Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Very good wording has been put forward by Senator Boyhan and others and I will be happy to support the amendment. I have tabled a number of amendments that seek to address the same fundamental issues in two or three lines. I am perhaps leaving a little more of the original text intact. The core point stands.

A local development plan is not just a planning application, a development on an individual street or one building. These plans are about the future of the places where people live around the country. Local development plans that are due to be developed in the next year will be fundamental because they will determine how we engage with the major challenges of climate change and what we have learned about living together after Covid. There is a mandated obligation in the programme for Government that local development plans reflect sustainable development goals.Part of the sustainable development goals is inclusion and participation in terms of good governance. The real concern here is that the permanent change being introduced in section 11 could mitigate against proper and appropriate public participation by people on shaping the places in which they live. My amendments seek to address a couple of specific issues and I have broken them into two sections. Amendment No. 2 goes to the fundamental point that public meetings need to be online and in person. Amendments Nos. 3 and 4 give the caveat of a public health emergency with regard to the "in person" meeting. Again, my preference is to have both. If proper consultation cannot take place it should be postponed. I accommodate these in a similar manner to that done by Senator Boyhan, who set out situations where alternative arrangements might be made and the wording is very good on that.

I want to point to the problem with the Bill. I hope the Minister of State will accept either Senator Boyhan's amendment or one of my amendments but if he does not I strongly urge him, given that he needs to bring the amendment he made on Committee Stage back to the Dáil in any case, to consider changing and amending it. Right now, the language states it "shall include the holding of a public meeting or an online public meeting". Right now, the legislation is, in fact, going to quite a degree to prohibit holding both a public meeting in person and an online meeting. It states "shall include the holding of public meeting or an online public meeting". This was an issue raised with representatives of the Government prior to Committee Stage. This is a concern. I would like to see "or" replaced explicitly with "and". We have heard that it is important to have young people being more engaged. It is not just an age thing. There are older people who are online and younger people who struggle with literacy. We have huge diversity and I will come to some amendments on diversity shortly. The key thing is there are those who may be able to engage with an online process and who may not have gone to an offline public meeting in the past. Similarly, there are those for whom a public meeting in person, with the presence of a planner and where they can ask questions, is how they will appropriately engage.

On Second Stage, we spoke about the fact that Ireland has very high levels of digital illiteracy. It is an extraordinarily high number of our population and it is not about aspersions or generalisations, it is just a fact. Approximately 50% of people do not have strong digital skills. These are the European statistics on Ireland. If a local authority decides to go only with an online consultation it will exclude huge portions of people about whom decisions will be made. These decisions will shape where they live and whether they can stay living in an area, what playgrounds their children may be able to access, whether they will have transport routes and what those transport routes are. The planning decisions that are made will shape literally hours of each of these peoples' days and they will effectively be excluded from participating in the process where only an online consultation is held.

Similarly, if we were to go only with a public meeting it would create disadvantages for some, for example, those with a disability who may have difficulties engaging with an in person meeting. This is fundamental because place by place it will shape what Ireland looks like. The question is whether we want the people of Ireland to be able to participate properly. At present, as it stands the legislation does not require public meetings and online public meetings. It does not require both. There is not even a caveat with regard to the health emergency. We will see a lot of places in Ireland where those who live there end up not having a say in the local development plan.

Amendment No. 2 is a short amendment that simply specifies that public meetings be online and in person. Amendments Nos. 3 and 4 specify there may be exceptions such as an emergency period. Amendment No. 5 is small. It is with regard to submissions in writing from members of the public. Again, given that many people and members of the Government parties spoke passionately about the importance of online communication in the previous session, I suggest they might want to support the provision that submissions, which are separate from the meetings, might be made online or in writing. Perhaps the Minister of State will clarify whether the interpretation of "in writing" will include online and postal submissions. There is an issue with planning applications at present. Those who submit online are limited in terms of characters and the amount of what they can submit. It is only those who can submit in person who are able to make more lengthy submissions on planning.

These are my concerns. It is a serious concern. When local area development begins people who are very concerned will feel cut out of the process unless we address it now. It would be much better to address it upstream at this point rather than have many local representatives inundated with people who are worried or upset about something that has happened and who did not know they could have engaged on it. If the Minister of State will not accept our amendments perhaps he will indicate whether he is open to changing the word "or" to "and" when he brings it back to the Dáil.