Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I have amendments to move here as well. I will be very clear about this. To have three hours for 175 pages of amendments is absolutely no way to do legislation. These are new amendments that have not been discussed in this Chamber before, have not been scrutinised here, so this is our only attempt to scrutinise them. Most of them will not be reached at all today. That is very worrying, given the track record in respect of planning legislation, where we have repeatedly had mistakes made that the Department and the Minister have then had to come back trying to fix with subsequent legislation. This has been an ongoing issue, so this is not the way to do legislation. It shows a complete lack of respect for the democratic process and for the whole process of legislative scrutiny.

As regards these amendments, the points have been made about Aarhus compliance. We had the progress report from the Aarhus compliance committee on 10 June and it was damning. The issue here is that if you get Aarhus compliance wrong, it effectively contaminates the entire Bill and the processes around it, and that will then lead to delays and additional costs. Therefore, when it comes to housing that we need, public transport, renewable energy and infrastructure, where we have critical needs as a country, not getting this Bill right in terms of compliance with a treaty we have signed up to and European Union law will create delays, litigation, additional costs and satellite litigation. That creates a huge cost for the people of this country. There is already huge dissatisfaction with delays in delivery of critical infrastructure that we need, so getting legislation wrong in this area and having it non-compliant with Aarhus is like shooting ourselves in the foot. It is a terrible approach to take.

I reiterate the questions being put. Why has there been no specific Aarhus compliance assessment of the Bill? When I pressed the various Ministers who came into committee meetings on this and I asked specific questions about areas of the Bill and Aarhus compliance, I was given very general replies that "we have got advice that it is Aarhus-compliant". However, when I gave specific examples with reference to sections of the Bill, I could not get specific answers back apart from that general statement of "we think it is Aarhus-compliant because we have been told it is." I have pointed out examples that are in breach of Aarhus; I could not get a detailed response on them. It does not bode well for this legislation that that has been the approach to date. I am therefore hugely concerned that this approach being taken will backfire and lead to more delays and additional costs we really cannot afford in terms of delivery of housing and critical infrastructure.

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