Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister, Deputy Murphy, who is bringing this plan through, is very clear on this. It is a plan for the country. We will make decisions that are right for the country, as Senator Humphreys has said as well. It will reflect the ambitions of each individual county but decisions have to be on behalf of the country and the regions. That is prioritising and that is what we will do. I know the Senator wants to push for Carlow. Everyone wants to push their own county. It is important though that everyone realises that we have to make national and regional decisions. To allay fears, do not always believe what is written about Cabinet meetings. The Cabinet has a very clear understanding.

This is a national planning framework. It is something we have worked on through various Ministers. The Minister, Deputy Murphy, has worked hard on it for almost the past year. There have been serious rounds of consultation with the wider public. There has been strong representation from all Departments and agencies on the board bringing forward that plan. I have been at those meetings myself and around the country with this over the past 16 to 18 months. There has been a lot of consultation. We have had debates here, in local authority chambers and regional debates. All that debate will be reflected in the final plan.

I hear a lot of commentary from people in here and outside about what is in it and what is not. People are commenting on a draft plan. That has evolved a lot over the past five or six months, and rightly so. That is why we had the consultation, why I went to the regional assemblies and why the Minister, Deputy Murphy, has been engaging directly with people. We are doing that through our officials in the Department for a reason. That is to get everyone's input so we can all buy into the plan and agree with it. The hysteria I have had to listen to in recent weeks is not reflected in the most up-to-date plan. It is a plan that will save rural Ireland.

I am disappointed to hear politicians in recent weeks saying that this plan is going to ruin rural Ireland. It will save rural Ireland, as well as put our cities on a footing to be able to compete on an international level, where they should be able to compete. I refer not just to Dublin but to Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford as well. If we are going to have real job creation for a real future for this country, we have to be able to compete on an international stage and not just from county to county. I want to be very clear on that as well.

There is concern that I am bringing this Bill through and not the senior Minister. I know it not meant personally. We take this Bill very seriously and so does the Minister, Deputy Murphy. I started the Bill in the House before and I was asked to continue with it. It is something I am glad to do because, like the Senators, I have been a member of a local authority and I have seen bad planning. Apart from the people we represent and apart from driving around this country daily and seeing bad planning, I witnessed bad planning as a councillor as well. I had to fight against it. When I came in as a young councillor I had to make some important planning decisions. I did not always go with the grain, I went against the grain. That was difficult. We want to make it possible for councillors of all parties in future to stand up, be strong and make the right planning decisions. The office of the planning regulator will help them do that job and will oversee that. The independence of that is so important.

We have also built in accountability. It is important there is still democratic accountability. That is why the office of the planning regulator will be able to bring forward suggested directions to the Minister who then has to make the final decision. At the moment, the Minister, which is me currently, makes those decisions without any regulator or transparency. We have about 300 local area plans coming to my Department on which our officials work daily and then they come to our desk for decision. That will change once we have the office of the planning regulator. It will bring those suggestions to the desk of future Ministers. The future Minister, whoever it is going to be, will make those decisions in a full transparent way in front of the Houses of the Oireachtas. That is important and it is not there at the moment. I assure the Members I try to make the right decisions on behalf of everybody. Some are discussed in this House. However, the regulator will take the lead on this and bring forward those suggested directions to local authorities on all plans not following national guidelines or proper planning. I believe this is the right system we are putting into place. My time spent as a councillor has given me the real desire to get this Bill through because I have seen bad planning. We have all seen it and it is wrong. We have to correct that. I think we will get most of that right in the future.

The national planning framework is also part of that discussion. I refer to getting proper planning dealing with all the issues the Senators have raised into the national plan. I think we can achieve that. I hope both Houses of the Oireachtas will accept and buy into the plan. I hope they understand that it is a genuine attempt to plan this country for the next 15 and 20 years up to 2040. It is right that as politicians we make long-term decisions. That is why it will be backed by a capital plan of €110 billion to €115 billion of taxpayers' money, money that we have to spend. It is right that they are co-ordinated because in the past we have had national plans that nobody followed and were thrown to one side. There was no backup and no political backup. That was wrong and that is what we are trying to correct with this Ireland 2040 national planning framework. I believe we can do that as well as we go along.

Amendments have been suggested. We are happy to look at all amendments over the next couple of weeks and tease them through with the Senators. We had that chance in the Dáil. It is legislation for all the years ahead and not just this national planning framework. Most importantly, it does reflect the Mahon tribunal recommendations, that is, the planning recommendations. It does not deal with all of the recommendations of the tribunal because it should not. This is a planning Bill. Some of those recommendations are already dealt with in other legislation. Some are for the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport. They are not for a planning Bill. However, I understand the point made and I will certainly pass it on. We cannot deal with them all in this Bill. We are dealing with the recommendations that are relevant to planning. That is what we are trying to do here and to correct that as best we can.