Mary White (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister, Deputy Roche, back to the House and wish him the best of luck during Second Stage of this Bill. As he stated in his speech yesterday, our planning system works well at the local level and in the local framework. It is up to date and it is ideal for that, but it does not work adequately for infrastructure which brings a major public benefit to a wider area or to the entire community. That is why we need to bring forward the Planning and Development (Strategic Infrastructure) Bill in the Seanad. It represents one of the most important Bills of his career as Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.

The Bill represents a major evolution of the planning code to meet the demands of a modern State. It will use the experience and competence of An Bord Pleanála, which already deals with many major types of infrastructure, including motorways, and can be expected to give the same robust examination to the projects covered by the Bill.

The new legislation is needed to ensure the continued economic development of our country in a sustainable manner. Ireland is regularly criticised by international consultants, and recently by the OECD, to the effect that our infrastructure is not up to date and has not been able to cater for our increasing population, the return of our diaspora and the many thousands of immigrants. There are major gaps in our critical infrastructure and they pose a significant threat to the country's sustained growth, to the environment and to the standard of living people have rightly come to expect of a modern 21st century economy.

The Bill is of fundamental importance to our economy. We cannot run a modern economy on 20th century infrastructure. We need to find ways to move millions of people to work and to school every day, as the Minister stated in his speech, without having to spend hours in their cars.

I want to focus on two particular types of infrastructure. The specific types of infrastructure listed in the Bill will be eligible to come within a single step application process to An Bord Pleanála. The board itself will decide if they are of strategic importance having regard to the criteria, which are listed in the Bill. The Bill will take over responsibility from the Minister for Transport for deciding on rail orders, heavy rail, light rail and the metro. Importantly, as was stated already here this morning, major electricity transmission lines will be subject to a special consent process direct to An Bord Pleanála. The Bill will also be amended to include consent for strategic gas pipelines. We all know how much controversy the Corrib gas pipeline has caused in the affected local area in County Mayo and that will be an important measure.

I totally support another point the Minister made in his speech, that the decisions will be made for the overall benefit of the country and of the people in the country, but I want to put on the record here again today the bizarre planning going on in the Poolbeg peninsula in Dublin. An environmental impact statement is being undertaken currently on the proposal to build an incinerator on the Poolbeg peninsula. As I said to the Minister privately, I would have had no problem with this if the Dublin eastern bypass had been built. The bypass should ideally take the form of a tunnel and a feasibility study is under way in this regard. It should go underground at Sandymount Strand and merge with the port tunnel. It was wrong to locate the incinerator in the Poolbeg peninsula because it is more or less a cul-de-sac. I travelled the roads there three or four times daily for 16 years. I drove along Bath Avenue, South Lotts Road, Strand Road and Merrion Road and they were congested back then. They were originally designed to service villages such as Sandymount, Ringsend and Irishtown and they cannot cope with the traffic nowadays, particularly trucks. I saw a child being knocked off his bicycle and killed by a truck at the Ringsend Road junction.

The incinerator will convert domestic refuse from the four Dublin local authorities through thermal treatment. It is estimated this refuse will be brought in and out of Poolbeg using 400 trucks every day. There is no rationale to this planning. I have no personal grievance with members of Dublin City Council on this matter and I have sympathy for them because of the position they are in. However, a total of 2,500 residential units and 1,500 sq ft in office space are expected to be constructed on Poolbeg peninsula, increasing the local population by 6,500.