Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. Most of us in this House started our political careers as councillors. We have an understanding of the work they do and the role they play in communities. We must recognise that role.

I do not agree with everything Senator Keogan said but I agree there has been a diminishment of the powers of councillors, not just under this Government but under previous governments as well. The Putting People First policy probably was the start of it. I looked at that in a positive way initially but, in fact, it has not restored any significant powers to councillors. One power that was lost out of that, and by the creation of Irish Water, was in regard to the provision of water services. Councillors also lost the ability to decide where the population would go and the infrastructure that would follow behind that. It is interesting that we are coming full circle now, with the Government going back to the local authorities to implement the various rural schemes in villages and smaller towns.

Putting People First introduced the local property tax. I saw that as a means, at long last, of giving councillors power over the budgetary process and some say in where the money would go. We then had the introduction of the 20% equalisation fund. Fortunately, that has now been done away with. Reference was made to one of the key issues, namely, that without a baseline review, we are not looking at a balanced system. Councils were told they were getting the 20% back from the equalisation fund but, the next minute, they were told they had a certain baseline and the Government would decide how that would be spent. The money was not really being returned. The baseline review is critical for the funding of local authorities as we move forward. It could, in turn, enhance councillors' role and how they manage their capacity to vary the local property tax up or down by up to 15%. Many speakers referred to the need for training and informing councillors on exactly what they can do. We need greater clarity on what they can do with the 15% variation. That should not be a matter for the management to decide. We need some guidance in this regard.

Senator Burke spoke about county development plans. For councillors, the drawing up of the county development plan is the only real democratic role left to them in deciding how their county evolves and develops. Even that role has been minimised by the national planning framework, NPF, the use of regional plans and, indeed, the role of the Office of the Planning Regulator. Every local authority has been hamstrung. I spoke in the previous Dáil about how the NPF set its population targets and how the regional authorities then took the population targets and aligned them to each county. Why should a regional authority have a role in telling Wicklow County Council, for example, what its key towns should be? Why should a regional authority, without any knowledge of the local infrastructure, have a role in telling councillors what population should be put into those key towns? One of the fundamental flaws of the NPF was that it was not aligned with the reality of what critical infrastructure is in place to allow for housing development. We are seeing examples of that now in every county, with a population being allocated when there is no infrastructure there to deliver on that population. In other areas where the infrastructure is in place, we cannot build houses because we are exceeding the population target. The first real evidence of this problem arose in Greystones three weeks ago, when Wicklow County Council refused permission for 98 houses solely on the basis that their construction would exceed its population target. There was no other reason for the refusal other than that it would exceed a target figure in a spreadsheet in the county development plan. This is being done in the middle of a housing crisis. Councillors understand the infrastructure in their local authority areas. They should be allowed to determine how the population is distributed within their counties. Local policy should not be based on diktats from the national level that go down to regional authorities and then to local authorities.

Rural planning is a sensitive issue for anybody who comes from a rural area. The Government is working on new draft guidelines in this regard. Anybody who has worked in rural planning anywhere across the country will talk about how this is a very emotional journey for the applicant who is going through the process. Applicants are not developers. They are people who are trying to build a house for their own needs. As such, their situation should be looked at slightly differently from how development is managed. There is an issue with how preplanning happens across the country. Each county interprets preplanning by way of a different process. If I am dealing with Wexford County Council, for instance, I can walk in and meet a planner. In Wicklow, I will barely get an email in reply to a query. It is simply not good enough. People who are making a preplanning application should be able to sit down and interact with local councillors. It is they who are relaying the information back to the individual.