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

There are two separate issues at stake here. I remember sitting in the Dáil while Brian Cowen launched the national development plan somewhere else down the road. I understand the annoyance of Senators about that. They need to get over it because it is a separate issue. The issue of the launch is not the same as the planning issue we are talking about. The launch is not the same as the actual process of drawing up the plan. The plan is what is important.

In this legislation, we are setting out a process for formulating that plan. This legislation was not in place when we started the last plan. It is still not in place. Everyone admits that we tried to honour the spirit of it when we launched the plan. Most people here say it is a great plan. Everyone is complimenting the consultation process. I am confused over what the actual argument is about. In the absence of this legislation having been passed, we made sure to honour the spirit of it by going through all the consultation. I will not go back over that again. Last night Senator Brian Ó Domhnaill made a point about feedback during the process, but he had left the Chamber by the time I addressed it. I said that if we had failed in that process, in the case of the marine strategy we were certainly making sure there would be proper feedback. During the debate on that strategy last night I committed to making sure we would get the feedback loop right. I had thought we had done it right in the last proces, but the Senator has doubts in that regard. I was present at all of the meetings throughout the country, at the committee, in this House and everywhere else. I thought we were giving feedback, but perhaps it was not done during the formal process. We will learn from it and make sure the feedback loop is in place for future plans. We will certainly do it in the case of the marine strategy also. We are prepared to learn.

The Senator was not here last night when I made the position clear. He made a charge that the changes made at the end of the national planning framework process were political changes and represented interference at the last minute. That is not true. I watched the changes being developed as they fed through the system. They came from councillors, Deputies, Senators, the thousands of submissions received, the discussions and especially the regional meetings which were not controlled by the Government, local authorities meetings and the committee meetings I attended. The Senator can track them through that process, if he wants to take the time to examine it because I was present at the meetings and know about them. The changes came through in the right way through the consultation process. It was in place because we honoured the spirit of the legislation. It is now being turned into a formal process.

I will deal with the detail of the amendments, but for most of his contribution the Senator spoke about the sponsoring of and having a debate here on amendment No. 30. The amendment refers to having a vote, but in his contribution on it it was all about having a debate. We have had a debate here and there will be ample time to have further debates on it. I was available, as was the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy. We had committee meetings and were in this House and the Dáil for statements on the issue. We can come back every week and have a debate on it. if that is what Members want. They are in charge of what is debated in this House. The Senator's amendment requests a vote, not a debate, on the final document. We have had all of the debates Members wanted and I offered to have more, as did the Minister. There was no issue in that regard. I ask Members not to confuse the two issues because there has been no shortage of debate. The legislation proposed encourages debate. The Senator's issue was with a vote on the final document, but in his contribution it was alleged that we had not had a debate. That is not true and it is not what is envisaged for the future. They are two separate matters, namely, having a debate and a discussion and who gets to finally sign-off on the document. There is also a reason for that and I went through it.

The wording of the Bill, as it stands, refers to seeking the approval of the Oireachtas, rather than a vote. Achieving consensus on the content of a national planning framework requires extensive engagement with a spectrum of stakeholders, interests and experts, including in but also beyond the political realm. It is very important that it not just be a political document; it is a planning document for the country and all of the different stakeholders should be involved. I sat in at a workshop this morning and met an advisory group on the new marine strategy and all stakeholders were represented. They are not political; perhaps they are in their own right but they were not there wearing political hats. They were there representing their stakeholders and agency groups. Likewise, the planning framework process provided for the same consultation. It is not just a political document or Members' framework, it is everybody's, the country's, planning document.

Achieving consensus on either a draft, new or revised national planning framework in order for it to be brought before each House of the Oireachtas for approval signifies that an intense and complex engagement process has resulted in a workable document that is fit for approval and implementation. Requiring a vote in each House of the Oireachtas would risk opening up the overall development process to being revisited, triggering potential delays that would have significant implications. Senator Paudie Coffey was right in the point he made. As I mentioned, if we had come here to have a vote on the final document, the chances are we would never have got it finished. I referenced the Action Plan for Jobs which was introduced five or six years ago, a time most people want to forget, when there was a 16% unemployment rate and it was heading towards 20%. The plan was put in place and turned things around. It did its job and involved hundreds of actions. If we had brought it forward in year one and tried to get consensus on it and held a vote to pass it, in the current set-up where we have a minority Government, it would never have got through. At the time we had to make decisions in the Labour Party-Fine Gael Government to implement and go with it. It was driven by the Government. Everyone would now say it has done its job. The unemployment rate is now down to approximately 5%. That might not suit everybody here, but it is the factual position. If we were to bring forward that plan today under the current working arrangements in the Dáil, we would be here for years trying to get it through and the unemployment rate would continue to move in the wrong direction. That is the danger in that regard.

