Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Canney will not make it, so I will take his time if that is all right. I am sharing time with Deputy Tóibín.

I normally begin my contributions by welcoming the opportunity to speak on the topic in question. I must say, however, that on this occasion I am pretty dissatisfied with the behaviour of the Government in scheduling this debate. The Government has allocated three and a half hours today for Deputies to make statements on An Bord Pleanála. The reason for my displeasure with this is that earlier this year, in July, the same Government allocated just two and a half hours to debate almost 50 pages of new planning legislation. In July we had all the legislation rammed through, with little time for debate or scrutiny, and many of the Deputies who spoke during that debate on 7 July expressed similar concerns. They described the Bill as a very technical one which needed more time to be examined. Regardless of the contents of the Bill, it is fundamentally very poor governing practice to rush things without debate or adequate time for oversight. That is how these mistakes are being made. It is how loopholes are found and how the errors occur, and that in turn is how legal challenges succeed. We are here as legislators. The fundamental purpose of our being here is to design, to debate and to enact good legislation. Ramming through Bills is becoming too much the norm, and the Government appears to be using the summer recess tactically to avoid scrutiny of or debate on certain types of legislation. It happened in 2021 and it happened again in 2022.

There are so many problems in our planning system that one would think that scrutiny of even more planning legislation would be high on the agenda to try to tidy up some of the mess the planning system is in. The housing crisis, for example, is being exacerbated by planning legislation. Developers have in some cases in the past few years had their developments scuppered by planning regulations that made certain developments in certain areas unfeasible. The planning regulator's insistence on high densities for developments in rural areas is one such example. No one would deny that is appropriate for city environments, where the transport infrastructure to accommodate high-density settings is available, but it is not appropriate in rural or regional Ireland, where no such infrastructure exists. In a number of An Bord Pleanála inspector's reports the inspector has relied on the proposition that ministerial guidelines impose a minimum density of 35 dwellings per hectare in respect of edge-of-town greenfield sites where no such minimum exists. This has been described in those reports as higher planning policy that usurps the statutory standing of the local county development plan. The current regulator continues to act ultra viresin writing to the county councils to insert as mandatory such non-existent minimum densities.

It has been decided in the courts enough times now that the current regulator is simply wrong on some of the most basic elements of the law.

The advice he has given to the Minister and the Department has also been wrong. This should by now raise alarms bells. I expected action to be taken after the Department's most recent loss against Cork County Council for the second time, which was a complete waste of taxpayers' money. The fact this particular regulator is investigating his former colleagues in An Bord Pleanála, some of whom he may have appointed or advised on their appointments, is a perfect display that all of the millions spent on tribunals and inquiries have taught us nothing.

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