Paudie Coffey (Fine Gael)

I thank the Minister of State for outlining a brief explanation of these amendments.

On Second Stage and Committee Stage we had good engagement on this area, and the whole question of the making of development plans, variation of plans including local area plans etc. I can see the Minister of State's reasoning. He is trying to achieve a consistency across the whole of Ireland, but our concern is that this is a top-down approach, as I said earlier. Everything is emanating from the national spatial strategy, which we see as not being totally legitimate because it has not had any proper environmental assessment or test as to its justification.

If the Minister was changed in the morning his or her successor has the power to change the national spatial strategy. In turn, he or she has the power to change every single regional plan, every development plan and local plan. That is the point we are trying to address here. There is a democratic deficit as regards the national spatial strategy, while I appreciate there is much good in it. However, it is not democratically accountable. It is for the Minister of the day to formulate the national spatial strategy and there are no structures for engagement with stakeholders throughout the country to ensure that it has been properly and democratically arrived at and accounted for. That is the fundamental problem we have with the model the Minister of State is presenting through this Bill.

From the national spatial strategy every regional authority is required to draw up a plan and every constituent local authority development plan is meant to comply with aspirations of the regional plan. I have made the argument on previous Stages as regards the present regional structures not being adapted for this Bill. At the moment delegations from local authorities attend regional authorities. Even the members selected – not elected - for the regional authorities are sent by the constituent local authorities to represent their interests. If the structure was to be properly in keeping with the aspirations of this Bill, therefore, those regional authority members should in fact be directly elected in my view. They should be accountable for the plans they make to the full and entire region they represent. That is a fundamental point I wanted to make on regional plans.

As regards the county and local area plans, every county, town and city is unique in its own right. That is why we have places in Ireland that are culturally very different. Waterford city, for example, has a strong manufacturing tradition and heritage which is reflected in the docklands and Waterford Crystal site. This would be very different from, say, Galway city which has a more cultural and academic background. Accordingly, one size does not fit all.

We need to exploit the uniqueness and cultural potential of cities, towns and villages. However, this planning model will make every town and village the same.