Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I share the frustration of others. As colleagues have pointed out, some of the premise for this entire project, this giant planning Bill that is being pushed through in an unusual way without proper process and proper scrutiny, is the suggestion that it somehow represents taking action on the housing crisis. We need to remember that planning is not and has not been the cause of the housing crisis. There are, for example, 100,000 unused planning permissions in Dublin. The vast majority of planning applications are granted permission and only a very tiny percentage of them are challenged. The actual problem behind the housing crisis is poor policy, from strategic housing developments to the absolutely appalling decision to depend on leases rather than the direct building or buying of social housing.

We are dealing with the legacy of still relying on leasing and of the Government's mixed motives because it is invested in large investors in speculative housing even at the same time as local authorities are trying to buy houses. Small decisions matter too, including Part V and the way it is full of loopholes that allow developers to create an inequality in who gets housing and to substitute another site rather than actually building our cities in the way they should. There are major issues right down to the grain in terms of housing, including the fundamental point addressed by some of the amendments before us, which is the question of what will happen to public land and whether there will be public housing on public land. Will it be affordable and social housing or just social housing on public land? The Bill is worded in such a way as to make it a very blunt tool. The local authorities just have to say how many units they can fit in. It is clearly designed to lower standards such that we will build a certain number units. The reality is, however, that it is about people and families rather than units. Maybe the local authority will fit in fewer units because the housing need is for families, given the huge rates of family homelessness that we have.That is why we have an amendment that states "appropriately", because it is about recognising what kinds of units are needed and what amenities go with them, rather than, as the Bill says, how many units. If you want to make it dorm rooms for student accommodation, you will be able to fit a few more units in. These are the kinds of things that are an issue when we look at the housing policies.

There is also something that makes me kind of sad in this debate. We heard it when Senator Currie spoke about more ambition for public ways. We spoke about that. I know that people right across the House have good ideas for how local development plans could be better and do more. I know that councillors across the country have ideas for how local development plans could be better, do more and make liveable and better places. I know the public, in its input to local development plans, has ideas that matter in terms of the decisions being made where they live, and what it could be, and how it could genuinely be somewhere they and their families could have a good life. All of those ideas are ultimately overwhelmed by the fact that regardless of what goes into the local development plan, this Bill facilitates the complete railroading of that.

Regardless of how great the ideas we put into the local development plan are, an coimisiún is a rebranded An Bord Pleanála with the same dubious measures including ministerial appointment of the first commission board. It can, in an appeal, effectively disregard something in the local development plans by saying it is strategic infrastructure, which may include LNG. We also know the Minister is proposing new large underground or overground storage for gas as one of his amendments. It can also overrule because something is in the Minister's planning statement. If the Minister's planning statement says what he actually wants to happen, an coimisiún can say it does not really matter what is in the local development plan, which means that all the work everybody put into it and all the ideas everybody pooled do not matter either. There are many ways this can happen when it comes to the crunch. Development plans are not decorative - they are meant to matter when planning decisions are being made - but when planning decisions are being made, local development plans are way down the pecking order, underneath the Minister's personal statement, the coimisiún's interpretation of that and the many areas of exempted development.

In section 212 the Minister will be proposing more categories where we do not even need permission. He talked yesterday about exempted developments. This even includes the foreshore. The Attorney General has acknowledged that there are issues about how "foreshore" is defined. An coimisiún and our marine planning authority will effectively be able to say it is nice that the people there thought these things and that it went into the local development plan, but by the by what it plans for the State trumps that. If people try to challenge it through the courts, they will come up against the many obstacles intentionally being placed there. Huge obstacles are being placed against who can challenge a planning decision, the scope of what they can challenge and what kinds of remedies are available when it comes to the timeliness of the solution. There are huge issues and questions around costs, which were previously used as a way to pull the public out of that decision making in the courts. There is now a wider range of areas in which people will face obstacles, and of course there are huge access to justice issues too. These are the two strands of Aarhus. Public participation with local developments plans is one of the core pieces of that, as is access to justice. However, public participation is being overridden by the many provisions relating to an coimisiún and the Office of the Planning Regulator which has got further because an coimisiún has gotten a little off the hook especially given its extraordinarily poor record on decision making found by the many judicial review it has lost. A judicial review is not about whether something should be built or not; it is about whether proper process was followed. It has lost these cases because it has not followed proper process. It is now being given 20 more excuses and reasons it can disregard local development plans. It is now allowed, as now indeed are all planning authorities, to amend planning permission without going back to public consultation. All of this is undermining public participation, and on the other side we have the issue of access to justice, and we are making sure to tie everybody's hands in that regard too.

I find this discussion sad because people have beautiful, good and reasoned ideas. That is not confined to the Opposition. Government Senators have ideas. Councillors across the country from every party and none have run for election because they genuinely have ideas. I feel this will probably adjourn when we are still discussing the development plan, but not the fact that the development plan will not be given the proper weighting it should when planning decisions are being made, particularly up the line, and many decisions now will not be in the planning process at all.