Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)

I support what Senator Cummins said on regional authorities. Other Senators agree on the importance of determining how regional authorities will work in conjunction with local authorities. We saw recently that regional authorities play a bigger role than we give them credit for in terms of the adoption of county development plans. One could say the regional authority plan is sacrosanct when it comes to local authority members adopting their plans. It is interesting how all of this pans out locally. When a regional plan comes before a local authority or the county manager says that the regional authority has agreed it, then the local authority members have to take the regional authorities' ideas and plans on board and incorporate them into their plan.

Senator Cummins made an important point when he inquired where the regional authority plan originates. Is it with the regional authority manager? Do we have regional authority planners? Is it with the county managers from within the region who put their proposals together? Do the planning officers within each local authority meet and formulate the plans? Do the plans come from the Minister's office or central government to the regions based on decisions taken, for example, by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government or the Department of Transport, which state what they require in the regional plans? Do the regional authorities' rubber-stamp those plans without going into them in any great depth or consideration of the consequences of the adoption of the various development plans?

I agree with the point made by Senators Cummins and Butler that the county development plan should be the real plan. Before regional authorities were put in place we saw that adjoining local authorities worked well together. I would like to know the strategy for major schemes such as waste water. For example, the Dublin waste water treatment unit goes through a number of local authorities. Does the plan for such a project come from central government or the local authorities within a region? I presume the plans for national primary routes and national secondary routes come from the National Roads Authority rather than from a regional authority. Perhaps the National Roads Authority issues guidelines to regional authorities and those plans are put into county development plans as well.

Senator Cummins raises a very important point on how regional development plans originate and who has the input into them. Ultimately, local authority members' rubber-stamp them and when the plans go to county councils the councillors automatically include the regional plans, in many cases without considering the consequences of that. We need to debate carefully how the regional plans work out on the ground.