Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

And consistency.

I welcome the Minister of State and his officials to the House and thank the officials who are not here who have been working on the planning Bill. It is an enormous piece of work and an enormous amount of time went into it. It is a timely review that irons out the kinks, for want of a better word, or contradictions in the existing legislation which led to a lot of judicial reviews and court challenges. This is important, timely and necessary legislation. Resourcing must follow the plans in this legislation. To give a figure from my local authority, Donegal County Council will need about 24 extra staff members to deal with the different responsibilities and accountabilities in this legislation. The resources must follow. Duplication has been taken out of this legislation. It is plan-led decision making. From my contact with some of the planning officials in my local authority area, it streamlines it to an extent and takes out the grey areas.

That is where I leave the planning Bill. I wish to raise an issue concerning a planning development in my parish, which was agreed upon with the Department and local authority in 2018. There was a €3 million announcement. It went through the planning processes; it was a turnkey development. The planning authority was happy with all of the requirements and specifications. Everything was going in the right direction in 2018. Those houses could have been built today, only there was no streamlining of communication or co-ordination between the local authority and Irish Water. Irish Water has designed the sewerage treatment plant and, in fairness to the local authority, it will not put in 34 extra houses in a small village unless the required sewerage treatment plant is in place. That is acceptable. We have been waiting all that time for Irish Water to put a contractor on site and do that work. It has not happened. The designs are complete - all it requires is that the contractors be appointed. I would like the Minister of State, be it himself or through his officials, to make formal contact tonight with Irish Water to try to expedite that situation. He should not be doing that and it should not require me standing up here tonight. Is it a competency of the Customs House and the officials in the Department of local government? There will be an argument that it is not its job to ensure progress is made with a competency outside of its control but the question I raised is perhaps there will be an opportunity to address it at some stage. It is not in the 710 pages of this planning Bill, as far as I am aware. Should there be oversight in ensuring developments progress? There will be different service providers at different junctures in a planning process which, for one reason or another, will hold up specific projects. Perhaps there is an opportunity in this planning legislation to ensure that oversight to move things along pro-actively, progressively and in the right manner. Meanwhile - this is where I digress from the planning Bill - one family, as many families on the housing list, in my parish and environs have been waiting in hope for five years.

There are families whose lives have been put on hold for five years in the hope these houses would be going ahead. They now know it will be another two to three years. What do I tell the particular young family I am thinking about? Their child has recently been in Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin. They are paying high rent because it is in a rent pressure zone at the moment. It is a successful tourism location. Accommodation is at a premium. Airbnb is on the increase. What do I tell that family, who I told with excitement five years ago that there will be houses in this area? There will be a great opportunity for many local people to get houses, because there will be 34 houses in a small village. It is a positive story for the area. What do I tell that family? Do I tell them they have to wait another two or three years? That is not a good place to be. I should not be raising this issue tonight, but I am raising it. I know the Minister of State's bona fides in terms of his personal approach to politics. I know he will take this issue and deal with it personally, and I know his officials will too. I may have been remiss down the years. Sometimes when a piece of legislation with 700 plus pages comes before the Dáil, we maybe do not give enough credit to the people who burn the midnight oil and put in that effort. They work diligently, both legalistically and not just churning our legislation for the sake of it. The previous legislation was good legislation. However, once legislation is presented gaps and contradictions can unfortunately appear. As I said earlier, that is why we have so many judicial reviews on the planning side. There will no doubt be other legal challenges with this legislation, but sometimes we have to look at the personal situation. At the end of the day, TDs or Senators in these Houses, or county councillors all have the one mission as politicians. We are all trying to make life that bit easier for people who are in difficulty. At the moment there are a lot of people waiting for houses to be built. Let us fast track them, but look at a proactive way to ensure there is monitoring and oversight to ensure projects are moving okay within one service provider. If there are hitches in another let us look at trying to move that forward in a better way.

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