Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

My colleague, Senator Boyhan, has made the case for all of us. I recall the first day the Luas track opened in Leopardstown. I waited for the Luas to arrive to go into town. An elderly lady came up to me and said, "Isn't it marvellous that the Harcourt Street line is open again for business?"

In thinking about the Bill and public consultation, I found myself thinking about planners. The Luas line was a vacant piece of land running from Leopardstown into Harcourt Street. In all the years that it lay idle following the closure of the Harcourt Street line, nobody touched it. Planners saw the benefits of maintaining that piece of ground for future use.

There are other such places around the country. I recently heard people talk about trying to reopen the Clifden line and various other lines, such as the line from Ennis to Galway. All these lines were preserved to a large degree by planners who had foresight and were able to think about what may be required in the future..

I also think about public consultation and engagement. Where I live in Leopardstown, a number of planning applications have been made over the past number of years. One was to build an 18-storey block close to the British ambassador's house. The public were engaged with that. Those on the estate where I live are totally and utterly engaged in everything that takes place in the local area. There is a fear in this country that we are pulling everything back to central government.

One constantly hears local representatives, including city and county councillors, complaining that they are losing more and more power as the years go on. They are the front-line people who, when development plans are put in place, hear complaints from local constituents and who would like to maintain public consultation in any development plan. When we start removing the public and their views from the process, we are running down a very dangerous road.

We do not always like what people say. I appreciate that in recent years there have been some fairly militant groups dealing with all of the different plans of Government. Maybe it would be ideal to have a situation where we did not have to listen to them, but citizens and taxpayers pay our wages and from that point of view it is vitally important that they are engaged as much as possible in anything to do with the areas in which they live.

From that point of view, I appreciate that we are on Report Stage and that the Minister of State's officials will have advised him to, as far as possible, resist any changes to the Bill, but at the end of the day, his name will be on the bottom of the Bill that is enacted and he will have removed the public from the consultation process.

I ask him to listen to what Senator Boyhan said. He has years of experience on local authorities. I never served on a local authority so I do not know what happens. I trust my colleague, Senator Boyhan, and other colleagues in the House who have spoken to me about the need for public consultation. I will not waste any more of the Minister of State's time. I ask him to take the amendments on board. I thank him and appreciate his time.