Maurice Cummins (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Sargent. Like Senator Boyle, I compliment him on bringing the Bill to the House. There are some aspects of it which are very important and with which we agree, while there are other aspects with which we do not agree. However, it is a genuine attempt and, as Senator Boyle said, we can make the necessary amendments on Committee and Report Stages. While we will never satisfy everybody, we can do our best to improve the Bill as much as possible.

The explanatory memorandum states: "The purpose of the Bill is ... supporting economic renewal and promoting sustainable development by ensuring that the planning system supports targeted investment on infrastructure by the State and further modernising land zoning". That is laudable and nobody could disagree with such aims. How we achieve it is another matter.

A number of items arise. An Bord Pleanála has been mentioned by a number of speakers. I see no problem in reducing its quorum from three to two. My difficulty, however, is that we have seen many An Bord Pleanála decisions go against the recommendations of its own inspectors. For the ordinary person in the street, this is difficult to understand, particularly where professional inspectors inspect sites and give a recommendation only to be overruled by two or three members of the board. Nobody could consider that as a transparent system, and it needs to be examined.

Over the years, there has been much scepticism about decisions made by An Bord Pleanála. It is said it is made up of faceless people and that there is very little transparency to their decisions. Some credence must be given to that viewpoint. The issues involving An Bord Pleanála need to be addressed further than they have been in this Bill, which is somewhat superficial in this regard.

I agree that development plans should be in line with regional planning guidelines. We are proposing in this Bill that this should be mandatory rather than such plans simply "having regard to" the guidelines, which was the term used in the previous Act. Nonetheless, we will have to beef up the regional authorities in a major way. I sat on a regional authority and know their members will have a greater need to be acquainted with the problems and plans of the local authorities within their areas. At present, this issue is not being addressed within the regional authorities. More meat will have to be given to them to address the greater role it is intended they would have under the Bill.

Some of my questions on planning are addressed in the Bill, particularly with regard to developers and unfinished estates, which is a major problem in many areas. The whole question of the bond causes major difficulty. Developers put a bond in place to pay for unfinished estates but if they go out of business, the value of that bond is often not sufficient, and it needs to be increased. Moreover, local authorities will claim the use of the bond is worth very little in the context of having it as a stick to hold over developers to ensure they finish estates. I am sure we have all come across such estates. Only recently, I received correspondence from residents in Dunmore East in my constituency who have a number of items that have not been addressed.

There is also a situation where the developer who got the original planning permission may have gone out of business or sold on the other part of the land to another company, in which he may be a sleeping partner - who knows - and that company can then apply for permission and there is no black mark against it. There are not sufficient penalties for developers who do not finish estates.

This is also a problem for local authorities, which do not have the funds to meet the cost of repairs to footpaths, green areas, roads, lighting and so on that are deficient when these developers walk away from the system. It is just not good enough and to expect local authorities to pick up the tab where there is not enough money available through the bond is not acceptable. We are cutting local authority finance and to expect local authorities to finish estates where developers have walked away, perhaps through no fault of their own but in some cases through their own fault, is not acceptable. The question of responsibility for unfinished estates and the raising of the amount of the bond are issues that badly need to be addressed, and it should be done in this Bill.

There is another area of planning which I am surprised the Green Party has not addressed to date. Throughout the country, we can see in fields close to roads, particularly roundabouts, lorries and trailers carrying advertising. Any wheeled vehicle is exempt from planning. I would call the advertisements placed on broken-down trailers and lorries in the middle of fields and unsightly caravans litter. This is a blight on the countryside, a greater blight than many of the issues discussed here today. I hope this issue will be addressed in the planning guidelines and planning legislation. When one asks about these vehicles, one is told they are exempt from planning regulations because they are on wheels. I might add they have also been used by political parties which have used this exemption to promote candidates and parties, a practice I disagree with. It is a blight on the countryside and should be addressed in a Bill such as this.

Some sections of the Bill will add greatly to bureaucracy, particularly those concerning the interaction between regional authorities. There is certainly a need for interaction between the plans of local authorities, regional authorities and the national spatial strategy. However, the national spatial strategy was introduced by one Minister of one Government. Another Minister can change that policy without reference to any of the local area plans or the regional authorities. The national spatial strategy is a political measure but who was it overseen by? It is used by county managers and others when it suits them but it is not used on other occasions. Waterford is a gateway city. Under the national spatial strategy it was geared for all sorts of things but they have not happened. Other towns in the region are being promoted at the expense of Waterford city. People ask about the national spatial strategy but political expediency exceeds it whenever it is deemed necessary.

Section 5 deals with the promotion of sustainable settlement and transport strategies in urban and rural areas, including taking appropriate measures to reduce man-made greenhouse gases. We all support that objective but it is a very broad statement. In the early days of our urban jungles, in which flat complexes were simply thrown up, I was criticised for opposing them and some critics accused me of being anti-development. These complexes have continued to be built in the past ten years but they are now turning into ghettos.

I would never support houses being built on every acre of land around the country but the monstrosities in cities and small towns show that the building boom was not geared to people but to developers so that they could make a quick buck at the expense of the Exchequer or others. Who could blame them when the Government advocated and fuelled the policy? The bubble had to burst and now the people who had no hand, act or part in the creation of the problem are suffering. They will suffer most at the next budget, not the developers, not the bankers and not the politicians who have been responsible for this economy in the past ten years. It is unacceptable that ordinary people, including public servants, should suffer because of the mistakes of others, but that is what will happen.