Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. My contribution, in the context of the number of years I have been in the Dáil, is one of my most important. It is one of the last opportunities for me as a TD for Cork South-West to finally sort out the slow, laborious planning process people have to face day in, day out, especially in the area of west Cork because although we are blessed with beauty, it can unfortunately be a bit of a punishment from a planning perspective. I am talking in particular of one-off houses.

This legislation is big. I see its size in front of the Minister of State. It is hundreds and hundreds of pages of legislation. There has to be an opportunity in it to once and for all address an issue that has been an issue ever since I have been in politics, for 15 years now, and that is the obstacles and barriers faced by young people in particular - it is not just young people but I will single them out - in getting planning for one-off houses. I will pick up where Deputy Flaherty left off because this is clearly not just an issue in west Cork. It is taking some couples, if they are lucky, two to three years to get planning from the point of starting the process, picking a site, an architect and an engineer, putting it through the process, preplanning, back and forth, refusals, withdrawals and whatever it is. It is taking years and years. It is not just about time. As time goes on, costs increase. These young couples are paying tens of thousands of hard-earned money just to get their planning over the line. We had the report today on the cost of houses and the increase in cost. The planning issue has to be an aspect of that as the report included all costs and not just the build. The cost people are going through to get redesigns done, to do new designs and drawings, and the efforts as regards landscaping, etc. is prohibitive. The Bill has to be an opportunity to sort that out once and for all.

There is an issue with interpretation of the county development plans, where certain planners interpret them in one way, while the members who wrote the plans and were involved in drafting them interpret them in another. It is always the planners' interpretation that seems to win out, however. That is wholly unfair on applicants because it leads to a situation where there is back and forth. An applicant will choose what everybody else thinks is a reasonable site in a good location, within a farm holding or land or whatever it is, but for planners it is too elevated, it is scenic, it is exposed or it is ribbon development. Whatever it is they will pick every word that suits their interpretation of the county development plan. This legislation has to address that. We are not talking about allowing applicants free rein over where they want to put their dream house and putting it anywhere. We are talking about a reasonable interpretation because the experiences young people, in particular, are having are stressful and very costly.

There is then the issue of objections. We all saw "RTÉ Investigates" and the despicable behaviour that exposed. However, it is not just big developers who have to deal with these vexatious objections. Right across the board, young people building their first homes are also facing vexatious objections that are completely unreasonable but because of those objections, applications end up going to the board. It takes years to get through the board, although it is 18 months in some instances. It is far too long and we need to stamp that out.

It is not just individuals who are objecting. A big issue is that some of our own State bodies are objecting to young people's applications. This is the thing that frustrates me more than anything else. In west Cork, TII has made it a habit in respect of any individual who wants to build along the main corridor into west Cork, the N71, to make submissions and objections in many instances. The worst case I can think of concerns a young man who lives on a laneway off the N71, with his parents in the same house, who drives in and out of that entrance every day and has been doing so for his entire life. A perfect site was there in an ideal location. It had water, wastewater treatment services and everything. I understand that the area engineer, in that instance, was inclined to say it was okay and acceptable. The young man was already going in and out of the site and it was absolutely fine, yet TII came along, made a submission and put that area engineer in a position where he cannot grant an application.

I understand the health and safety implications. We have to look at them in all cases but, for God's sake, when someone is already going in and out of an entrance, it is ludicrous that TII, which does not know the individual or the pain this person has gone through with planning, is making objections. It is ridiculous. There are so many instances of this. There are instances where a farmer's son or daughter is looking to build next to the farmyard, for practical reasons, because they want to be close to it, but they are told it is too elevated and are put down into the deepest, darkest hole of a site. We cannot be the only ones experiencing this in west Cork. It has to be happening throughout Ireland. This legislation has to introduce mechanisms in order that things can be looked at in a balanced way and county development plans can be interpreted in a balanced way. I am not sure how long I have got.

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