Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am here to say that it is deeply worrying that this type of discussion would proceed in this way on a date when we are actually reducing the participation of ordinary people in making submissions. I absolutely object to the word "objection", if that is not a funny way of putting it. Objections do not carry anything. They are submissions by concerned residents and citizens relating to the planning law. Over a long time now, we have proceeded to reduce the ability of concerned people to make submissions. We started that at local authority level where we stopped them appealing to An Bord Pleanála if they had not made a submission at local level, and we introduced charges. This Bill would make it even worse in terms of onerous obligations on, for example, a residents' committee in that it has to be in place for a year or more and so on, when quite the opposite is needed. It is not only me saying that. The various judges have said there is a trinity when it comes to the planning laws that are all equally important: the person who makes the submission, the authority that gives the permission, and the developer. We will see a Bill go through tonight and it will be guillotined.

It is hard even at this stage to think we are doing that when we look at what this country has been through. We had the McCracken tribunal. That was set up to inquire into payments to politicians. It did very well. It reported in six months and in 100 pages. It was excellent and quick and told us exactly what was happening with payments to politicians. Then we had the Moriarty tribunal, established in 1997. The final report was published in 2011. The cost was €65.5 million. What was the title of that tribunal? It was the Tribunal of Inquiry into Payments to Politicians and Related Matters - payments to politicians. Then we had the Flood-Mahon tribunal, the Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters and Payments, established in 1997, the same year as the Moriarty tribunal. The final report was published in 2012. It cost €159 million. On corruption and public life, Judge Mahon stated in the report:

...it continued because nobody was prepared to do enough to stop it. This is perhaps inevitable when corruption ceases to become an isolated event and becomes so entrenched that it is transformed into an acknowledged way of doing business. Specifically, because corruption affected every level of Irish political life, those with the power to stop it were frequently implicated in it.

I will give the House another quote as I have two minutes left. It is also from the Mahon tribunal report.

It is clear from ... [these] inquiries that these concerns [of corruption - payments to politicians and so on] were well-founded. Throughout that period, corruption in Irish political life was both endemic and systemic. It affected every level of Government from some holders of top ministerial ... [positions] to some local councillors ... [and so on.]

Time prevents me from quoting further. I have mentioned only three tribunals. Arising from that, one would think we might use our time in this Dáil to see how many of the recommendations, if any, have been implemented to ensure that will not happen again. We might use our time in the Dáil to look at SIPO and its annual reports that continually highlight the difficulties it has in enforcing the legislation because of a lack of sufficient power. We are talking about conflicts of interest and ethics in public life. Corruption does not go away. Bad behaviour does not go away. We know that from the Dáil and we do not seem to learn. A motion such as this does not help in any way at all. It deflects from what we should be talking about, which is making planning efficient, open and accountable and resourcing it. I think the figures I saw when this Bill was put before us - I ask the Minister of State to correct me if I am wrong - were somewhere between 400 and 600 vacancies in the planning system - more than 400. How could a planner do his or her job properly? Then we go to An Bord Pleanála and we will have legislation going through tonight which would change the name of An Bord Pleanála. There is no need to change its name. There is a need to ask how people were appointed who had serious conflicts of interest, failed to recognise they had conflicts of interest, failed to resource An Bord Pleanála and failed to make it more efficient and effective in order that we can trust it. It is our planning system.

Sinéad Mercier has done tremendous work in educating us TDs. She has said that not the usual - will we say "cranks"? We will use the Rural Independent Group Members' terminology - not the usual cranks and crackpots but the legal and planning and professions have criticised the planning Bill for breaching EU and international law and for its potential to clog the planning system. The Attorney General has told the Government in private correspondence that parts of the Bill give the appearance that the Government is being led by developers. Then we have the strategic infrastructure-----

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