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

The Senators are divided. There is a disagreement and I would rather that we could find a way in which we all agree on this. The issue is whether a councillor would have the right to a zero fee right throughout a local authority area or only in the municipal area. That is the space we are down to. There is disagreement on that. Senator Humphreys made a good case on that and I am willing to look at it a bit more and tease it through further with him. I want to draw the distinction that maybe it is different between cities or large urban areas and counties. We can tease out over the next week whether we agree on that as well. The approach represents a reasonable balance by giving appropriate recognition to the role of elected members in representing the interests of their local area's electorate.

I am sure the Senators would agree that the compromise, clarification or concession - call it what one likes - of the zero rate fee is a positive for elected members who want to be able to do their good work but we might have to consider whether we need to attach conditions to this so that any such arrangement is not abused and does not result in members of the public trying to circumvent the normal process of paying his or her €20 fee to make an observation. I spoke about this previously. I do not wish to see councillors, who, as Senator Grace O'Sullivan stated, have a busy workload as it is, pushed too far because they will then be used to make submissions, either positive or negative, to planning applications by the public which they would not normally make but because councillors do not charge. I do not want them feeling, as a councillor stated to me previously, under more pressure to do that if there is no fee. I accept that is not what the Senators want. I am merely stating we must ensure that we do not walk into a space we do not want to be in. We will clarify whether we need conditions around that. Everyone is in agreement here that the fee would not apply.

As I set out earlier, the setting of the planning fees is more legally correctly provided for in regulations and I would therefore propose to address this issue in regulations rather than in primary legislation. I accept the Senators will not agree on that. I would ask them to give a little more thought to that because that is the space in which it has been and where it belongs with the overall planning fees. It is not only the local authorities for which we set fees and that is why that is there. We still propose to have them in regulations.

We have a week or two until Report Stage. I am happy to engage further with the Senators. Let us see if we can get agreement on that as well. At this stage, I would ask the Senator to withdraw the amendment because we agree on the zero rate and it is merely a matter of working out whether it be in regulation or primary legislation. It is the Senator's choice. I can only make the case to the Senators.