Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wholly endorse this amendment. Without rehashing and going over what we said last week, participative engagement by citizens and elected members of city and county councils is vitally important. We need to see it in the context of a form of local government. I posed a question here last week and thereafter received calls from three sitting councillors in Limerick. I did not think too much about the issue until I received those phone calls yesterday. If we are to have an elected mayor of Limerick, as we and others have been advocating, that mayor would have no function under the new legislation we are bringing in. The mayor would be out of all of this. We may change legislation in the future but we must strengthen the powers of our elected members in local authorities. That engagement existed in the strategic housing development, SHD, process. It is important that the LRD process will restore the previous two-stage planning process by returning the primary decision-making functions to the planning authority and the appeal mechanism to An Bord Pleanála. As politicians, we sometimes get caught up in all the words and legislation but there must be three or four key measures, when one drills down into the matter. In fairness, the Minister has said that repeatedly. That is an important measure. When I leave this Chamber, I like to think that I take away some concise messages and retain the full integrity of what they mean when I pass them on. This is one of those key measures. We are going away from the terrible SHD process. We can forget about who was responsible and who prolonged that process. That was yesterday and it is in the past. Going forward, we will now have a two-stage process and I welcome that. I support this amendment, in particular.