Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome anything that will move on housing in this country. I will make just a few observations.

First, as for the board, the chairman of the board and the way the board will be picked, I greatly resent that we always look for public servants in this regard. I tabled a number of parliamentary questions over recent weeks and went to every single Department and State agency. I do not know how public servants, health board officials or county managers can do their jobs because every second one of them is on boards, and it is not right. When this board is set up we have to put on it people who are for planning, people who may be against planning and professional people who know about planning. Even retired builders will have to be put on the board to show how they have to work and operate. I am not a builder and none of my family are builders, but the people who build houses are builders.

I will give the Minister an example of what happened during the summer in Geesala. They run a fantastic festival there every year, with horses on the beach. Thousands of people come to it. The week before the event they got a call from the foreshore section in Cork telling them they could not have the event and needed to go looking for maps and this and that. Every single thing they had to do they had to pay for. Everyone in the foreshore offices and the National Parks and Wildlife Service was getting paid for by the State, whereas the volunteers who were putting on the races were expected to do so on their voluntary time, trying to do good for their community and trying to help their community. We are over-regulated in this country. Such events went on for years and years when there was no regulation. We have just gone too far.

Does the Minister talk to the county managers or the county managers' association? Are they serious about building houses? Three major developments in my county over recent months have been refused. They go to An Bord Pleanála. You would be as well to send them to hell or to heaven because by the time you get a decision you would be dead, having waited for months. When your time is up and you are told your decision will be done, what happens? I will tell you what happens. You will be another six months and another six months. Anything the Minister can do to try to speed up that process has to be done. Also, if there are cases going to the courts, they have to be sped up. We cannot expect people to wait for years and years. We have a housing crisis and we need planning laws that will move this on. If something is wrong, it should be refused. If it is right, it should be moved on as fast as it can be instead of everybody looking at it and making decisions, with an appeal here, there and everywhere. Something has to be done.

I really want the Minister to put in place a board that represents all sections of society. Too much is happening in this country now. With every single State board being appointed now, it is public service people who are put in. The Government that is there all the time is now running things. The Minister brought into the development plans provisions that the councillors could zone land and send it up to the Department. Then it is sent back from the Department. Then it is sent to a regulator and he scraps off what he wants or does not want. That is not proper local government. That is not democracy. For the past three nights I have been watching on the television a programme about the Irish Civil War and the setting up of this State. I thought we had a free State and democracy. I thought we had a Minister. This is his job. When I was a Minister, I was a Minister. Public servants have a job to do and they do a good job, but they are only the public service. They are there to advise the Minister. The Minister of the day is the one who should make the decisions and not be afraid to make them. I listen to the Opposition and the media speak of conflicts of interests and conflicts of this and that. We need people on boards who know what is going on out there, not people who make rules that make it more difficult for people to operate under those rules.

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