Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

We certainly did not receive any correspondence from him. This is not the first time the Government has claimed to have engaged with the Opposition only for it to turn out that it had just engaged with one Opposition party. This poor practice needs to change. We would welcome any engagement.

The Bill runs to more than 700 pages, making it one of the largest ever produced in the history of the State, yet there was only one week between it being published and Second Stage. No rational person could expect us to have read all 700 pages to inform our contributions. We asked for an extra week so that we could take a good stab at it, but that was not allowed. We asked when the Bills digest from the Library and Research Service would be available. It was available early this week, but that Bills digest, which is an important resource for us as parliamentarians in terms of any Bills we examine, did not go into the Bill in depth. Clearly, there was not time to do so. The digest is very cursory. In fact, there is little examination in it once one takes out the report from the Department on the pre-legislative scrutiny recommendations and the introductory material on the background of the Bill and so forth. There is very little analysis of the Bill in the Bills digest.

The explanatory memorandum is highly problematic. I shall give an example. The explanatory memo reads:

Section 17: Evidence This section provides for the evidential value of the development plan.

That is not what section 17 of the Bill appears to be about at all. Instead, section 17 is actually about stipulating what is required in terms of certifying and providing evidence in respect of a whole range of matters to the relevant body or authority and covers a considerable amount more than the development plan. It refers to the national planning framework, national planning statements, regional, spatial and economic strategies, urban area plans, priority area plans and co-ordinated area plans in addition to development plans and the relevant standards and bodies for certifying such materials. The explanatory memo is deficient in a number of respects. I ask that the Minister of State commits in his closing comments to updating it and giving us a more comprehensive one.

We lack information on what changes are being made in this Bill compared to the provisions in existing legislation. The Minister’s comments on this matter were incredibly cursory, with him just going through a few sections of the Bill in this debate. We have had no comment from him at all on Second Stage about significant changes. There are many deficiencies in this process. Members of the committee have been asking the Minister to provide the rationale and evidence base for the changes and an actual list of the changes the Bill makes compared to existing legislation. That is not an unreasonable thing for us as legislators to ask for.

There are a couple of key reasons for the significant backlog in An Bord Pleanála. One is that the board has been understaffed and under-resourced. It is good to see that some progress has been made in this regard. Another reason is that, when serious issues were raised about the board and without any of us asking him to do so, the Minister started to deplete the number of people on the board. As members resigned or their terms finished, he did not replace them. At one point, this left us with a board of five members making decisions. The Minister's decision, which was not called for by anyone, was one of the contributing factors to the backlog. It is good that this issue is now rectified.

There needs to be clarification as to why the Minister did that. As people's terms were up or they were resigning, they should have been replaced. That should have been done quickly. It should not have been held back for a prolonged period.

It is worth noting that attempts to short-circuit planning sometimes backfire and lead to further delays. This happened when so-called fast track of SHD planning was introduced by the Government. This was going to speed up the delivery of housing, we were told. However, we now have a situation where SHDs, so-called fast-track planning applications, are taking up to 79 weeks for An Bord Pleanála to make decisions on, with 22,000 potential homes remaining stuck in the process. Let us not forget when SHDs were introduced - this is well recorded, the research has been done and it is on the record - it was after extensive lobbying by developers who said that Government Ministers had implemented their proposals lock, stock and barrel.

It is worth noting that in recent years, the Government has done almost everything asked of it by developers and their lobbyists. Some 28 mandatory regulations issued by the Government that were lobbied for have reduced standards and yet failed to deliver sufficient affordable housing. Of course, we should be trying to have as few planning matters as possible decided in the courts. The best way to do that is to invest in forward planning and co-creation in order to reduce conflict and get communities involved at an early stage in helping to design large projects in their areas. To reduce delays in the courts, a much better approach than what the Government is talking about, would be to assign more judges to ensure that appeals are heard quickly and hire more planners. Rather than having more cases and judicial reviews going into the system because of a failure to comply with environmental law standards, it would be much better to prioritise compliance with the EU environmental legislation, instead of trying to find ways of getting around our obligations. That would be a much better way to do things.

In order to speed up the construction of housing, we need to tackle structural delays such as connections for utilities. For Uisce Éireann and other utility companies, this is a massive issue. We need to do much more to get skilled construction workers and more people into apprenticeships. In some of the key wet trades we are at about 14% or 16% of our 2006 levels of apprenticeships. A really good start on that would be to pay at least the minimum wage for people in construction apprenticeships. They should not be exempt from minimum wage protections.

We must not lose sight of the importance of good planning. In terms of this Bill and the issues around centralisation of control and reduction of public accountability, we see that in the environmental costs scheme. There are significant concerns about the eligibility restrictions, means testing, requirements to provide financial statements and the political control on this through the ministerial role and ministerial control which is not appropriate.

