Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will echo the questions put by Senator Warfield. What projects are involved? This change does not only apply to residential developments but allows for all kinds of judicial reviews to be pushed directly from the High Court to the Supreme Court. If there is a judicial review, a process that is currently being reviewed, the appropriate place to deal with the matter is in the review of judicial review. The measure can be brought through as part of the judicial review legislation. It is not enough to simply say we will have projects in the future and we will want to use a leapfrog mechanism to make them move faster, for whatever kind of projects because the mechanism is not limited, constrained or tied back to large-scale residential development.

As we have heard, in the case of the equivalent policy, which was strategic housing developments, these have been dealt with in the High Court in most cases and An Bord Pleanála lost those cases in that court because of the poor decision making process employed. I mentioned one such case but I stand corrected by Senator Warfield who pointed out that only two strategic housing developments cases reached the Court of Appeal. There is no major backlog in the Court of Appeal that is delaying housing developments.

What projects does the Minister have in mind for this leapfrog mechanism if it is not large-scale housing developments? Why are we using this mechanism? Why on earth would we, as legislators, agree to allow the planning authorities, the State or others to use a leapfrog mechanism to skip straight from the High Court to the Supreme Court for purposes unknown, as is effectively happening here? This is for projects which we need to move quickly. That is for the review of the judicial review process.

The Minister is jumping the gun in trying to insert this section in this Bill. I strongly urge him to answer Senator Warfield’s questions on where this is coming from, why it is being pushed for now and why it relates specifically to this legislation? I urge him to consider pulling back on this section and deal with the matter properly? We cannot have a drip, drip approach chipping away at our judicial process, which is part of our democratic system. We have the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court for a reason. If we are going to make it easier to leapfrog one of these courts, we need to hear a very good case for doing so, not simply that it may be used or be useful in the future.