Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)

It is the greatest cod that judicial reviews are what is delaying the development of housing and planning in this country. It is also the height of hypocrisy because we all know, when we go to community meetings where residents are up in arms over some development, the Minister's own party members will also be there giving it loads.

I attended meetings before the election. If the Minister recalls the other planning changes that were made, many developments went straight to An Bord Pleanála at the time rather than going to the local authorities, and people did not realise their local planning officials had maybe more of a connection on the ground. Now, there is this thing about judicial reviews. There are two facts. Lorcan Sirr, the housing analyst, has made it clear that only 0.22% of planning applications ever go to judicial review. It is double figures in one year for so many developments. It is not the cause of the problem. The Minister's Government and the previous government are the cause of the problem.

I will give an example of how I oppose any changes being taken to things that give residents power. Sure, we can all cite something that looks really bad that is being delayed. Unfortunately, with any law, you are going to get something you do not like, but in general, these are very important for communities to have a say. At present, I am involved in making a planning appeal to An Coimisiún Pleanála. I will not go into the details but I will mention how difficult it is for people to do that. To get a professional planning consultation, depending on the size of the application, it can be €2,500 plus VAT, for example. To get a traffic study done, it can be the same. That is a hell of a lot of money for a group of residents to raise for something they believe is fundamentally unjust, especially when you are up against a vulture fund that has so much money and power at its disposal to get all the analysts in. It is a David and Goliath battle we are talking about here. We should be very careful about agreeing to any of these changes. It is nearly always working-class communities who suffer the most because they do not have that wherewithal, professional expertise, cultural capital or whatever.

I want to cite the recent example of Blanchardstown Centre, where the owners are trying to introduce parking charges. The centre includes public facilities, such as the council office, the library, the post office and so forth. It is a vulture fund with no connection with the community, with the workers in the shops or even with the other companies there. For example, footfall in Liffey Valley went down dramatically there, loads of jobs were lost and people's hours were slashed. These things drive online shopping. They are not good for communities and, unfortunately, local authorities and so on are using these ludicrous examples of, "Well, you have a great public transport system there. Get out of your car and into the public transport." We are talking about residents being up against big vulture funds and the local authority, and Government is trying to take away even further their right to challenge things. I say this as somebody who does not object to very many developments, but sometimes you have to.

I utterly oppose this and it is being weaponised against the public good, to be frank. These changes the Minister is proposing are taking more and more power away from the small person and communities to object to proposals that are going to impact their lives severely, with no proof or correlation made that it is inhibiting development. We all know many of the developments being objected to tend to be high-rise vulture fund developments that are build to rent right beside, say, two-storey housing or, in the case of Blanchardstown, a vulture fund fleecing workers and the community for greed and nothing else. I am utterly opposed to these changes. Government needs to get on and have its meetings with the local authorities sitting on public land banks that have not been developed for years.

There are two examples. I am very bored saying them and the Minister may be bored listening to them. The first is in Dublin West in Church Fields, which Government is now hailing as being a great development, and I agree it is very good - not perfect but good - but it was socialists in solidarity who highlighted that that land was sitting there during a housing crisis and put a lot of pressure on Fingal to develop it. Similarly, there is another huge land bank up the road in Dunsink, Elm Green, in Scribblestown, which could provide thousands of houses. Government needs to have meetings with councils on those land banks and get them developed because they will be the game changers in the housing crisis, not things like judicial reviews and curbing people's power to object to things that are justifiable to object to.

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