Michael McCarthy (Labour)

I requested this debate last Thursday, although that should not be construed to mean I support Government policy in any way.

Like some people in this House I was elected to a local authority five years ago and one of the overriding issues at that time was the difficulties people were facing in terms of the planning system. It appeared to me that the typical cases ran into difficulty for a number of reasons, some of which concerned bad planning agents, the people between the applicant and the planning authority. There was not sufficiently strong regulation in terms of who was allowed to lodge applications to local authorities on behalf of applicants. That in turn led to a very broad system where sloppy applications arrived in local authorities which only added to the woes of those applicants. As soon as these applications run into difficulty, either for planning or engineering reasons, more often than not the response they get from their planning agencies is to go to their local councillors, Deputy or Senator. These people were happy to take €2,000 or €3,000 from a young applicant, not put in the effort to which they are morally entitled in terms of pursuing their application and then expect somebody else to pick up the pieces. That was one issue.

The second issue is the rigid application of the interpretation of development plans by a new generation of young planners in particular, including those who came out of UCD. They regarded the development plans as their bible and decided to work to them but once they took that attitude and adopted that policy, difficulties immediately arose for the applicants.

I have had cases where the sons or daughters of landowners applied for planning permission. I am not necessarily talking about farmers but a broader term of landowner where people who lived and worked in an area felt entitled to get planning permission and live in that area for obvious reasons. People are entitled to live within reasonable parameters of their home area. There is also the cost issue. Some of these young couples would not survive long in the housing market, given the way prices have gone in recent years and the most cost effective solution was to get a site from a relative and build a house. Many of them took the route of building through direct labour, which again reduced costs.

Up to three years ago Cork County Council only had approximately 40 planners. There was a huge shortage of planners in the system despite the fact that it was the largest local authority outside Dublin. That speaks volumes about the difficulties applications in that area ran into because the planners were working to the optimum but were still unable to cope with applications which in turn led in some areas to a deferral of applications just to allow the people dealing with them time to do that work.

I never had any sympathy with anybody who wanted to build a South Fork-type house or mansion in a rural area.