Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The first amendment proposed by Senator Boyhan and me reflects his reasonable nature. I would be more radical than that. I do not believe in ten-year plans. I do not believe in ten-year plans that can be extended to 12 years. In particular, I do not believe in plans of this kind which are effectively pre-cooked by the Office of the Planning Regulator and, in effect, preordained in large measure as to their substance because of the obligation to consult with that office and then, in the end, subject to actual correction at the hands of the Planning Regulator and those of the Minister, who is obliged to obey the Planning Regulator or else come before the Houses to explain why he is not so doing.

This is a very sad piece of legislation. It marks the end of any real hope of local democracy in Ireland and of a functioning system of local government. It is a sad, sad piece of work and it is an immensely worrying development that the Department of housing is reconstructing local government in Ireland to remove as much as possible of the discretion and the independence of each local authority and to arrogate to itself and, as I said earlier, its daughter institution the Office of the Planning Regulator, virtually complete control over planning and development in Ireland. I really feel a sense of almost disgust at this legislation. I have to say that to the Minister of State, in all sincerity. I think this is one of the saddest and worst pieces of legislation that has ever come before this House. The fact that it is so enormous is almost bound to wear down the capacity of legislators to put their heads above the parapet and see what kind of Ireland we are creating. Who is this Planning Regulator? It is supposed to be an independent office. When you get to the end of the Bill, which we never will, it is an independent office with functions which are supposed to be independent. Independent of whom? This is probably the result of a slide that started with the various planning tribunals and planning corruption scandals. We are now cementing into place and building on the most secure foundations the most antidemocratic, centralised system of development law probably of any state in western Europe. I cannot imagine any other state accepting this. Britain would not accept it. No English local authority would accept this kind of behaviour. What is it about us? I know we are a small country and some people argue we have a population the size of greater Manchester and the like, but we did become independent as a small country. In this spurious attempt to pretend we have real local government and local democracy, which is reflected in the watered-down terms of Article 28A of the Constitution, we have at least the aspiration to create a genuine system of local democracy where local people really do choose what their community will do. What we are dealing with here is farcical. By constitutional requirement, there are local government elections every five years.

Local government members are then stuck with a development plan that may have come into existence before they were elected, will see them out well after and that they cannot vary except at the instance of and with the co-operation of the executives, who are all subject to the overriding and baleful control of the Planning Regulator. What is the function of a local authority member? Why do we have elections? I looked back at the recent local elections and one thing that struck me was that none of the candidates who sought my vote in writing said anything remotely intelligent about the development plan except for a few pious platitudes. I was not invited to make any decision by any of the aspirant local authority members where I live, which spoke to the kind of Dublin they were in a position to bring about. When we consider that in the future they will be stuck with a local authority development plan put in place by people who lost their seats and have been replaced, this reduces to a farce the whole local government process. How can it possibly be that local government elected members' mandates are five years and the life of a development plan, which is so difficult to vary, is ten? It is a sick joke. It is suggested that we need a planning regulator because, for instance, Dublin City Council might do something that contravenes a national planning framework or national planning statement. What can Dublin City Council do except carry out the functions conferred on it by statute and develop plans to try to improve the city? I got a message since my contribution earlier today: unless CPO powers are changed dramatically, Dublin City Council is emasculated in carrying out its functions. It must be able to, with ease, purchase compulsorily land, use it, change the nature of the areas over which it has control, redevelop areas that are derelict, underdeveloped or underused, take entire blocks of the city and say it has a different plan for that precinct of the city and will, like the wide street commissioners in the 18th century, redevelop that part of the city to make it a real living city and not await individual landowners putting together handkerchief sites and then come up with schemes for high-rise developments that bear no relation to the place in which they are. Unless we put in place such powers, give them to local authorities and give local authority elected members some considerable authority over the chief executive and planning executives in their authority and carry out that revolution, everything we do is fundamentally futile.

This House is now more or less inured to the notion that local government cannot be radically changed and that we have to have the same relationship that exists in the future as exists now between local authority elected members and their managers. We do not encourage, for example, the Dublin city manager, Richard Shakespeare, who is a good man, to have a vision that he implements for the city centre. Let us consider upper O'Connell Street and what has happened there. The Carlton cinema site has been vacant for 20 years and nobody seems to be in a position to change that. What kind of crummy system of local government do we have that this has happened? Why is it O'Connell Street and the north inner city is so deprived and increasingly deprived of any concept of a living city? I do not know why it is permitted to happen but we in our smug laziness in this House consider that is enough for this city. It is the only city I am intimately aware of. What happens is absolutely pathetic. What does not happen is twice as sad. We live in a totally dysfunctional, non-functional society as regards genuine local government. This Bill is the dregs when it comes to that. It proposes to change the existing life of development plans by extending them to ten years and providing that they can, in circumstances in which the local executive requests it, be extended to 12 years. What function do local authority members have any more except to bicker about bicycle lanes in their areas? If the development plan is effectively precooked by a process involving the Planning Regulator being consulted before it even starts and then having the power to strike out anything the Planning Regulator so-called independently feels is inconsistent with its interpretation of these framework documents and planning statements, how sad and pathetic is that?

This Bill should never have been brought before this House. Things need to be done to increase housing supply and prevent fraudulent and abusive objections to planning permissions. This Bill does a bit of that but grabs more and more power for the Custom House and its daughter institution, the Office of the Planning Regulator, sucking the blood out of local democracy, such as is still left. It embeds in Ireland a system that has failed for so long. I support Senator Boyhan's amendment with some degree of reluctance since he makes a concession for seven years. The Bill is a sad reflection of a decadent democracy. The more I read about it and the relationship between this so-called independent regulator, the manner in which they are appointed, the Minister and government of the day, draft directions and obligations of Ministers, I see a Bill that is the death knell of Irish local democracy. This is not the charter for a developing Ireland; this is a charter for a sclerotic stagnation over the next ten or 15 years. It should not be enacted. The particular provision with which we are dealing in the amendment proposed by Senator Boyhan is that the development plan should take place every ten years and possibly as much as every 12 years when things go slightly wrong, and that people would be elected to local authorities, never be involved in the development of a plan for their area and be bound by the decisions of the people elected five or ten years before them is grotesque. I will not put it any further than that.