Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Something that happens in Dublin has no relevance to my life. I would not dream in a month of Sundays of objecting to anything in Dublin. I cannot fathom why someone in Dublin would object to a key project in County Clare.

The wind energy guidelines have been with the Department for a long time, since December 2019. I believe they are going to the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications. I ask that the Government gets the guidelines out, published and operational.

The European Court of Justice made a very important ruling on the Flemish Decree of 2009 in respect of the right of the European citizen to freedom of movement. That freedom of movement spirit, enshrined in the European Court decision, has not always trickled down in respect of county development plans and how the local rural person is categorised. Pre-planning meetings are supposed to be part of the planning system. They rarely happen these days because of staff shortages in local authorities. Pre-planning meetings are one of the best ways for applicants to negotiate all of the messy stuff that invariably happens in the planning process.

The issues with An Bord Pleanála could be dealt with at a more localised level.

It is a centralised office. One of the ways of doing this could be that planning file appeals from County Clare could be sent to another county for adjudication. The Government could outsource and devolve some of An Bord Pleanála's functions to other counties. A file from County Wexford could be adjudicated on by a planning official in County Mayo and so forth. It would help us to some degree to get through the backlog of 30,000 or so homes that are currently within the system. That €20 objection fee has to go up. I know people will defend it and say it should not be costly and that people have a right to object. Absolutely, they have a right to object but in my book, they have no right to object to a project on the other side of Ireland that has no relevance whatsoever to their lives. I hope the individual I named, for which I apologised, is listening and gets to hear a little bit of this debate.

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