Michael McCarthy (Labour)

In the south, and other Members may articulate on this aspect later, we have special areas of conservation and areas zoned for particular usage in terms of the inhabitants of the area, which poses difficulties for the people outside of those zones. There are also the coastal areas which are extremely sensitive and undergo rigid procedures in terms of planning. That is understandable in some cases because of their proximity to tourist areas.

In one instance, for example, somebody from the United Kingdom built a type of mansion and the genuine young applicants in the area who had been refused planning permission were naturally aggrieved by this decision. They investigated it and discovered that planning permission had not been sought or obtained in that case. The roads committee in this area had a meeting at which we were lectured by a planner about how this decision was wrong and the person who had erected the mansion would be told to reduce the height of the building by approximately four or five feet. That is not the way to administer any system. That case rightly aggrieved the people in the area who had been refused planning permission because this guy breezed in, with all due respect to anyone who is a blow-in, and put up a building as he saw fit. That is not good enough and it is an inconsistency in the system in terms of how it is administered in different local authorities.

The people for whom I always felt sorry were the genuine applicants, young couples with a housing need. I have seen a great sense of reasoning with these people when their plight becomes known to the managers and assistant managers. We must not forget that the executive function in terms of granting permission is the sole responsibility of the managers. As we were dealing with a generation of planners who were applying the letter of the law rigidly, planning and engineering issues, for example, had to be considered in coming to a decision on an application.

I have always had recourse to the management of the council and I do not necessarily believe that should be the case. We also have recourse to management to say as regards an application, for example, that the landowner who has applied for planning permission is heavily in debt, for whatever reason. This person may have an asset and wish to dispose of 2% or 3% to get himself or herself out of financial difficulty. That is not being unreasonable. Situations arise where there are a number of children in the family who may be going on to third level education, which is expensive. There have been cases where people have applied for planning permission in order to be able to raise the revenue to fund their children's third level education. In these cases the planning permissions when granted were structured so that while no large-scale development was allowed, a halfway solution was found which catered for the needs of applicants and the requisite housing needs within proper guidelines.

One section deals with guidelines and I would be interested to hear the Minister's response on the compilation of development plans. I raised this last Thursday with the Leader during the Order of Business. My interpretation is that the compilation of the development plan is the responsibility of the members of the planning authority, working with the officials. I am interested in particular in how the guidelines will affect that particular system. Do they supersede the development plans? In Cork we are in the first year of the current five-year development plan. There are four more years to go.