Likewise, the danger with a planning document like this which is vast and involved a consultation process spanning three or four years with all stakeholders is that we could get stuck in trying it get it through for years with rows over tit for tat issues and making little changes here and there. I hope that will not happen because the majority of Members will be responsible but some will not be. We might never get it through and the country would stand still again or there might be bad planning in certain cases. That is the difficulty in having a vote on the final document. Somebody has to bring it to an end. That is the job of the Government. Governments change, as do political parties in office. I hope that will not happeh in the near future, but it might. Governments come and go. We are putting in place a process to get us through the end result on a new planning framework and then the Dáil will discuss it, suggest and make changes to it and pass it for final decision-making by the Government of the day, but somebody has to end the conversation. This House had the chance to debate it and did so. The committee and the Dáil debated it and the Dáil made a decision - I am not sure if it was discussed in this House also - to let the committee do all of the formal work on all of the recommended changes and that happened. The committee went through all of the recommended changes and suggestions and brought a report to the Dáil. It was a cross-party committee, not one controlled by the Government. That was the decision taken by the Dáil, not a majority Government. Members handed the work over to the committee to be done on their behalf. That is the reason some of the debate and the detailed discussion took place at committee level because that was the decision that was made. Understandably, the debate could not take place for hour after hour on the floor of the Dáil. It is not true to say we did not have a debate; we had it and there will be further debates in the future because that is guaranteed by the legislation .

The amendment would have implications not only for the national planning framework approval process but also for the possibility of future alignment with the national development plan process which would impact on regional spaces, economic strategies and all statutory land use plans across the country. It is important to note that the amendment would not apply retrospectively, as the current national planning framework was adopted and published by the Government on 16 February 2018 to replace the national spatial strategy for the purposes of section 2 of the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended. Therefore, the current national planning framework is on a statutory footing afforded by the provisions of existing legislation and will not be impacted on by the introduction of the amendment. I am not trying to ask Senator Brian Ó Domhnaill not to press the amendment because it would affect the current national planning framework because it would not. This is for the future when I might not even be in this position. It is not personal for me, my party or the Government; we are trying to encourage proper planning. I want to be very clear in that regard.

Introducing the amendment would also place new and onerous statutory obligations on the Oireachtas in complying with European environmental law, which requires further legal advice from the Attorney General's office to fully establish the exact role of the Oireachtas and the associated obligations by which each House of the Oireachtas would legally be bound. This is because the amendment would have the effect of making Dáil Éireann the designated competent authority for the purposes of considering and approving the environmental report under the strategic environmental assessment, SEA, directive and appropriate assessment under the habitats directive. Moreover, subsequent to a vote, if the national planning framework was to be amended, the Members of Dáil Éireann would be drawn into a very complex legal and scientific area and it might have a whole series of unintended consequences regarding the scope to make or amend policy. I mentioned this previously in this House and made the offer that if anybody doubted me or wanted further discussion to engage with our officials who would explain the complexities surrounding it. I do not believe anybody took up the offer. If Members are genuine about requesting a vote, before proposing it I suggest they would have taken the advice and realised the complicated process in which they would be involving this House. That is not our role because we are not the competent planning authority. I do not believe any Member approached me or any of my officials to tease out the matter which is serious. I mentioned it here three or four times, but there was no follow up. Members need to think deeply about what they are trying to do in requesting a final vote in terms of what they would be taking on. The legislation provides for a vote on the final draft, the publishing of a report and for the Minister to address it. That goes a long way towards ensuring transparency, proper planning, having everybody involved and copperfastening a procedure, but we are down to a vote on the final document. That would change the game a lot and Members need to think much more about it. I am not sure if that level of thought has been given to the process involved.

