Patricia Stephenson (Social Democrats)

I propose to withdraw the amendment to amendment No. 16. Amendment No. 14, to delete “varied.”.” and substitute “varied.”, is to deal with a punctuation issue. I am sure the officials will pick up on that on another Stage of the Bill.

The purpose of the amendment to amendment No. 25 is to ensure that extraordinary and worrying new powers under the 2024 Act shall not operate to remove, limit, reduce or otherwise compromise the record of protected structures included in a development plan in existence or whose drafting is under way prior to the commencement of the Act. Similar concerns have been highlighted in respect of the earlier definition of potential negative consequences of the 2024 Act on public rights of way that I have just spoken about that may obtain here as well.

The sections of the 2024 Act referred to that are precluded from compromising protected structures under our amendment include section 68(5), which if left effective would also force the precedence of a new or revised national planning framework over a development plan. In this regard, I refer to the list of all protected structures. Also relevant are section 61, which concerns consequences of new or amended national planning statement for development plans, and section 62, which refers to the expedited variation of development plans. As mentioned regarding amendment 13 in respect of public rights of way, ideally the list would be expanded to include sections 64 to 67, inclusive. I urge the Minister of State to accept my amendment in the public interest and given the importance of our heritage and protected structures, and also to allow for improvement, as suggested in the Dáil. That is everything from me.