Michael McCarthy (Labour)

I welcome the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, to the House, and the opportunity to participate in this important debate. I called on several occasions for a debate in this area to find resolutions for the difficulties that exist. All politicians, particularly in rural Ireland, who have clinics and interact with their constituents, will be pleased, as I am, with the publication of these guidelines.

We had a fruitful debate on this issue with the Minister after his appointment and I am glad the Minister has returned with these guidelines that I welcome unequivocally. As public representatives we have advanced cases through the years on behalf of constituents, not motivated by clientelism as the Leader correctly stated, but by a sense of duty to those constituents who, for obvious reasons, want to live in the area in which they were born and bred.

Some people confuse this issue with that of farmers profiteering while destroying the landscape. However, this issue is about landowners and their sons, daughters, nieces and nephews who want to remain in the communities in which they were brought up. In my relatively short political career that is one of the reasons I have advanced for granting planning permission. This is an extremely bureaucratic system and I welcome the section of the Minister's guidelines that deals with improving services to applicants.

As public representatives, we have gone into the offices of planning authorities on behalf of applicants and have dealt with people who have no personalities, not to mention manners, and who made decisions on applications based solely on the county development plan. We put forward genuine reasons as to why the applicant should be granted planning permission. Such reasons often included health or socioeconomic factors, where the applicant was caring for an ill, elderly relative or returning from abroad after a number of years. These reasons were never taken into consideration by the people in the offices of the planning authorities because they completed their course in UCD, became planners, picked up the development plan and used it as the sole criteria by which they granted or, more often, refused planning permission. They never took into consideration the reasons we advanced.

Access to the county manager was often difficult. We were at the beck and call of the local authority officials. We were pleading with all of our might, using smiles or tears, depending on which would be more effective, for permission for a constituent. That need not have been the case but unfortunately the system was such that we had no choice. The irony of all ironies arose when the planners pointed to the development plan and stated that the elected members of the local authority had formulated it. The expertise that planners and engineers had when formulating decisions, compiling reports and issuing final decisions meant they had an advantage over us. They were trained and expert on planning laws, planning policy and so forth, while we, the elected representatives were not. We had a mandate to advance the case on behalf of the constituent, while they had the advantage of being able to interpret a plan in a manner which was beyond us and such interpretations were used to defend their decisions. They used the county development plan as a bible and a weapon to refuse planning permission.

Local authorities can be blamed for some of the problems with the planning process. However, agents must also shoulder some blame. Public representatives are being used by planning agents, that is, people who lodge applications on behalf of applicants. These people are making a mint, particularly since the boom began. If an applicant wanted to build a house on top of Croagh Patrick, agents would send in an application to the local authority simply because they would get paid to do so.