Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. This section of the Bill has necessitated the longest debate. I acknowledge that the Minister of State and his officials have worked something in to this Bill, but I believe it is unworkable. I will give a number of reasons. There are no municipal districts in Dublin, there are only area committees many of which take place in very small rooms. We spoke about the need, and the box, and the Minister of State himself has acknowledged it. One of the weaknesses in this legislation in the initial scheme that was drafted was the weakness of transparency, the weakness in its public engagement and the weakness in its acknowledgement. The Minister of State and his officials accept this. To be fair to him he has worked practically and well with the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, at our meetings in this House and at other briefings held off-site to discuss this legislation. Some council meetings are not webcast, and the Minister of State has said that he liked the idea of them being webcast because there was a feeling that the public could view the proceedings of the meetings.

This is a new trend in local government. Consider a local council with 40 members. Those 40 members are not going to be allowed to speak because this is now being sub-divided into an area committee or a municipal district or whatever. In Dundrum, which is part of the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown council which is one of the more advanced councils regarding IT and webcasting, there is no webcasting of the area meetings. Now the Minister of State is closing off that option. He is closing down the aspect which last week the Minister had said was the opening up of the process for the public to absorb and engage. How does the Minister of State propose monitoring it? He has now put a huge burden onto the executive of the councils.

The chief executives have made their views very well known on this. I have spoken to a number of them and they have made the views of their respective associations known to the Minister and his officials. Anyone who has been in local government will know that council meeting minutes can be quite contentious, so now the chief executive staff will have to have a minute of the meeting, as a right. We may need more fundamental legislation. The minutes will have to be approved and there will have to be a further meeting convened of the council to approve the minutes. Anyone who has dealt with councils will know that minutes can be amended, varied and further drafts can be brought back. The Minister is now elongating this process. His staff has put him in a situation where, if this was to be agreed, the whole process is elongated because the minutes cannot be approved and cannot go up on the website until they are a true, accurate reflection. This will be quite controversial.

How does the Minister of State propose placing such a burden on the executive of the councils to, in some way, articulate this? These meetings can go on for some two or three hours. One can imagine the heap of papers that are going to be gone through because the Minister of State is saying that the chief executive will have to bring a report on the reviews.

I do not believe that any of this is necessary. Perhaps the Minister of State could go back to the amendment we initially had last week which proposed that the chief executive of the council would be obliged to brief the elected local authority members on the application and lay before them the drawings and various reports ,etc., to deal with environmental impact statements and assessments and various development requirements. This could all be simply done if the Minister - he indicated that he was favourably disposed to this - allowed a reduction in the fee. He has not yet set the fees so we do not know what the elected members will have to pay. Given that elected councillors have a mandate from the people to represent their communities, it would be simpler. Let us go for the simpler options and practical solutions where we can. It would be very easy to just empower the elected members to make their own submission. It could be a positive submission, it does not have to be an objection. The observation or submission could be made to An Bord Pleanála within the subscribed period of time, as for anybody else. The elected members could be given that opportunity. Many might not want to be involved. That is a very simple way to approach this.

The Minister is the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government - the big LG - and he has the remit to enhance the capacity of elected members. I know the Minister is committed to that and I am not criticising him. I am very supportive of this Minister on a range of issues. It would be so much simpler, with regard to this specific Bill and the elements on fast-tracking, for the Minister to decide that elected councillors would be empowered to make a submission without a fee to An Bord Pleanála. It must be remembered that councillors do not have the power to make planning decision, and rightly so. They are the guardians and custodians of their respective county development plans. That is the power. They have the power to re-zone in the county development plans every five years. That was simple. I thought we had an understanding, and on the fringes of meetings, that this was what was going to happen. The Minister of State has now come in to add a whole rigmarole, but he has no basis for it. He has not even set out in what format the chief executive would have to make a report to the board. The Minister of State needs to add more to this. The method or mechanism for recording councillors' views has not even been set out, and those councillors would also have to be given an opportunity to look at the report and seek to amend it. One cannot make representations on behalf of elected members without them having the right to review the minutes and approve them, and chief executives would not attempt to do this in any event. The proposed process is long, cumbersome and, as such, it is not the answer.

I take on board what the Minister of State and some Senators are trying to do. We want three things. We want councillors to be able to express their views as democratically elected representatives of communities. We want some mechanism of recording these views and we want the members to be able to submit them. There is no third party appeal in this new process and there are serious questions about the process, but let us take it as it is for the moment. For the final time I appeal to the Minister of State to strengthen the capacity of local elected members and give them their right to make an observation to An Bord Pleanála directly. This would cut out any misunderstandings and it also ticks the boxes in empowering elected members who have the right to represent their communities.