Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The periods here are just too long. We have suggested a range of different dates in the amendments. Senator Warfield's amendment suggests 1 January 2022 and I have given a slightly lengthier period and suggested 1 October 2022, which sees us through another winter, spring, summer and autumn. I have also suggested, in a few different places, the date of 1 January 2023. The date of 1 January 2024 is too long. It is an extremely long extension and it provides for a delay potentially in county development plans right across the country. It goes against huge areas of public policy that are dependent on new development plans. We are balancing matters of urgency here, including the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the sustainable development goals, which the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, will recall are in the programme for Government and are designed to be fulfilled during the term of Government and, specifically, in relation to local development plans, SDG 11 on sustainable cities and communities being key. These are sustainable development goals that need to be achieved by 2030. We have substantial climate goals and we will have a climate budget and local authority climate budgets through the climate Bill, which will need to be achieved by 2025.

The date of 1 January 2024, as the period of time in which new plans to address these issues might be arising, is too late. We are losing precious time in extending this provision to that point. The world does not stop turning because, maybe, we want it to. The planning process certainly will not stop turning because we will be seeing more commitments given and more planning granted under previous basis and previous existing standards, some of which will necessarily potentially be moving in an opposite direction to our current direction. For example, on data centres, we have different directives in respect of what data centres might mean and where their positioning might be. In the case of marine protected areas, will we have areas being considered for marine protected areas at the same time as they might be marked for intensive or industrial development under an old county development plan? There are little caveats written in, but 2024 is too late to be starting. There are many local authorities that have made great efforts on public consultation and are ambitious and want to do great things that potentially might need to use this legislation to delay for six months or one year in the current context. I understand that. My concern is that in providing for 1 January 2024 we will see extensions being granted in 2022 or 2023 and a whole swathe of development plans that are perhaps not suited to our current purpose. We will then go into another round of local elections where people will be explaining how they could not do whatever they needed or wanted to do because they were waiting for the new development plan and it did not happen but that the next one will be great and it will deliver on disability, environment and everything else.

The date of 1 January 2024 is too long. If we do have a further or escalating health crisis mid-2022 or in 2023, the most likely scenario being if Europe continues to drop the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, TRIPS, waiver and allow further variants to develop, the Government can come back with new legislation and we can then discuss what we might need to prioritise, what a variation might need to look like or how we are going to balance what will then be ever more urgent climate imperatives with our public health imperatives. The date of 1 January 2024 is too long. In each of the amendments a swathe of alternative dates is suggested. In terms of the impact on Part XAB of the Act of 2000, the extension to 1 January 2024 is particularly too long. I urge the Minister of State to pick one of the dates in 2022 or 2023 that have been put forward and show that he understands 2024 to be an overreach in legislation that is being framed as emergency legislation.