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

I will deal directly with the Minister's response to my queries, specifically in respect of amendment No. 2, but it is important to correct the record of the Dáil on the Minister's timeline. He gave the impression some of us on this side of the House said the legislation had been rushed.

In fact, in my remarks I made it very clear Committee Stage was done entirely appropriately thanks to the leadership of the Chair of the committee, Deputy Matthews, as well as the decisions of the committee. The charge is that the treatment of the 175 pages of amendments, including the amendment before us, is being rushed. I do not think anybody objectively looking at this would say 175 pages of amendments in multiple groupings to be done in three hours is anything but rushed. That is important because these amendments, including amendment No. 2, are very significant and therefore deserve to be properly scrutinised.

On the Minister’s timeline, he is right there was a review of the legislation led by the Attorney General, but when we undertook pre-legislative scrutiny of the legislation almost all the stakeholders who are going to have to professionally operate this Bill said the Bill as published bore no relationship to the discussions and contributions they were making in that forum. I was not at that forum so I do not know whether that is true or not, but it is not people on this side criticising that process. The Irish Planning Institute criticised it, the legal professionals from the Bar Council and the Law Society all criticised it. The Irish Planning Institute is one of the most cautious organisations that ever comes before our committee and it was damning in its criticism of that process.

The Minister is right that a draft Bill was published in January, but it was not a completed Bill. What was quite unique about it was there were sections of it written in Bill text and sections in general scheme text, so it is not that a Bill was published. It was an incomplete Bill with many questions, some of which are pertinent to these amendments and still have not been answered because related legislation has not been published. It is also simply not true to say two thirds of the 148 recommendations of our committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny report have been incorporated into this Bill. I know the Minister has to say that, but it stretches what is left of his credibility beyond all reasonable doubt. The overwhelming majority of those recommendations were ignored, as were our amendments.

With respect to Committee Stage, there was a row then because for the first time in my decade in this House as an adviser and a TD, the Government side of a committee imposed a committee schedule that not only made it exceptionally difficult to scrutinise the Bill, but also meant the Ministers of State did not have time to be briefed before they came in front of our committee. At times it was embarrassing because they simply were not equipped and did not have the time to absorb the complexity of the legislation in order to answer very basic questions. Again, that is not just my view; it was widely commented on at the time. All we wanted was a reasonable committee schedule. We even offered a compromise and the Minister would not accept that because he really did not care what the views of committee members were and wanted to get it through as speedily as he could. Fortunately, we did good work in committee. The only reason we protested and rightly withdrew my colleague was to make the point it is not reasonable to do 20 hours of Committee Stage in three days with no time in between to prepare and absorb the information. The Minister’s officials probably worked harder during that period than at any other stage with this Bill. They had to work late into the night, do very detailed notes at our request and come in very early in the morning to provide those. It was neither appropriate nor fair to behave in that way.

The Seanad also had its consideration of the Bill, but we are still in the dilemma as we are now an hour and 20 minutes into the debate and we are still on the first grouping of amendments. We will not get to scrutinise further amendments and some of them are very significant.

I will speak specifically to amendment No. 2. This relates to the Minister’s remarks on LNG pertinent to the grouping consisting of amendments Nos. 78 to 90, inclusive. This Bill was meant to put in place a plan-led approach to our planning system. Fundamental to that is the participation of the public, as required under the Aarhus Convention, to shape those decisions. It does not matter what the application is for. It could be a gas terminal, a residential development or a communal facility, but in every case the public needs to be consulted. One of the consequences of the Minister’s LNG amendments is that, by explicitly including floating offshore LNG terminals as strategic infrastructure, he is further reducing the rights of people to be participants in that planning process. That is why the content of amendment No. 2 is so important, or our amendments to amendment No. 2. It makes no difference whether the Minister thinks the Bill is compliant or not as he has admitted there has been no independent assessment of the level of Aarhus compliance. If not just those of us on this side of the House, but also the legal experts who gave testimony to our committee and the Irish Planning Institute, are correct, then it is not Aarhus compliant. They are the ones telling us. What will be the consequences of that? It means people’s rights under the Aarhus Convention to be active participants in shaping the planning decisions around them will be undermined. It means those decisions will be challenged and end up in courts and as a result of significant litigation we will have even greater levels of delay. Ironically for those who think an LNG terminal off the south west of Ireland is a good idea, this could actually delay the thing. It ultimately makes it more likely to happen and I agree with all the colleagues here as to why that is a bad thing, but I suspect this Bill will increase the likelihood of long and expensive litigation.

There is another consequence of failure to accept our amendments to amendment No. 2 to ensure full Aarhus compliance in reporting. The Minister is replacing the only recently settled cost protection regime arising from Heather Hill with a far more complex cost regime that includes setting of fees for solicitors by the State at one side and putting in place an as yet undefined and unelaborated legal aid system. As a consequence, we have no idea what that is going to cost the State. There is a level of cost to the taxpayer and the Minister simply does not know what it will be. We are being asked to accept these amendments, along with the Bill, for regimes we do not understand, so I am going to press those amendments.

The planning system needs reform. The single biggest cause of delay in our planning system is chronic underresourcing by this Government and its predecessors of the men and women who make planning decisions in our local authorities and An Bord Pleanála. That is the single biggest issue and we have yet to see the Minister’s long-promised work plan to accompany this. He has provided a fraction of the sanction our local authorities have told us they need to implement existing planning legislation, let alone the additional tasks of this. Likewise, the Minister mentioned it was he who abolished strategic housing developments. That was after he, when Opposition spokesperson, sat on his hands and abstained on the legislation in order to facilitate the introduction of the thing in the first place. Those of who were really the Opposition back then warned SHDs would lead to increased delays, increased appeals and increased litigation and we were correct. If the Minister had listened to us back in 2016 and voted with us, SHDs would never had been introduced. That is on the Minister as well.

The types of changes required to make our planning system more efficient and effective are not contained in this Bill. I have said before and say again that I have never seen a Bill as universally criticised across all spectrums, including planners, architects, legal professionals, environmental groups, residents’ associations and the local government sector. I cannot think of anybody who has advocated this Bill or supported the Minister on it. When there is such unanimity of concern about a piece of legislation that will profoundly impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people for decades, the Minister really has to ask himself what the point was of this three-year process when he ignores people time and time again. The Minister’s responses to our amendments are not satisfactory and I will certainly be pressing ours. I make no apology for voting against the amendments and the Bill because it is without doubt the single worst piece of planning legislation in the history of the State and the most controversial and damaging legislation I have seen in my time in the Oireachtas.

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