Dan Boyle (Green Party)

I will get to that point. Access to services, the existence of a transport infrastructure, the provision of key elements of infrastructure such as shopping facilities, schools, access to Garda stations and libraries are the principles that should inform the proper planning of any community but, sadly, they have not done so in too many of our communities.

While the 1960s were a time of trying to protect, fruitlessly in some cases, the built infrastructure, the 1970s was the start of a period of rampant development, underpinned by the notion of building anything anywhere. We saw that, both in terms of private developments and local authority developments, where one of the distinctions between the local authority being both a development authority and a planning authority came very much to light. We would not have had communities such as Ballymun in Dublin, Knocknaheeny in Cork or South Hill in Limerick if planning principles existed in local authorities.

The 1980s and 1990s became periods where those bad planning principles were translated completely into the private sector and where Dublin, in particular, became overrun with a vast urban sprawl for which we are still paying the price. Of course, that was informed by a level of corruption with which we are still dealing in what was the Flood tribunal and is now the Mahon tribunal, and we await the findings of that tribunal with interest. However, there was a coalition of developers, people within local authorities, which is regrettable, and people within the political process who helped bring about an Ireland which is not the Ireland it could have been. That, above all else, is why planning legislation has failed in this country.