With regard to restrictions on access to justice, we see in this Bill that members of residents' associations will be required to vote by a two thirds majority in order to take a judicial review. Significantly, however, each member who votes "Yes" will have their name and address published as part of the process. Clearly, that will have a chilling effect. It is designed to intimidate people. Let us be clear about what is proposed. It will reduce access to justice and reduce levels of accountability. It means that everybody who participates in the planning process, be they developers or anyone else, will not have to publish their names and addresses. If they participate in a judicial review, however, ordinary residents will have to do so. There is no legal justification whatsoever for this discriminatory and invasive practice.

Regarding declarations on exempted development, the Minister even raised this point in his introduction. This is designed to eliminate the one measure that members of the public can use to ensure some level of accountability for local authorities regarding exempted development and potential lack of enforcement. In a good planning system we should be able to use and expand the use of exempted development. If we do not have measures to hold local authorities to account for failure to enforce, that will not be possible. We need to have public confidence in enforcement and a mechanism to hold local authorities to account.

I want to give one example. I will quote a member of the public, who stated:

I believe this change in relation to Declarations will undermine the rights and entitlements of ordinary people In Ireland in the context of planning and development, especially in relation to unauthorised development.

I myself have had cause to seek a Declaration about unauthorised development carried out by the owner of a property next to my home after the planning enforcement section of my local planning authority stated the development in question was exempted development.

My ability as ‘...any person’ to obtain a Declaration enabled me to prove the development in question was not in fact exempted development, thereby requiring the planning enforcement section of my local planning authority to take appropriate action.

Had relevant legislation at the time allowed '... only the owner or occupier of land or a person with their consent’ to seek a Declaration then it would not have been possible for me to prove the development was not exempted development and to require the planning enforcement section to take action.

I regret that, based on my personal experience, I have little confidence in planning enforcement in Ireland

I was told by a planning enforcement officer .... that the relevant authority does not like to take planning enforcement action because it does not want to have to pay associated legal fees; and, secondly, that when I complained to the Ombudsman about this case the Ombudsman found that the planning enforcement section had been responsible for maladministration.

This Bill will remove the ability of a member of the public to seek such a declaration. What I read out from that individual absolutely matches my experience when I was an elected member of a local authority. There were lots of issues around planning enforcement. The declaration mechanism is the only one to hold the planning authority to account in the context of exempted development. Even though it is not greatly used or known about, it is very important existing legislation nonetheless. Seeking to remove it leaves people with no ability to hold a local authority to account. I have been told by people working in local authorities that they do not want to go down the route of planning enforcement because they are afraid of the associated legal costs.

I want to raise the issue of the Irish language in the context of this Bill. There has been a step backwards in terms of the provisions in this regard. It would be a grave mistake to go backwards on the limited measures that have been put in place over the years on a piecemeal basis to improve things for people in Gaeltacht areas who have issues with the planning system and trying to get housing.

There are also issues regarding people with disabilities. I will be bringing amendments on those as well. The Bill does not contain the measures we need to improve access to housing for Travellers and people with disabilities.

The provisions on compulsory purchase orders, CPOs, need to be strengthened. There is also a lack of measures to implement the recommendations of the Kenny report. Another thing missing from this Bill are use-it-or-lose-it measures that were promised by the Minister. Also missing is the land value sharing tax.

We do not have effective measures with respect to land hoarding. The Bill also lacks measures to promote home ownership and there is a lack of measures in terms of new build apartments to ensure that some of them are available for people to buy instead of having the rental only model continuing to dominate apartments in urban areas. There are also a lack measures around co-creation and early engagement.

The Bill also fails to address the issue of affordability. It perpetuates the entire system of passive planning that is led by market actors. If we want to address the issue of affordability, we have to have active planning. This can be seen in countries like the Netherlands where it is very effective. Serviced land with infrastructure is assembled by municipalities or local authorities and made available for housing at affordable rates. This is missing from the Bill, which is a terrible pity

Issues raised about Fórsa and the lack of consultation with its members about changes to An Bord Pleanála and the name change are very relevant.

Totally missing from the Bill are measures to improve situations on conditions requiring bonds. This is a big issue in new developments where the bond system has been ineffective and has not worked well enough.

One of the really important things in the context of the Bill is the failure to address the issue of taking in charge that affects people in newly built areas. For example, in my constituency, the public areas in estates that were built about 20 years ago have still not been taken in charge. There is nothing in this Bill that will put proper timelines in place for that. It perpetuates the status quo.

That is a very serious issue for the local authorities and local communities. Fifteen or 20 years on, people are paying property tax and management fees to management companies that are running public areas, such as roads, footpaths and green spaces, that should be taken in charge by the councils.

The legislation is not fit for purpose and this Bill is not fit for purpose. I accept that a lot of time has gone into it, but the fact is that these things are not even on the Minister’s radar, are not even referenced in his introduction and there is no attempt to fix these major problems with the planning system. If there is good engagement at committee level and the Minister takes on board some of our amendments and works with us on these, then we can fix some of those deficiencies. I look forward to doing that.

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