John Ellis (Fianna Fail)

Everyone of us is aware of this.

Senator Ó Brolcháin spoke about new councillors. In many cases new councillors are intimidated by some of the officials and led to take decisions that are not in the best interests of the community. If we are to have proper regional development, everybody living in a rural area should have the right to continue to live there if they wish; they should not be forced out of it. That is accepted by everybody, even those who might say people should be moved to towns and villages. Many local authorities did not put in place the necessary infrastructure in some of these villages to allow them to be developed.

It would be much better to see somebody with a septic tank on an acre of ground that has been properly installed, maintained and controlled, or a treatment unit which is what is installed in all new one-off houses. We all know that such units can provide a standard of outflow that is drinkable and can be proved. It is done through the provision of secondary treatment; even some primary treatment units can meet all of the count standards.

Yesterday a number of us from County Leitrim met the Minister, Deputy Gormley, to discuss the problem of one-off houses and the T test which in some parts of the country cannot be met, despite the fact that there are other means of dealing with the problem. We do not want to see a situation where the T test becomes the rule of law. To be fair to the Minister, he saw the sense of what we were saying and stated he would have his officials deal with the issue to try to find a compromise solution.

We need to ensure we plan for the future based on ten rather than five year programmes. There should be an initial five year plan to be reviewed after three or four years and then continued for the following five years. We all know it was suggested in the national spatial strategy that the population of some towns would double or treble during its lifetime. However, the population of some will not increase by 10%. When we discuss the revision of development plans, we must be in a position to update them on a regular basis.

I am a little concerned about the two thirds majority required for changes. In some cases lobby groups can exert such pressure on local authority members that they can act not to the good but the detriment of a community, as Senator Ó Brolcháin mentioned. Sometimes revision is required which can be for an ulterior motive. Something can be turned on its head, despite the fact that it has the support of 95% of the local community and 95% of officialdom in a local authority. Perhaps a procedure should have been included in the legislation, whereby, where there is failure to achieve the two thirds majority, the Minister of the day would have the right to intervene if he considered it would be in the interests of the common good.