Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for being in the Chamber. These are important changes to planning legislation. The Bill essentially changes the substitute consent regime provided for in the old Planning and Development Act 2000 and streamlines the substitute consent regime so that it becomes a more efficient process. I am glad that the legislation provides for a single-stage planning application process under the remit of An Bord Pleanála, replacing the current two-stage process.

The Bill contains many technical provisions but I want to begin my contribution about efficiency. I was in China around this time in 2008 when the whole country was getting ready for the Beijing Olympic Games. While I am not saying we should be going in that direction entirely, I was highly impressed at how they were delivering everything from power plants to housing developments. During the Covid pandemic, we saw how the Chinese Government was able to deliver new hospital blocks within 21 days in one instance. While that is the stuff of fiction and fantasy in this country, a source of major frustration to people is the delays in having public money, which is committed to many projects, actually delivered to allow projects to happen on the ground. There was much talk earlier this week about the MetroLink project which will be of great benefit to the Minister's constituency. However, that will take a good decade before any shovels are in the ground carrying out work.

There is a need to look at that overall. Since the Government came into office two years ago it has not been found wanting in committing capital money to capital projects and delivering on a new national plan to improve Ireland and drag us properly into the 21st century - we have only been limbering into it so far.

This day last week I met a group of people who work in the forestry sector. They met many Deputies from rural areas rural in the audiovisual room. Forestry is a form of land use which involves acres of ground being planted. The trees generally grow for 30 years before being harvested. It is a cyclical process. The timber is used in the building sector and new trees are planted. They are very frustrated that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine licensing regime is pretty much at the point of stagnation at the moment. Applications from Coillte are processed much quicker than those coming from private forestry. I have met representatives of the sector to discuss this.

There is a real need to bring forestry into the realm of planning. We are able to deal with complex projects, such as bridge construction, data centres, new hospital wings and mobile phone antennae. If we are able to deal with those kinds of complex and often controversial infrastructure projects in an eight-week planning window and subsequently perhaps ending up with An Bord Pleanála, that shows it is streamlined. In each planning authority, be it An Bord Pleanála or local planning authorities, there is in-house capacity for things such as environmental screening for habitats and archaeological grounds. There is in-house capacity to gauge each planning application that comes before it. We urgently need to consider bringing forestry under this regime so that it becomes a planning matter with an eight-week turnaround. It should be treated as a land-use matter rather than something for licence and certification from a Department that is currently incapable of dealing with them appropriately.

I give the Minister credit for the Maritime Area Planning Act. The Foreshore Act dated back to 1933, between the two world wars when steamer vessels were still paddling up and down the River Shannon. Nobody ever thought of its enormous potential, indeed the offshore potential, of generating electricity, or offshore exploration for minerals. None of that was being considered. However, our legislation did not change one iota from 1933 to December 2021. The Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, overhauled all that. That introduced a new streamlined efficient process and we are now seeing the benefits of that with the largest offshore wind farm in Europe now planned off the County Clare coast. This project very nearly fell 18 months ago because the legislation was so outdated. It is time to look at doing the same thing with forestry.

I wish to speak about planning objections. At some point we will need to introduce legislation to deal with the inordinate number of vexatious planning objections that continue to be submitted. We need some pre-qualifier rules. Some strategic projects in my county have been delayed and, in some cases, have fallen by the wayside entirely. The Killaloe bridge crossing was delayed by three or four years by objectors from Dublin. The coastal erosion defences at Doonbeg in County Clare-----

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