Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I look forward to the Minister of State's response. It is a legitimate issue that has been raised. As I am not a lawyer, I will defer to the legal eagles. However, I ask that we would not lose the context of what we are legislating for. This is the statutory public consultation process. We have more than 31 city and county councils with more than 940 elected representatives. They are not self-appointed. They are not anonymous people. They are living in their communities, dealing with their constituents on a daily basis. They spend at least two years engaging in the formal process of a city or county development plan but they spend a lot more time engaging with their communities, their counties and their cities in an informal way, consulting on what the strategic development and planning ambitions would be for their county or city area.

The House needs to be careful not to lose sight of what our piece of business is today and not to have a message go out that this Chamber, or any chamber, is legislating to exclude or minimise public participation. Everything we are about is about engaging and energising public participation, and in creating opportunities for the public to participate. There is nothing in this legislation that will stop any citizen in the country from talking to their local councillor or Deputy, writing to any of them, emailing any of them, phoning any of them, or stopping them in the street and engaging with them on what they want in their development plan.