Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will speak to amendment Nos. 1 and 2 in group 3. Amendment No. 1 is around the design envelope flexibility for large-scale residential developments. Senator Higgins has gone into incredible detail on what these two amendments are trying to do. Nobody is saying we do not need design flexibility, especially when it comes to large offshore wind projects, but we do not believe replacing the deeply flawed strategic housing development system with design flexibility for large-scale residential developments is the way to go. We have real issues with the public having no participation in the application of that flexibility, the decision-making or the implementation stage.

My understanding is the developer would simply have to notify the decision maker of the flexibility. The developer does not even have to outline the changes they are making. It beggars belief because this is being proposed at a time when it seems our planning process is probably at its weakest point when it comes to the level of public trust in the planning system, given what has come into the public arena in the past number of weeks. Instead of just addressing the issues we need to address in order to reform our planning system and screen out bad applications, we are now changing the law to allow large-scale residential developments to come in with design flexibility from which public participation will be, in effect, eliminated. The public will not have a say on the flexibility of the application, the decision or its implementation. There is no space for design flexibility in LSRDs.

Amendment No. 2 addresses the issue more generally around the design envelope procedure. As was said, we do not have a fundamental objection to allowing some flexibility, but we cannot eliminate public participation from that flexibility. We have a particular issue with this being in breach, especially as regards offshore wind, of the habitats directive, environmental impact assessments, water directives and the Aarhus Convention, and that it will, in effect, be carte blanchefor private developers.

We again urge the Minister of State to withdraw these amendments, allow the proper pre-legislative scrutiny to take place, and allow the committee to tease out the details of this. As Senator Higgins also said, when the Minister of State came to the Chamber on 6 April to say he would be making changes - we will get to the judicial review - he made no reference to the detail of what those changes would be.I do not think anybody would expect him to flag that he was going to bring in changes and then to bring in 48 pages of proposed changes to what was originally an 18-page Bill.

I remind the House what happened in the Dáil last night. The debate reached amendment No. 13 of 82 amendments, meaning the others had no scrutiny. The only people who are in favour of some of these amendments are the Construction Federation of Ireland. Everybody else, such as the planning association and the environmental pillar, An Taisce, opposes these amendments. The Government got through only 13 of them and it has then come to this House today to present them. There are issues also with the groupings and the amendments not being produced until Friday evening. It is farcical, but we are here and will engage with the process. We urge the Minister of State to withdraw the amendments.