Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

We all got the memo to go through how large a Bill this is. It is more than 700 pages. I wish to draw attention to the 1,200 amendments that were tabled at the select committee, which was only Dáil TDs. Not everyone was allowed in; only 12 TDs were allowed in. They put in a huge workload scrutinising this legislation. Members of that committee told me as they were going through it that they realised the Department, Minister and Government side were working collaboratively and recognised some of the flaws in the Bill.

It is disappointing that when it comes to this House, we have a very short timeframe and turnaround. In fact, we have a letter, as referenced by Senator Boyhan, which states that the Bills Office will not have the time to go through the amendments properly to ensure they are compliant. That is an important point in terms of making bad law if we amend it in this House at that stage and send it on.

That all said, it is extremely important that we have a functioning planning system, and we have not had one over the past number of years. We have a permission system. That does not work for anybody. It does not work for local communities, people who are currently unhoused and need housing built, developers or builders.It does not work to reach our climate targets and it does not work to reach our housing targets.

The Planning and Development Bill 2023 is being heralded as the solution to housing and the chaos in the planning system and, to a certain extent, part of that is true but there are other parts that are not necessarily true. We must be careful in what we adopt. We must listen to outside bodies and interests who are professionals in this area who say that in some areas it will bring more confusion to the planning system and practice that has built up over the past 24 years since the Planning and Development Act, in particular in regard to LAPs. For example, in the Bill, there is no mechanism to amend LAPs whereas there is a mechanism to have a variation in a development plan, which is used quite often by local authorities. Maybe we need to do that in local area plans as well. LAPs can be onerous documents. The same amount of work goes into an LAP as goes into a development plan and there is a need to be more dynamic when it comes to that. Other issues, such as defining non-material alternations, need to be in the Bill.

I am disappointed to see that there has been no reform of the CPO system, particularly with policies such as Town Centre First and money the Government has made available to it. We still have the difficult system of CPO.

I am worried about the approach of ramming through the Bill and guillotining the debate, and giving us only three days to consider hundreds of amendments and relying on unspecified legal advice where legitimate concerns are being raised. In particular, the latter has been raised in the context of the Aarhus Convention, which, the Government has said, this legislation is compliant with. Other outside bodies and interests are saying that the Bill is not compliant with the Aarhus Convention.

I would highlight that the Minister has yet to give any clarity on what the regulations, following the passing of this Bill, will look like. That has been raised by outside bodies, such as IBEC. Many in the construction industry say that they are staring into a black hole with very little understanding of what the regulatory situation will be post the passing of this Bill.

IBEC has stated that the Bill does not contain any exemptions for exempted development. That will be put into regulations but that is problematic. This Bill simply allows the Minister to lay them out in secondary legislation. Many of those exemptions in the previous Bill are crucial to some of the basic maintenance, structure and functioning of a planning system, not the big developments but the everyday developments people are doing. I would ask the Minister to look at that again. I am concerned that the exemptions are no longer underpinned by primary legislation.

I raise some concerns about the ability of the public to make submissions on ministerial guidelines, which can overrule development plans. We are moving to a system of having a plan-led approach. While that is welcome, when it comes to the national planning framework, ministerial guidelines will be issued by the Department and we must have a mechanism for public consultation on such issues as ministerial guidelines because they have a big impact on what we are building. For example, ministerial guidelines around standards have a big impact on the built environment but they have not had to go through any level of public consultation the way development plans, the national planning framework or the regional planning frameworks do. We must have a look at there being statutory public consultation, ideally approved by local authority members, to ensure proper democratic oversight of the changes provided in ministerial guidelines if and when they are issued.

I raise the issue of the OPR, which has been raised on a couple of occasions in this House. Senator Malcolm Byrne said the OPR was telling some local authorities to dezone land on transport corridors in urban areas. It is normally standard practice that public bodies and regulators operate within a board structure. However, this does not happen with the Office of the Planning Regulator and there are no proposals in this legislation to have a board overseeing the OPR. At the departmental briefing the other day, the Department said it was looking at that and it has gone to the Attorney General. That would be very welcome but that needs to be included in the primary legislation because we cannot have a regulator telling people not to build or telling local authorities in the middle of a housing crisis, when we have 4,000 children who are homeless, that they have to dezone land on transport corridors in urban areas. I intend to put forward amendments to provide for a board for the regulator.

As my party leader made clear in the Dáil, we want to see action, we want to see the delivery of homes our communities need to be built and we need to see climate action and large infrastructural projects that deliver the emissions reductions we need. While I welcome the plan-led approach of this legislation, it is extremely complex. We are all working our way around this. I would like more consultation at this Stage, so that we can iron out those difficulties otherwise we will be back here in a couple of years. We do not want to make bad law as we did when we rushed through the strategic housing developments legislation, which has clogged up the system and essentially made judicial review a stage in the planning process as opposed to an absolute exception to the rule.

This legislation far from facilitates more house building and infrastructural building. It risks taking a planning system and damaging it even more. We need to be careful about that. With that, I hope the Minister of State will be willing to accept some of my party's amendments on Committee Stage.