Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will speak to a couple of points. I note with regard to the Office of the Planning Regulator that there already was a review by the Department relating to the lobbying register and at that point it chose not to include the Office of the Planning Regulator. I am glad to hear there is another review, and we might get a very clear timeline for that. To be clear, this is not a simple procedural issue because a review already took place in which the Office of the Planning Regulator was not recognised as a party on the lobbying register. If there is to be a change of policy in that, it would be welcome but it would be a change from what we have had previously.

There are a number of other issues with regard to public participation. I hope we will come to those later but the Minister of State mentioned measures around a fund. To suggest that this fund with deep conflict of interest implications, whereby the Government might decide on the few people who it will allow to take cases and sponsor them to do so, is not a replacement for people's proper rights to be able to have access to justice. We need to be very clear on that.

When we talk about public participation, there are a number of areas of the Bill which are really significant and where there really is no provision for it. There is not a guarantee of public participation, including with the planning statements. Planning statements, which are politically and effectively done by the Government and Minister of the day, and which do not have a guarantee of public participation, carry intense power throughout the other areas of the Bill and are treated with the same weighting and seriousness as the national planning framework. I am glad to have a national planning framework which does have a proper process and some element of public consultation. Meanwhile, the planning statement, which is really the opinions of the Government and Minister, carries effectively just as much weight, including for the Office of the Planning Regulator. The Office of the Planning Regulator may be asked by the Minister to give direction to bodies, for example, local authorities, based on non-compliance with a national planning statement even though the public has had no input into it. Again, that is a situation where something the public has had no input into may be used to override something that has a public process, which are the local development plans. That is the difference between things like the planning statement versus the planning framework. There are huge holes with regard to public participation throughout the Bill and I regret the Minister of State is not accepting amendment No. 13, which addresses that.

I have a number of other issues with some of the comments the Minister of State made but I have to focus on the crucial one here because it is not correct. I know we have privilege in these Houses but we really should not say things that are not correct. In that regard, the Minister of State made the same statement as the senior Minister that the Bill is compliant with Aarhus. The Bill is not compliant with Aarhus. That is not my opinion but that is a direct statement from the body which is delegated by all of the parties who signed up to it and the body that has been allocated the task of interpreting the Aarhus Convention. I am reading paragraph 47 of the report. There was a somewhat disingenuous suggestion that there was a draft report. Let us be clear. The document I am holding up that came to the Government in early June is not a draft compliance report.Ireland already failed in a compliance report; not a draft report but a finished compliance report found that Ireland was not compliant. We have here a progress review of how Ireland is doing at addressing the fact that it is not compliant with Aarhus. It is not a matter of opinion or general statements. It is not even some of the discussions before UN bodies which Ireland has come out of poorly. This is different. This is a progress report on Ireland's non-compliance with Aarhus, as decided and clearly determined by the compliance committee, and how Ireland is doing at addressing that gap. Ireland seems to literally be denying it. Will the Minister of State clarify why he thinks we are compliant when the Aarhus compliance committee does not? Does he believe the Aarhus compliance committee is wrong? Does he have access to some different legal opinion that somehow trumps the Aarhus compliance committee which was asked to interpret the convention by all of the countries and bodies such as the European Union which allocated that power to the compliance committee? Why does the Minister of State say it is compliant when paragraph 47, not of the draft report but of its progress review relating to a previous finding of non-compliance, says otherwise?

The reason it only spoke about this one Chapter is not that the rest of the Bill is fine; it is that it was only asked by the Irish Government to give an opinion in respect of this one Chapter. The committee was explicitly asked to look at this Chapter, which the Government thinks is great. The committee stated, "In the light of the above considerations, the Committee does not consider that, if enacted in their current form, proposed sections 133 and 135(2)(b) and (d) of the Planning and Development Bill 2023 would fulfil the requirements of paragraph 4(a)(i) of decision VII/8i", which is the decision on non-compliance. It is completely clear and names the sections of the Bill, saying they do not fulfil the requirements of compliance. It is really clear. It is one thing to say it will be fixed on Report Stage but to have the audacity to stand and say it is compliant when it is not is pretty poor, wrong and quite disrespectful, honestly, to the House. Will the Minister of State clarify if the Aarhus compliance committee is wrong? Will the Government be happy to stand over that? It will create significant issues internationally. I expected, although it is still not adequate, that we would hear from the Minister of State how the Government plans to fix it. Saying how the Government plans to fix it on Report Stage rather than fixing it when it is a known problem on Committee Stage is inadequate but that is different from actually denying it. This is not a draft or opinion; it is a direct progress report on a finding of non-compliance. I emphasise that the rest of the Bill was not checked; it checked this one Chapter and found it to be non-compliant. Many civil society actors such as the Irish Environmental Network, many others and, indeed, many Opposition Members in the other House told the Minister for months there were concerns about compliance yet the Government continued to believe it was compliant. It was found not to be.

The other issue around Aarhus throughout that Bill is that the Minister of State got it wrong on this one issue which has been tested by the compliance committee. Perhaps he needs to actually listen to those telling him they think he got it wrong in a number of other areas as well. When one gets it wrong, one does not get to bludgeon over it. It creates chaos.It is doing exactly what we are claiming we do not want to do in the area of planning by creating legal chaos. The idea is that an attempt will be made to try to stop anyone from taking legal cases against the illegal thing being done that is breaking the law. That is not a solution. The solution is to get the legislation right, which will lead to fewer cases, rather than blundering ahead with a Bill that is wrong, while trying to run interference on anyone who might call the Government out on it in the courts. I ask the Minister of State to explicitly clarify why the Government believes the Bill is compliant with the Aarhus Convention when the committee responsible for compliance made it explicitly clear to the Government just a month ago that it is not.