Dominic Hannigan (Labour)

If the Senator looked at some previous Green Party councillors' records, I believe he would retract that statement. I can give clear examples of that having happened. I do not believe any party can claim not to have had some members who have rezoned irresponsibly because I have seen them and know that to be the case. In understanding how that might have happened, we must recognise that many new councillors are elected because of their expertise in areas such as health or education, and may have had no experience in planning. When they get into office they need to learn very quickly because they are thrown into preparing local area plans with very little help or advice. As the only advice they are likely to get is from a developer or his agent, they are seeing only one side of the coin. I would like to see the Department take a proactive role in this area and examine ways of increasing the planning knowledge, especially of new councillors when they first get elected. Many new councillors were elected only last year from all parties. I would like to see the Department working with these councillors to improve their knowledge of the planning system to ensure we do not repeat the same mistakes. I do not doubt people's motivation but it is clear that bad decisions were made along the way for whatever reason.

On this specific plan, the decentralisation strategy has been mentioned. That was intended to be the mainstay of the national spatial strategy and we can see it has failed on many levels. I take Senator Ellis's point about specific instances of success. Carrick-on-Shannon was one, and I am aware there are also instances of failure in respect of the plan. Any independent assessment of this position would have to conclude that this has been a failure. This raises the question of whether decentralisation will ever work. I believe it undermines the document produced early last week.

There was a promise in the Government's 2002 general election manifesto that it would continue with the decentralisation of Government offices and agencies. It has not happened successfully and therefore the Government will have to forgive me if I take its current proposal in this area with a grain of salt.

The national spatial strategy was intended to build the strength of all regions and it is clear, certainly from my own county's experience, that this has not been the case to date. We must be more effective and funding is likely to become a problem. If the Government is serious about this strategy, I call for the gateway development fund to be reinstated. It is important that is in place if we are to ensure the proposals contained in this paper are put in place.

We often hear promises about what the strategy will mean but we need to see action and delivery on those promises. I welcome the document and the opportunity to speak on this issue. In essence, we are supportive of it, but I have some doubts about whether we will see the implementation of the proposals contained in it.