Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It captures better what a local authority is there for - to serve. It is there to serve the people of Galway and Mayo. It is not a business. The Chair was there at the time, but he cannot comment, when the manager confirmed the number of vacancies for planners in Mayo County Council. This is the same for Galway City Council.

The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, which is a very respected organisation, highlight that we must keep the ex parte system, with the court retaining the discretion to direct that such an application can be heard on notice where circumstances require. The court has that discretion, and the Minister of State knows that better than I do. It can direct it to be on notice. I therefore have no idea why the Government is doing this. The commission also makes very serious submissions about the failure to deal with Traveller accommodation, which was briefly mentioned by Deputy Ó Broin. Nowhere is that reflected. The commission talked about the administrative scheme and its difficulties with that. It also talked about the getting rid of the Court of Appeal for this area of law only. Can you imagine getting rid of the Court of Appeal just for this area of law, when there is no rationale anywhere, no explanation as to why that is necessary, and no idea what it is based on? As I mentioned already, the former Chief Justice, Frank Clarke, had serious concerns that it will lead to a lot more litigation. It has already had unintended consequences in another area of law, namely, asylum. We have the experience of messing up there and we still have not learned.

I want to finish by thanking those who went to the trouble of putting in all those detailed submissions. I read every single one of the submissions. I did not read the more than 700 pages because I did not have the time. What I have read, however, has raised serious concerns for me that what we are doing is business as usual when actually what we need is transformative action on every level. I am the first to promote renewable energy, but the transformative action we need has to be with the people on board. What we are doing here is othering them by saying they are the problem and that they have created the mess, and not the Government that brought in strategic housing developments, SHDs. Most of them that were judicially reviewed were successful. At the time, the local authority in Galway warned the Government not to do this. It said it was taking up its time and that it was going to An Bord Pleanála. It was an absolute mess, and then the Government blamed An Bord Pleanála for that.

I do not blame An Bord Pleanála or the staff on the local authorities. I blame successive Governments. I abhor the narrative that is going out to the effect that people and serial objectors are to blame for a housing crisis and the failure to promote and develop serious and important infrastructural projects.

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