Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. I fully agree with what Senator Byrne said. The Minister met with my colleagues in Wicklow and they asked if he could do anything to give them powers to extend the county development plan process. This is about restoring powers to our local authority members. I hope they use them. I will come back to the two-thirds majority required for decisions under the legislation. We might need to look at that.

The core principle here is about consulting with communities and the public, explaining to them what the core strategy means and what the national planning objectives are and how they will impact on their communities moving forward. Trying to do that in real life is hard and complex enough. Trying to do it over Zoom is impossible. That is why we need to extend the development plan process to allow that consultation with communities and with the people directly affected by decisions the council would make.

As I said, I have a concern about the two-thirds majority. I understand and appreciate the work local authority officials have done in trying to put together a county development plan process in a pandemic. It has been a nightmare for them. However, at the end of the day, it has to be about the people in the communities. By putting the two-thirds majority in the legislation, we are giving officials the power to defer the local area plans, and they are doing that already. Regretfully, every municipal district has a local area plan we must remember that the core strategy sets the foundations and the principles of how that local area plan is to be structured.We need time to amend the county development plan. I ask the Minister to consider the issue of the two thirds majority again. There should be a simple majority, given that the decision is on the core strategy, which determines everything. The local area plan does not determine the core strategy. Members of the public covered by a local area plan are entitled to understand the impact that the core strategy and national planning policy will have on their futures.