Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Ruane for these amendments. Again, we went through these in great detail on Committee Stage. I propose to address amendments Nos. 4 and 20 first. These are matters far more appropriate for building control and are dealt with in our building control and standards legislation rather than planning legislation. The area of the rights of persons with disabilities is one that we all espouse and we make sure that we do have universal design concepts in place too. To have this in the Bill, however, would simply take one element of building control and planning design and put it into the Bill as opposed to all others. We do not think it is appropriate to put these amendments into the Bill.

On amendment No. 5 and climate emissions, I debated this at length with Senator Higgins. The whole area of embodied carbon emissions is addressed in the climate action plan and construction products regulation. It is not appropriate for inclusion in this legislation.I cannot accept any of the three amendments.