Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 47:

In page 42, line 6, to delete “or expedient”.

I will run through these very speedily. Amendments Nos. 47 and 48 obviously deal with the issue of regulations and the conditions under which the Minister can issue them. The Minister may remember we had some debate around the use of the phrase "necessary or expedient". We argued in committee that "necessary" is enough and "expedient" makes no sense. Amendment No. 47 seeks to remove "expedient", as we tried to do previously. Amendment No. 48 makes the case for the Government to adopt a conservative or cautious approach to such regulations. The Minister of State who dealt with this felt the language of the amendment was not great. I am more than happy for the Minister to correct the language on Committee Stage in the Seanad, but it is the broad approach we are promoting here.

As for amendment No. 49, the Minister may remember he was directly involved in this discussion at the early stage of the Bill around prescribed bodies. This amendment requires a Minister to establish a list of prescribed bodies. This is to deal with the confusion we had at that point of the discussion as to whether prescribed bodies are just State bodies, as they are in some sections of the Bill, or include other independent organisations.

Amendment No. 50 deals with public participation with respect to certain categories or regulations. Given many of these regulations will essentially have a similar impact to planning law we think that is necessary.

Amendments Nos. 52 and 53 deal in different ways with the role of the Oireachtas with respect to dealing with those regulations, especially concerning exempted developments.

I have a question with the Minister's amendment No. 51. Obviously with certain categories of exempted developments, currently there is a procedure in the Oireachtas whereby a motion is brought before the Houses and the exempted development regulations are brought before the committee. That is very useful in terms of scrutiny and sometimes it actually results in change or improvement as we have seen. I want to be clear about whether there is anything in amendment No. 51 that would alter or limit the scope of that exercise because that is very important.

Amendment No. 52 deals with the issue of the requirement for resolutions of the House for the passing of some kinds or regulations and amendment No. 53 is similar.

I will be interested to hear the Minister's responses to those and will respond as appropriate.

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