Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I do.

I agree it is important to be accurate on the record that this Bill is being pushed through in an undemocratic manner because the Seanad is half of the legislative process. With respect, discussing pre-legislative scrutiny is by the by when we talk about the legislative process. There are ten Stages to any Bill, five of which take place in the Seanad. They have been extraordinarily curtailed. We had less than 20 hours for Committee Stage. To be very clear, the Government will apply a guillotine which will mean that we will have had less than 11 hours to discuss almost 800 amendments. To be clear, the plan of the Government is that on Report Stage in the Seanad, there will be less than a minute for every amendment in the discussion of these crucial issues. This includes the 167 pages of Government amendments, many of which include lengthy provisions which have not had pre-legislative scrutiny, which have not been debated or discussed in the Dáil and which have not been addressed on Committee Stage in the Seanad. These are provisions which are going to be pushed through and guillotined without any scrutiny by the Oireachtas. To be very frank, it is a disrespect to the democratic process. That is a fact.

The Minister simply talking about how long he spent on it, how long he thought about it and where else he discussed it is by the by. To be very clear, this is disrespectful not only to the Seanad but to the work of the legislative process that happens in the Seanad and indeed to the public who are entitled to legislative scrutiny of legislation which will affect their lives in immense ways.

We have been provided with 167 pages of amendments and allowed less than one minute to discuss each of them. Some of these amendments are pages long.

Let us also be very accurate in respect of the Aarhus Convention. I hate to have to restate it but it is important to say that we have had an inaccuracy stated on the record again, namely, that this Bill is Aarhus-compliant.

Be clear. Who determines whether it is compliant? The Aarhus compliance committee. To be very frank, and let us have it exactly, it has already been found previously that section 42 of the 2000 Act was non-compliant with the Aarhus Convention. This is not one person's opinion versus another. This is the body that is charged with determining compliance. In the progress report produced in June on the fact of Ireland's non-compliance with the Aarhus Convention - and it must be borne in mind that this was not the first report that referred to non-compliance, it has been well signalled - they are really clear in paragraphs 28 to 50, which I will not read but paragraph No. 47 of the progress report merits repetition. It states: "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.". The proposed sections 133, 135 (2)(b) and (d) are the new chapter that the Government sent to the Aarhus committee to say that we believe this will make us compliant. The Aarhus committee came back in June and said "No it will not", and they are explicitly clear. The committee does not consider that if enacted in their current form these proposed sections would fulfil the requirements of that decision on non-compliance. It is not compliant and the proposed changes in this Bill do not make it compliant.

Those are all issues around the really important question about public participation and decision making. The wrong test has been applied by the Government whereby it is saying that we do not need public participation in matters where an appropriate assessment or an environmental impact assessment is not required. The Aarhus committee, however, has been clear that if there is potential significant environmental impact then one needs to have a mechanism for public participation. That was the problem in terms of extension of planning permissions. There was no mechanism to check if a permission extension would have an environmental impact and whether the public should have a say. The Government did not have an adequate mechanism but it is actually making the same mistake again on loads of other areas including around exempted development, which is copperfastening the thing the Aarhus committee previously told us did not work.

The Minister is saying that it is unquestionable in terms of access to justice but it is extremely questionable. There are questionable provisions around who can take cases and who has standing, excluding huge numbers of members of the public, including many local groups and residents groups and others, from being able to take action. There are questions around the costs and around the fact that it should not be a prohibitive cost to take action. There are questions around the scope within which action can be taken. There are questions around the time allowed for these actions. There are many questions but perhaps when the Minister says that they are unquestionable what he means is he will be guillotining the debate before we get a chance to question them and that the Government will be making sure that we, on behalf of the public, do not get a chance to question these issues and that they are rammed through and pushed through in a way that we can deal with after the fact. To be very clear, we have talked about people standing up and talking about issues but we also have people standing up and talking about bad decisions. We had people today on Government and Opposition sides talking about the badly built apartment buildings during the Celtic tiger, the problems with concrete blocks and the fact of those failures. We have many people talking about the outcome of insufficiently scrutinised, insufficiently consulted-on and insufficient democratic decision-making in respect of planning. That is what we are signing up to. It will not make delivery of housing quicker. It will lead to hugely expensive delays. It will create more confusion and probably more litigation and more ambiguity. I put it to the Minister that these are serious issues.

I note and regret that when the Minister talks about the planning statement he has been clear that he will require everything downstream, including the local development plans and everything else, to have to be compliant with the Minister's planning statement yet the Government does not want to put a little line in the Bill saying that the Minister's planning statement has to be compliant with the national planning framework and the marine planning framework. The Minister is declining to accept that amendment. Whoever the Minister may be, he or she is not required to check in on compliance with the national planning framework but all of those downstream plans and local development plans must get into step with the Minister otherwise the Office of the Planning Regulator, overseen by a board appointed by the Minister, will require them to do so. This is a massive step backwards for democracy and I cannot allow the Minister to pretend or paint it as anything different. If it is a power grab let us be clear that it is a power grab and not try to paint it as something different.