Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This is incredibly sharp practice on the part of the Government. It makes a mockery of any sort of proper oversight of legislation. We had a briefing on Monday from officials on these 48 pages of amendments. These are substantial amendments in the areas of planning that will affect the rights of people to access justice through judicial reviews and will affect what is, broadly, a good objective as regards short-term lettings but, as others have said, the objective and the actual translation into legislation may not be the same thing. Everything of that sort needs to be scrutinised properly. I had to ask for an explanatory memorandum at that briefing. As with all legislation, we get an explanatory memorandum to try to translate what is often and, in this case, is, quite dense legislative language into relatively plain English so we can understand what we are looking at and voting on. I received this explanatory memorandum on these 48 pages of last-minute amendments from the Government to a Bill that is being guillotined so in reality we will not have time to look at and scrutinise it properly at 8:58 a.m., two minutes before the debate started. That is just an absolute joke. It is the Government laughing at the Opposition, and showing utter contempt for the legislative process, democracy and the public.

The amendments the Government is bringing forward are far outside the scope of the original Bill we started to deal with on Second Stage. If we tabled amendments that were anything even remotely similar in being outside the scope of a Bill, we would just be laughed out of court. They would be ruled out of order and would not be allowed. The Government, however, can do it by putting forward this motion, ramming it through and then guillotining the debate on the Bill later so we do not have proper time to scrutinise the amendments.

The substantial amendments that are of particular concern relate to planning matters and the question of judicial reviews. These are important issues. I wonder about the timing of the amendments. I suspect they result from lobbying by the private offshore wind industry. That is what I think. It has lobbied the Government to do this and that is why it is being done. It is so that industry can get flexibility in planning applications for offshore industrial wind turbines. In essence, the amendments amount to, from the perspective of planning and the public, buying a pig in a poke because they will give the industry the flexibility to apply for one development, but for the development it actually develops to be a different development. That is what the flexibility amounts to. The height and design of the wind turbines can change.

The Government will say there are safeguards and the industry has to show the different options and so on and so forth. All of that should be subject to serious scrutiny but in actuality we are dealing with a serious matter, namely, the ability of private developers because that is what we are talking about here - probably most particularly on these legacy projects or relevant projects as they are described - to be able to put in a planning application for offshore industrial wind turbines, where the public has to respond to a particular type of planning application. However, what is actually developed later may be something completely different and the ability of people to take judicial reviews against developments that are being applied for, which may affect them or the environment and so on, will then be limited. That is unacceptable.

I am sure the Government does not give a hoot that we think it is unacceptable. There is laughing. That is what it does at this time of year.

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