Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I got involved in politics because of my interest in planning and because I understand that if we do not have a proper planning system, everything else fails. When you get planning right, people generally do not notice, because things are good, but when you get it wrong an entire generation or generations can live with the legacy. We see some of that in the urban sprawl we have seen in the past 30 to 40 years and the traffic issues, car dependency and climate emissions, etc., that come with that. The decisions we make in planning impact intergenerationally, and this Bill will have to serve the next couple of Oireachtas terms and generations. Perhaps it will be in place for the next 15 or 20 years. I have no doubt there will be amendments. When a Bill is this size, it needs to be amended as things evolve and change.

Much of the commentary we have seen is based on the publication that came out in January, which was problematic. We heard expert witness testimony in the quite intense pre-legislative scrutiny we did over a short period. We brought in a wide range of experts and practitioners in planning. There were problems with the Bill, so people need to take what is here, study it carefully, compare it with the January document and remember that the comments, many of which are in public circulation and were made by people whose comments I respect, may have been rectified in this version. I draw attention to one example. It is the problematic thing about the board being able to correct any error in law. I understand that has been rectified. Now a judge will make that decision. That is a positive move because it was a step too far and would probably have encouraged planning consent applications that were not complete. We do not want to encourage sloppy applications or people leaving bits out because they think they can go back to correct the application as an error of law. I appreciate the Minister taking on board the committee's view on that. It appears to have been rectified.

Planning is incredibly complex. I know many people who work in the planning system because I studied planning more than 20 years ago, even before there were strategic environmental assessment directives.

While I welcome the tightening of timelines to give certainty - everyone wants a little certainty in the planning system - I recognise that, given the sheer array of information that comes at planners who are trying to make such complex decisions, if you put a tight timeline on them, while they are also constrained by resources - people have covered resources, and I will come to it in a moment - that is when you get mistakes in decision making. When the applications are complex, it is also when you get mistakes in the applications.

We need to be careful when we are critical of the planning system. Our planning system is quite good. It is democratic and participative at every stage, from electing councillors to crafting county development plans and dealing with the decisions that are made on those plans. We have the bones of a really good planning system. I do not like the narrative that delays in the planning system are the root cause of every problem. They are not. We need to differentiate planning infrastructure. We go through all the different stages from public spending codes to the development consent process and so on. Our local authorities are quite good at meeting their development consent process timelines. Most of them meet the timelines with eight or nine weeks or a little longer for those that require environmental impact assessments.

There are delays with An Bord Pleanála. There is no doubt about that. Its representatives were before the committee recently. It was not a well-attended meeting. It probably would have been 12 months earlier, but an RTÉ celebrity was next door and stole the audience. However, I was quite comfortable with what I saw coming from An Bord Pleanála. It is up to full speed. It has its full complement of decision-makers. It can operate multiple meetings now and, from the latest report I have seen, it looks like it will be up to good speed by early next year so we should start to see the delays in the process easing. When the constant narrative is that the planning system is a problem, it almost provides ammunition for people to attack the planning system by stating we need to regulate it more and pushing down more on it. We need to avoid that and as public representatives we have a role to play in respecting the role planners do and in looking deeply at why there are problems in the planning system. It is because it is under-resourced. We are addressing that.

I will table a number of amendments to the Bill. I will refer to the original section numbers because I am not up to speed on the new ones. Under the original section 5, anyone could seek a declaration on whether something was development or exempted development. It seems the opportunity for any person to do so has been removed. It should be put back in. I note that the pre-legislative scrutiny report states this is problematic. In the pre-legislative scrutiny sessions, we did not get that message. I do not know why the message changed between the pre-legislative scrutiny sessions and the pre-legislative scrutiny report. I would like to see that re-instated.

Section 25(a) of the original Act is important in the context of regional planning. It requires Departments and each local authority to report to the regional assemblies every two years. That is critical. Regional planning is as important as county planning and the continual monitoring of regional planning is particularly important, especially when we try to report back on the national planning framework.

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