Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

With respect, we have gone to great lengths to try to ensure that is not the case. We are ensuring that local authorities have a real say in the process of assessment and consistency with local area plans. Most of the bad decisions in regard to houses in the wrong places, such as building on flood plains and so on were zoning decisions as well as planning decisions. The zoning decisions were taken by councillors. Mistakes were made that should not have been made and councillors are still responsible for deciding where houses go. The only thing we are discussing in this House is the density, design and quality in terms of all the planning considerations that have to be taken into account.

Local authorities through the local planning authority make strong recommendations through the pre-planning process, which will be for a statutory nine week period, and it will impact on that. Councillors and anybody else can make an observation once the formal application goes in and they can make an objections once the formal application is lodged - just like they can do during the current process. We have a crisis that we need to address. The normal planning procedures are not delivering large scale housing decisions at present. We are trying to change that for a temporary period to try to get momentum into the housing delivery market to address the issue of supply. It is nothing more or less than that.

Let me assure Members because I have been on Cork County Council, the largest county council in the country, and I have been through a development plan process. I have been in and out to planners in terms of one-off housing applications and larger applications, trying to make sure they fit in with the environment and the zoning and all the rest, as have Members, but let us not paint the issue as something that it is not. I am not trying to bypass anybody. I am trying to get an appropriate response to what many people in this House and elsewhere have referred to as a housing crisis, where young people cannot get access to homes they can afford to buy, because they are not there. One of the ways in which we are trying to address it is by getting large scale developments up and running, to get decisions that can make that happen sooner rather than later.

I appeal to Members to work with me in that spirit, rather than trying to see something in the Bill, which is not intended, such as to undermine democracy or to bypass anybody. That is not what we are trying to do. If we were simply to invest in the existing planning system, I do not see and we have looked at this in a very intense way, how one can make decisions in 25 weeks that involve an appeal to An Bord Pleanála. I do not see how it can be done. We have introduced a system that An Bord Pleanála accepts it can do. We have been speaking to chief executives of the local authorities, and I have also been talking to a great many councillors, to try to gain acceptance that, for a temporary period, we need to get things moving again. It is in the interests of local authorities to deliver houses quickly in the areas where there is most pressure. I am sorry if I sound a bit defensive but we have had this conversation over and over again in this Chamber and I think it is important that there is a fair reflection on what we are trying to do with this element of the legislation.