Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and thank him for bringing this legislation to the Senate first. I am a member of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage and I appreciate that some members were confused as to the Minister's intentions. I accept the Minister's apology and accept that his intention in bringing forward this legislation is both to support the proper functioning of our local authorities and our planning, development and building control processes and to protect public participation in those processes. I welcome this debate and Fianna Fáil Senators will be supporting the Bill today.

The Bill as I read it is an updating of the Planning and Development Act 2000 to allow for public consultation processes which are used for consulting with the public on city and county development plans to be updated and for the continued operation of the planning and building control systems during emergency situations like Covid-19. I welcome the fact that the Minister is replacing the mandatory requirement on local authorities to hold public meetings with a requirement that they consult with the public. The amendment he mentioned, which will be brought forward on Monday, provides that local authorities will hold either physical or virtual public meetings. This is very welcome and we will be happy to support it. Allowing the Government to make orders during emergency periods like the pandemic to extend the statutory periods applying under the Planning and Development Act and the building controls is also to be welcomed and I hope the whole House will support that.

This legislation reflects a Government that is trying to modernise how we do our business. It is also reflective of a Government that is responding to the very real-life circumstances in which the country finds itself in terms of the pandemic. It aims to improve accessibility and inclusiveness in our statutory processes while at the same time upholding the very important values asserted in the Aarhus Convention regarding public participation in decision making when it comes to environmental matters. I am coming at this from the perspective of a former city councillor in Dublin. The Dublin city development plan is a really important document that sets out the statutory guidelines and objectives for the development of our city. The current development plan was drawn up in 2016 and will expire in 2022. In June of this year, city council officials and councillors commenced work on the new development plan. The plan has multiple stages, beginning with a pre-draft consultation, on which submissions are invited. Then there is a consideration of those submissions, following which a draft plan is put out for public consultation. More submissions will be received on that draft plan and then that will come back for consideration. Following this, a plan is actually made. The process takes 99 weeks or almost two years of work. It is a really important piece of work that requires significant resources, not just from officials but also from the elected representatives. In that context, I am not going to let the Minister leave the House without reminding him of the Government's commitment to local authority members to deliver on the Moorhead report. It is an outstanding action and one that I ask the Minister to provide an update to the House on, as all Members would appreciate that.