Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

We need to stop trying to make a virtue of past mistakes. There were mistakes on the strategic housing developments. We highlighted exactly what would go wrong and it went wrong. There is the headline item here that we are bringing back planning. However, let us be clear: the Minister is partially bringing back planning but what happened with the strategic housing developments created many problems. The Minister says we need to look at judicial review. Let us be clear about the elephant in the room: it is not judicial reviews existing, it is An Bord Pleanála making bad quality decisions that do not satisfy appropriate process and being found wrong time and again by our courts because it has failed to apply European law, local law and due process. The problem is with An Bord Pleanála. That is the part of the system that needs reform. It is not a matter of getting rid of anything that might get in the way of what it wants to do. One cannot dispose of all of the elements of democracy, due legal process and European legislation, which it has been found to have flouted in the past so conveniently. That is a separate day's argument. It relates here because we were told that councillors are the problem, that councils slow everything down and that is why nothing is getting built, regarding the strategic housing developments yet -----