Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Labour Party will oppose this motion. In recent weeks, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage has driven a coach and horses through the long-established process for bringing legislation through the Houses of the Oireachtas. He rammed through the mica redress Bill, and every Stage of the Electoral Reform Bill 2022 has brought complex and substantial amendments outside the original scope of that legislation.

Later today, 72 Government amendments made in the Seanad to the Electoral Reform Bill will be dealt with in 45 minutes of debate before going to the President for signature. It is an appalling way to make law that will determine the future of our democracy. Now the Minister is introducing, at a very late stage, six sets of complex amendments to the Planning and Development (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill that run to 48 pages. The original Bill was only 18 pages long and dealt with some technical issues. He will triple the length of the Bill with his new proposals.

One of the sets relates to short-term lettings. While potentially welcome, the Labour Party has warned for years of the need for stronger regulation of so-called Airbnbs. As far back as 2017, my former colleague, Mr. Kevin Humphreys, introduced a Bill to provide for a register of properties, with fines for those who do not comply. It is good to see the Government finally catching up now, five years later, but it should not be rushed through like this. There has been no scrutiny of the proposals at committee and no engagement with stakeholders or teasing out of how these new laws will work in practice. Many of the proposals being legislated for also relate to the Minister cleaning up mistakes previously made by proposals passed by this Government and its predecessor. Some of these are technical in nature and relate to ministerial directions and the OPR, flexibility in planning applications, maritime area planning and the Valuation Acts. What is not clear is why these could not have been progressed in the Seanad or introduced when the Bill was originally published.

The most controversial set of amendments relates to judicial review. It was the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage under Fine Gael, and supported by Fianna Fáil, that created the crisis in An Bord Pleanála and the avalanche of judicial reviews when it introduced the strategic housing developments legislation, bypassing the normal two-stage planning process. We warned at the time that this would result in a significant increase in court activity, and that has been borne out. There was no compelling reason to bypass local authority planning, as it has done nothing to speed up the planning process, and An Bord Pleanála was clearly not equipped to deal with the massive increase in large and complex housing developments that require local planning expertise. However, now, without any pre-legislative scrutiny or Second Stage debate, the Government is planning to limit the ability of people to take judicial reviews and even when the courts find mistakes made by An Bord Pleanála, it will allow it to fix its own homework to pretend it never happened.

Planning law solicitor, Mr. Fred Logue, has helped to highlight the problems with the Minister's approach. It effectively moves the goalposts for anyone who legally challenges a planning decision. He said in the Irish Examineryesterday: "Under European law, the system has to be fair, equitable and not prohibitively expensive." I wonder where the St. Anne's campaign would be now if this legislation had been in place before the campaign began. With the sudden resignation of the deputy chairman of An Bord Pleanála at the weekend, it is crucial that the Minister now fast-tracks the publication of the report by senior counsel, Mr. Remy Farrell, in full. It is essential that people have full confidence in the planning process and if the report reveals more systematic and seismic issues in An Bord Pleanála, they must be addressed. Transparency and fairness are the bedrock of any democracy, and trust in the planning system is vital.

The amendments being forced through raise serious questions about the crisis at the heart of our planning system. These changes raise serious questions of European law and constitutional concerns about the restriction of access to the courts. That is why we oppose the motion. If the Minister wants to understand why there are so many successful judicial reviews of planning decisions, it is because a dysfunctional Department and a willing Minister keep bringing forward last-minute legislation. The actions of the Minister also raise serious constitutional questions about the level of scrutiny afforded to our legislation. He has a proven track record now of bypassing the processes and Standing Orders of the House to get his plans put into law. Rushed law is bad law, and the Labour Party opposes this motion.

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