Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The leaves but it is when all the things are growing up through your garden or if you cannot drive out of your driveway because you cannot cut the tree back. These are small concerns but they are the tensions that explode into something else in the long term. They are neighbourhood disputes that probably do not end up in here but it is a planning Bill and we should try to plan for this.

On the other aspects of this Bill, I was listening the other day when Deputy Madigan was speaking and I agreed with her, believe it or not, when she said that she was proud of public participation in the planning process. That is important. At the heart of all of this the public must play as big a role as it can. I do not agree with Deputy O'Dowd that we as politicians should be ruled out once the planning strategies are created by the council or once the development plan is signed off on. As Deputies we do not have as much say in that planning process. We have no more say than other citizens and rightly so but there are times when the wisdom or lack of wisdom of Deputies is important. We have an oversight and we often have a longer view than somebody who is next to it or who has a specific financial benefit in a plan. We can sometimes spot things or have an understanding of what is right or wrong.

At the end of the day, we do not get it for free. Like every other citizen, in our observations on plans we have to pony up whatever the fee is, which is €20 for the initial observation or €50 or €120 or €220 if you wish to go to An Bord Pleanála. If you are rich enough and have surplus cash, you can go to the courts as well. I do not remember any politician taking a judicial review. That is a huge amount of money and some of this Bill was fast-tracked because of the amount of communities that raised money to undertake the judicial review process. I had heard of this although it was something I had never considered but the vast majority of these people appeared all of a sudden in a period of three, four or five years in my area, where the strategic housing developments were foisted on communities.

There was then a panic because those communities did not get earlier engagement with planners and the system. An application went straight to An Bord Pleanála, and that was the final decision. Those communities did not have recourse to a review or anything else. That has now been changed but it cost us, as a State, a fortune. It also created delay and bunged up An Bord Pleanála for that whole period. It was very expensive. I was at a local public meeting and one of the residents asked an expert in taking these cases what the cost would be. He suggested that it would be €50,000 to €60,000, and that half of it would be required up front. Very few communities in this country have that type of money to set aside. That is, in some ways, wrong. Part of the problem is that communities need to be engaged from a very early stage. Good planning applications should involve the community from very early on.

A number of years ago, there was a plot of land where I live. Builders were asking how to deal with the community. We did not have a residents association so we set one up and there are now 20 groups in it. Any time developers come to the area, they engage. The community managed to get money from Dublin City Council to put forward a vision for the area. The people in the community are involved from the start. It is not just me, the Minister of State and whoever else, but the whole community. Every organisation that works with people in the community is represented. That means there is a vision in the host community.

We know already there will be considerable development. I am thinking, in particular, about the City Edge Project. Everyone who knows Bluebell knows that from there to the Red Cow, both left and right, there are industrial estates. Under the project, some 70,000 people will be living in the area by 2050. That is the plan. The communities backing onto the area wanted to have their say and ask for this and that. It is good planning when we involve the community from day one. Where planners and developers do not engage, there are clashes. People will then raise points about height, density and car-parking. The local communities know that a development of 200 or 300 houses will change the local landscape. In the Liberties, for example, there has been a proliferation of student and short-stay accommodation in the past ten years. The community was not happy with that trend and asked where were the homes for the families who live in the area. They said the nature of the whole area would change and it has changed in some ways. Some of those changes have been good and some bad. A small, quiet area changed overnight with a lot of younger and transient people coming in. It has helped the economy and all of that but it changed the nature of the area. It will take time for the community and society in that area to settle down and find its own level again.

We in this country have suffered from bad planning, as we all know. There was a notice in the paper this week in respect of Cherry Orchard. It has taken years to get to this point. We have all heard about the area in the negative. Cherry Orchard has one shop, which is in a house. To this day, it has that one shop. That shows how bad planning affects people's lives. There is a new plan in place that will, we hope, front-load other services. A school in the area is considered one of the best primary schools in addressing needs and teaching young kids. People saw that the plan involves more homes but we also need to ensure there is proper planning for proper services. There is no butcher, hairdresser or solicitor in the town. There is a community centre with an extension. There is also a church, as well as the school. When planning, we must build in those considerations. In fairness, Dublin City Council and some of its officials have stuck with it. The problem is that a number of plans have fallen because of a lack of investment or a downturn in the economy, which means we have to start all over again ten years later. The same is true of the regeneration of many of the flat complexes in this city. The communities engage and their hopes are built up before being dashed again when they are told developments are not going ahead and the process restarts. In some cases, communities see three or four iterations of plans before anything happens. St. Michael's Estate is an example. We hope that regeneration will go ahead. Planning permission is being sought. Part of the Dolphin House project has been done but the rest has stalled. The development at St. Teresa's Gardens has stalled. The Oliver Bond flats are another example. Some of those complexes were built quite a long time ago and redevelopment has not been fully delivered.

We also know about the problems when the planning system is allowed to run wild by itself without oversight. That is not necessarily the fault of the planner but somebody has to have oversight of the finished product. We know about the 100,000 apartments in the State with major building defects and the costs for those living in those apartments. Management companies are demanding €30,000, €40,000 or €50,000 to address the problems with fireproofing, fire stops or water egress. Some car parks are totally closed because they are so dangerous. It does not augur well. We also have the pyrite and mica situation. That is not part of the Bill but it is part of the background, if you want. It is why people start to get frustrated when planning is mentioned.

Deputy O'Dowd mentioned the history of major corruption in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. We saw the "RTÉ Investigates" programme the other night, and have heard stories since, about corruption. People are abusing a system that was put in for the greater good and as an organisation to which people could appeal and make points about plans. People once again seem to have been using it for their own good even when they have no connection whatsoever to the area or to the plans in question.

I have, on occasion, had the pleasure or courtesy of working with some communities who have asked me to have oversight of plans that are submitted. I have made quite a number of observations. Some of them have been successful and some have not. They laugh at me in the office and ask if I am reaching for the bible again. The bible is the development plan, which is very large. That is what I have to base my observations on. If there is nothing in it, there is nothing in it. If somebody has zoned a piece of land in a particular way, so be it until the next development plan if he or she wants that zoning changed. We need to ensure that change happens right.

Only recently, someone contacted us about the zoning of a factory. He did not know anything about it but overnight that factory was zoned as residential. The factory employs 70 people and its owner has no intention of closing it. He is proud of his factory. He is a world leader, in fact. Anybody who sits on a plane sits on his products. He works in the Liberties, in one of the last weaving firms in the area, and in Donegal. The fabric for every aeroplane in the world is made there. The factory was going to close because somebody somewhere wrongly zoned or de-zoned it. That issue has been addressed, and that is, in some ways, the beauty of the planning system. When you spot a mistake such as that, you can go to the city council and it can change the rezoning in full public glare. It is not about one person winning over another. It happens in the full public glare, within the sight of the community and society, with all of us involved, if we wish to be.

This legislation is welcome.

Obviously, there will be a need for some changes to the legislation but I hope it will have the full effect suggested by the Minister when he introduced it to the House. I hope it will address the problems in the planning process, speed it up and address the need for community consultation.

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