Maurice Hayes (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. It is quite clear that the Bill has a general fair wind and I will not dissent from that but I wish to make a few general points. It is important that we are able to deal with great infrastructural projects in a timely and reasonable way. I think of the great programmes of public works carried out in Victorian times. A large mental hospital was built in every county in Ireland within a period of 20 years. Those hospitals would have been objected to if they were being built today but most of them are now listed buildings. I think also of the railways, the great viaducts and so forth. One can look at France, which is hugely democratic country but was able to push through great auto route schemes and other projects. We need to be able to deal with these issues.

I was struck by the thoughtful speech by Senator Quinn regarding the necessity for reassurances and built-in guarantees of quality. We have all seen great schemes which have been held up for years, sometimes for trivial reasons, but very often for very good reasons. It is important that the people who have very good reason to question particular schemes are given the chance to do so. It is an improvement to have a cental competence developed for dealing with these great subjects. It is very difficult to get any level of quality control when a county council or local planning authority is dealing with one of these great schemes only once in its lifetime. It is much better to build up centrally the competence, knowledge and experience to deal with these schemes. That will tend to give one a better quality of decision, examination and presentation of the issues. It will also give one a better consideration of all of the environmental concerns. For that reason, we should ensure that the people working on the planning appeals board have the competence and the capacity to deal with such schemes.

The Minister of State might provide reassurance if section 22, where it states that the requirements which must be followed including the Government's strategic plan, directives and so on, also included a requirement to respect European standards on environmental protection as set out in directives and guidelines. It should also require that the board should provide itself, either directly or by hiring international expertise, with people of competence to deal with subjects which may be arising in Ireland for the first time. There is no point, if one is dealing with an application for an under-sea pipeline or to bring natural gas ashore, in having a principal officer in the planning section searching for results on Google. One must have international expertise available. Of course, the board will build up its own expertise in dealing with these matters over time.

The Minister of State might be able to disabuse me of a notion, but it appears from the legislation that the board processes the decision and then hears the appeal. It may be necessary to make it clear that the same people should not be involved in making the initial decision and hearing the appeal. This quite often happens with boards of this nature and it is easily dealt with by simply saying that the people involved in the first part of the process should not be involved in the second.

Some of the applications will straddle several counties and planning authorities and therefore, it is sensible to deal with them centrally. Some of them might even straddle the Border. There may be strategic infrastructural projects with which it is preferable to deal on an all-island basis. It may be that this is provided for under the strategic planning legislation but, if not, the Minister of State might consider giving the board power to hold joint hearings or joint processes with a comparable body in Northern Ireland for projects which might have an important cross-Border impact.

The explanatory note indicates that ten extra staff will be made available, which seems a rather mean provision given the sort of things we expect these people to do. I know it is not easy to direct moneys or to secure cross-accountancy between local authorities and central Government but there will surely be a saving of staff in some local authority areas. If this is to be made to work, it must be a Rolls Royce operation, but it will not be that with ten people slaving away. That aspect requires further consideration, but on the broad basis of the Bill, subject to the remarks I have made, I wish the Minister of State well. The Bill is timely and necessary.