Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is not personal but the parrot-like responses that have been prepared for junior ministers to come into the House are totally unacceptable. I have been in the Oireachtas for 22 years. I know what An Bord Pleanála does. The Minister of State started by talking of its independence and then he spoke better than any communications company procured by that company. He did not listen to anything I said about the tangible issues that are going on day to day with An Bord Pleanála’s strategic operation. It is not fit for purpose. It is paralysing the State. This is the objection that it has already adjudicated on, namely, that this proposed development is at the end of a cul-de-sac and there might be a difficulty turning cars. It has already adjudicated on this. To send an inspector to a nimbyistic objector like this is the biggest waste of state resources ever. The Minister of State has just described another layer of commissioners and CEOs and officers and inspectors and administrators so the administrative merry-go-round and waste of public money can be exacerbated while we make more people homeless and load people in through the ports and airports. It is about time for an element of common sense. The Minister of State said the Government is independent of this. The Government is to govern. People need housing. I have given the Minister of State tangible examples of why the system is not working and why a desktop exercise on this appeal alone could decide that it is absolutely nimbyistic and vexatious and that as the board has been at this site previously, there is no need to go back for the same issue. I gave the Minister of State the planning number for the case which went in months after the one I referred to in which there has been a decision already. While I know it is not a Minister because that would be illegal, somebody in An Bord Pleanála is obviously selecting. He or she is saying, if you like, that he or she will do the Minister of State's application now and will leave MacSharry until last. I should have a more wholesome response based on the Minister of State’s own common sense, rather than rhyming off this parrot-like response, which was probably prepared in An Bord Pleanála.

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