Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to mention two issues. Yesterday, I was chastened for not apparently understanding what section 58 actually provides for in the powers it gives councillors to propose variations of development plans. The point I was making - and a number of people contacted me to ask me to make this point - is that when one looks to sections 61 and 62, the OPR does have a very significant effective role of control and veto over such variations. My point, which Senator Moynihan has just made, is that there is a sense that the OPR has such huge powers in interpreting legislation, and that, coupled with the capacity of the Government, through the Minister, to establish frameworks and issue statements, that the way in which development plans for local authorities are developed is massively influenced by the centre and the OPR is effectively the enforcer of that influence. Maybe people are happy with that situation but I am not. I repeat that I am not happy with that situation.

I see local government as having a very different role from many people. I said yesterday that during the local election campaign, few enough of the candidates who presented themselves to me for my choice made the likely attitude they would take to development plans a point of policy on which I was to choose between them. In my area, Senator Moynihan will be glad to hear, that one candidate who stood out above the others for suitability for electoral support and that was Councillor Dermot Lacey because of his experience, wisdom and commitment to local government over decades.

I believe local authorities need not merely pixie dust thrown over them; they need a total transformation. They need to be born again in the sense that they need to suddenly be told they must drive the development in their areas and they must not be passive spectators in the development of their area. If they want something to happen, they should go and do it. If they want land to be converted into public, social, private or mixed housing, they should go and get it and make arrangements with developers to build public, affordable, private or mix them all together as they wish. The should go and do it, and become executive agencies in the whole process of development. That is what I believe is the future of Irish local government. I feel this with a passion.

The point I have been trying to make is that it is all very well for wealthy speculators to buy a site on the corner of Appian Way and Leeson Street and propose a ten-storey block there because it is available. That is not the way to build a city. That is not the way to decide whether a city should or should not be built or how that area should develop. We need a coherent plan for that area, which is implemented, through direct intervention, by the local authority.

Senator Moynihan has touched on this and I reiterate for that purpose unless we allow local authorities to use what in America is described as the "doctrine of eminent domain" or compulsory purchase order in Ireland and make that realistically possible, the local authorities cannot really drive the process of development in urban areas. Every day, I pass a site on Tara Street. There is one public house sitting in the middle of a development site where the development has not yet started and there are all sorts of complications with railway considerations and all the rest of it attaching to that site. If it makes sense to develop that site as part of a city, it may also make sense that the public house be incorporated into the site to make a sensible development of that mini-block in the city centre of Dublin. The point I make, as Senator Moynihan has, is that unless we have a system of workable CPO powers for city councils and they have the encouragement and resources from Custom House to exercise those powers and the Department does not second guess-them such as asking to see and check their plans for social housing and rechecking them with their own architects and the like, and unless city councils are given their heads and told to assemble sites, look at areas of dereliction in the city, take them into public ownership and then give out building leases or whatever, depending on whether they want to own it themselves thereafter or hand it to private or semi-private ownership, or partnership developments, there is no hope for decent urban development in Ireland.

With regard to CPO powers, I mentioned the other day a meeting I had with a very experienced Labour Party councillor who had sat on Dublin City Council for 20 years; it was not Councillor Dermot Lacey. At the meeting, which was on a different matter completely, when the question of compulsorily purchasing some land came up, she said it takes 15 years for the council to CPO land. That is the experience.It could be due to inertia in the council's law department or a desire to avoid using CPO powers and to try to negotiate at length instead or legal delays or challenges or the need to go to court for confirmation of CPO powers. One of the first things I did when I went to the Bar in 1975 was to advise in respect of the compulsory purchase of land in the Dodder Valley and the need or absence of need for that to be taken into public ownership. Unless we have a workable system of compulsory purchase, local government is bound to be a spectator in planning. Local government cannot say it is able to assemble that site for someone. A developer may say there is a ransom strip being sat on which is frustrating him or her in developing this block of the city. The developer might say that if he or she could get that strip and two small landholdings without paying through the nose, he or she could put together a decent development. What if Dublin City Council could in those circumstances decide to acquire those parcels and allow the developer to build what he or she has got to build? If we had a positive approach for city councils to engage in positive planning of their areas then many things that are happening at the moment would be avoided.

Going back to the much more urgent public issue of housing, as mentioned by Senator Fitzpatrick, I agree completely housing is an issue we must deal with and that bogus objections must be dealt with. I have no problem whatsoever with doing any of that.