Kevin Humphreys (Labour) | Oireachtas source

People are still suffering the consequences of those decisions. They are living in houses that are built on flood plains and do not know when they will be flooded. People purchased houses which they thought would be located near services, such as shopping centres and schools, that were never provided. We saw rezoning at will in the interests of the few and not the many. I, for one, am glad to see that period over. I see elements in this legislation that will prevent it from happening again. It destroyed the reputation of good politicians in this country who fought hard against wrong and corrupt decisions.

Those really bad decisions, which resulted in prosecutions in the courts, affected towns. As a Minister of State, I had the privilege to travel the country from one end to the other and I saw small towns which were destroyed by poor planning decisions. Land was zoned for shopping centres outside town centres and now we see empty shops. Despite being told that it would destroy the town centre, councillors put shopping centres outside town centres for their own personal and greedy reasons. We also saw it at a national level. As with "The Late Late Show", there was something for everyone in the audience in our national spatial strategy and decentralisation. Senator Victor Boyhan is absolutely correct that decentralisation is not about moving jobs from one place to another; it is about moving the decision-making powers closer to the citizen and away from centralised government. We need to put more decisions back in the hands of good local public representatives.

I hope we have seen an end to the days when the Progressive Democrats drove Fine Gael into taking crazy decisions and when signs welcoming people to "Parlon country" were erected.That is some planning we must remember. I hope this legislation will start putting an end to that. We cannot go back to the bad old days of bad decisions made, unfortunately, by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Some of those politicians should still be behind bars. In many ways my party was seen as the good policeman that had to watch the big lads and ensure they were not being too corrupt. I certainly hope those days are over.

In the coming weeks and months, there are big decisions to be made on the future of Ireland, particularly where we will invest the money that the citizens went through great pain during the recession to raise so we could get back on our financial feet, so to speak. It cannot be about somebody wanting money spent in Ringsend, Carlow or somewhere else.