I will give an example of something that might happen. Nine Members might want more flexibility in dealing with the issue of one-off housing. It is a popular issue and one with which we tried to deal in the national planning framework. It is also dealt with at European level. It is likely that an appropriate assessment would find this to be seriously problematic, if Members wanted to change it from a habitats directive perspective, thereby triggering complex legal mechanisms, for which the Oireachtas would be entirely responsible. That is one example, but there could be any number, even hundreds. That is what would happen because everybody would feel obliged to come and give their tuppence worth on local issues. We all say we would not do that, but it would happen. We would draw out the process here for a long time and it would also become legally complicated, but I am not sure everybody has taken this on board.

Amendment No. 31 proposes three additional requirements that do not appear to serve any practical purpose and would create an excessively elaborate monitoring and implementation process. I understand the practical reasons behind the suggestion of a review, but I am not convinced that providing for a one-year period would be practical. I understand what Senator Brian Ó Domhnaill is trying to achieve; he is seeking to ensure we will do our job right. I was involved in the process mentioned by Senator Kevin Humphreys, but it involved a Department doing work in a new area.This is a planning framework for 20 or 25 year period and it will be hard to judge its success over six months or one year.

The first requirement in the amendment is to have an annual review of the national planning framework, which is to be laid before the Oireachtas. As a long-term framework, the NPF is not readily amenable to annual review. At a national spatial scale, the change on the ground in terms of outcomes will not be readily apparent on a year-to-year basis, nor will coherent or comparable databases be available to measure a clear national pattern. We have discussed here before a different timeframe and settled on six years. While I acknowledge that the proposal is genuine, a year will not achieve what the Senator wants and would be a cumbersome process to go through. It might not show much in the way of results given that this is a long-term planning framework that we are putting in place. There are local development plans, regional plans and a six-year review to assess all of the work. While we can have a discussion around that in the Houses, I am not convinced much would be achieved by holding annual reviews.

Subjecting a long-term strategy to annual review would embed uncertainty and create a near-constant process of reflection rather than an implementation of the content of the national planning framework. It would be disruptive to the development and implementation of plans and projects at regional and local levels which need certainty over a multi-annual period. In addition, it would not allow sufficient time for meaningful evidence to be gathered to inform the review process and duplicate the planned monitoring role of the office of the planning regulator which this legislation will establish. It will be the job of the regulator to monitor ongoing plans. In relation to an earlier amendment, for example, I discussed the ability to have variations. All of those changes will come through the regulator which will judge them to determine if they are in order under national planning policy and local or regional plans. It is an ongoing process. That is what Members are voting on, what the legislation is for and what the staff of the regulator will do.

The Bill already provides that the national planning framework will be reviewed every six years, which is a meaningful timeline, in particular for data gathering and the analysis of outcomes. We are doing long-term planning here. It is long-term thinking and rightly so. That is the whole idea of having a national planning framework. The legislation also provides for a six-year review cycle, mindful of the availability of CSO census data every five years and building in a further one-year period for the requisite analysis. As such, there is a logic to what we are trying to do here. We used a great deal of ESRI and CSO data in our planning of targets. The framework is built on data and evidence gathered over a period. It is not built on a whim. It is proper, logical planning based on evidence and involving the various stakeholders who contributed. Therefore, I cannot accept the first part of the amendment as it is contrary to what is already provided for elsewhere in the legislation, meaningless in practical terms and wholly unnecessary in the context of a long-term spatial planning framework. I accept the spirit of what is proposed. I am not trying to criticise what the Senator wants to achieve.

The second part of the amendment appears to be based on a misunderstanding of the legislative meaning of an "appropriate assessment report", which is wholly separate from the public spending code. Appropriate assessment is a process further to the EU's birds and habitats directives whereby certain plans and programmes must be assessed to ensure they do not affect the integrity of an EU-designated habitat or species. It has nothing to do with the public spending code on value for money, which is a different process but must separately apply to the national planning framework in terms of general outcomes. To link the two in legislation, as proposed based on an erroneous presumption, would be a serious mistake and cannot be accepted.

The third part of the amendment proposes a factual clarification, the inclusion of which in primary legislation is unnecessary and would be better addressed by way of a note or definition in the preamble to the legislation. It is therefore unnecessary although it can be dealt with elsewhere. I must, therefore, oppose amendments Nos. 30 and 31. I hope Members understand that I am trying to be genuine. We have discussed this before and I opened the door for people to have discussions with officials to prove it is not a political desire on my part to avoid this. There are solid and logical planning reasons behind it, which I hope Senators will accept and vote accordingly.