This Bill, which is a very long measure of great importance to the community, is, in the main, an urban Bill founded on the studies made here by Mr. Abrahams in his review of the Dublin problem. The problem of Dublin-and to a lesser extent of Cork and Limerick—is one not general in the country as a whole. So far as the rural areas are concerned, the Bill might have dealt with the Dublin problem, the problem of the larger built-up area, and then we might have had something which would have been peculiar to rural areas. As the Minister mentioned, town planning is old. It is something that has come along over the years. As a matter of fact, man has been dealing for years with his environment, his working conditions and his leisure. In England, the United States, Canada and the industrial countries of Europe, the problem of town planning has grown because of increases in population in the urban areas and because industrialisation has brought a large number of people to those centres. That problem is peculiar, as I said, to the city areas and it is indeed very applicable to Dublin where there has grown up a large industrial complex in which a large number of the people reside.
Cities in other countries have been planned and replanned for various reasons: the plight of people because of congestion, bad housing, inadequate sanitation and other drawbacks. Modern planning stems from the social and economic revolution which took place in the 19th century. In the industrial revolution of those times, poverty increased, old slums became worse and new slums were created. In man's attempt to get away from those conditions, there was a movement to the outskirts of the cities, and the built-up areas sprawled into the countryside. The conditions which prevailed constantly needed revision in an effort to ensure some amelioration of the situation.
In 1940 in Great Britain, an attempt was made by legislation to give privileges to private enterprise under which it was hoped that the central areas of some cities would be rebuilt. I venture to suggest that the factors which have influenced planning abroad and the factors which should influence planning in this country are not the same. Smoke and grime from the coal pits and the transport of crude oil and squalor in many of the industrial cities in Britain and other industrial countries led to the town and regional planning movement in those areas. There was a movement to the garden cities, a movement which was understandable in these conditions. When we come to examine this Bill in relation to conditions in this country, I think we will find that the reasons underlying it are, and should be, different from those underlying town planning abroad.
The purpose of the Bill, as the Minister said at the outset, is to repeal the existing legislation which governs town and country planning and substitute new legislation for it. The Act of 1934 was never properly interpreted or administered, as evidenced by the fact that after 25 years or more of what one might call fruitless expenditure, no local authority has produced a planning scheme which has been acceptable to the Minister, to the public, or to the interested trades or professions. Some years ago, a scheme was prepared by Dublin Corporation and put before the Minister but it will now be buried under this new legislation.
One of the purposes of the Bill appears to be to relieve the town planning authorities of the obligation to produce a planning scheme of the kind which it was contemplated they would produce under the 1934 Act. The change there is, I think, to the good. A further good feature of this legislation is that a review of the stage of planning will take place at least every fifth year, and that there will be power to alter, to add to or delete from the planning which has been adopted at that stage.
This appears to be a more reasonable approach to the problem. It is less rigid and more practicable, always provided, of course, that we do not make it too flexible and that there is not, for instance, too much reviewing within the five year period. It is reasonable to assume that if a plan is produced, there will be a certain amount of rigidity and that the people working it can look forward to some reasonable term in which interpretation of the development permissible under this Bill will be open to them.
A very noticeable feature of the Bill is the manner in which it is proposed to invest what I might call the bureaucrats with full and final power in relation to property and the property rights of persons affected by their decisions, without any real protection by way of appeal to an independent tribunal or an independent authority. In the 1934 Act which is being repealed, there were many provisions in respect of recourse to the courts, even if the appeals were only to the district courts. There was also provision that orders made under the Act had to be laid by the Minister before the Oireachtas so that they could be reviewed. There was also access to the courts in regard to any matter which a person thought affected his personal rights. In this Bill it is not proposed that this safeguard should remain. Therefore, the Minister will be put in the position, after the passage of this Bill, of being the interpreter of statute law. The courts are set up for the very purpose of interpreting the statute law as passed by the Oireachtas. The usurpation of that function is something which this House should not lightly allow to go unchallenged.
The limited protection afforded under the 1904 Acts will disappear if this Bill goes through without amendment and the only appeal then left is the appeal to the Minister for Local Government as provided in the various sections. Such provision might be thought to be some safeguard but Section 80 prescribes the regulations that can be made for any matters of procedure in relation to reference of appeals. In reality, then, the merits of a case will be decided by the person who makes the report to the Minister and any idea of an impartial hearing being given to an appeal by the Minister in question is purely a legislative fiction at that stage.
However, we will be returning to this matter on Committee Stage. Indeed, this is a Committee Bill and one which will require very careful attention on Committee Stage to ensure that the sections as they are passed in fact carry what the House feels ought to be done in the nature of town planning while at the same time preserving the rights of individuals and of property.
Having regard to the manner in which some local authorities have failed to operate the Town Planning Acts which have been in operation up to the present time, it is questionable whether they should now be invested with the sweeping powers which it is proposed to give them in this Bill, powers which will limit the use of lands and buildings which are private property.
The Minister mentioned the objects of planning and gave some instances of desirable developments. As I have already mentioned, some of the things he mentioned are matters which from the earliest times have agitated the mind of man where man has sought to improve his environment. There are various factors, some stronger than others, which have influenced man in regard to his environment, from, in the early days, military necessity, down to commercial activity. There are living standards and the social type of environment and the recreational environment in relation to which man has sought to prepare regulations which would improve the standard of the people.
I do not intend to go into these various matters though it was remarked in regard to the planning of cities that Paris was very much improved by the dictatorship of the Napoleons which resulted in that city being laid out as it has been. Again, the influence of Sir Patrick Abercrombie, which the Minister mentioned, is very noticeable in regard to town planning, particularly with regard to developments in the period after the world war which lasted from 1939 to 1945. His plan for the new London was placed on record at that time. His plan, which laid out London as a number of squares and having a green belt around about it, became a model for other places. This type of town planning has grown in England, being implemented by various pieces of legislation which have been introduced there.
In other countries, the plan has been to disperse the population to new or existing towns. That is one of the essential differences between the legislation which has been invoked abroad and the legislation which would be necessary here. If we exclude Dublin, we have not got any problem of that nature throughout the country. There may be a minor problem in regard to Cork or Limerick but, in the main, so far as country towns and rural Ireland are concerned, we have not got any problem in regard to dispersing the population because, unfortunately, the population has been dispersed from the countryside and has been attracted to the large centres, particularly Dublin.
The various problems involved in dealing with a large project, such as is represented by Dublin, in regard to the siting of schools, houses, public buildings, highways, are matters which must affect future development of cities. The solution of these problems has been a feature of planning abroad and a matter to which Abrahams has given much thought in his study of the problem in so far as Dublin is concerned.
The zoning of cities has had a considerable influence, not alone on the architecture of the cities but on the preservation of amenities. It is a new movement and is still experimental. In that respect we can profit by the mistakes which have been made abroad in regard to zoning, which can create problems of its own.
There is a quotation I read in relation to the constant striving down the centuries by man to make the physical environment of the community as noble as his ideal of human rights and dignity. Sometimes his efforts in that respect are wrecked by his own greed and lust for power and, again, by someone else. So, it is reasonable to ask at the outset in relation to this Bill if one of the most cogent reasons for the fact that the existing Acts have not proven workable has been the failure to have sufficient consultation with the various professional bodies representing those interested in such planning — architects and engineers, builders, those who represent the building trade, the property owners—and to inquire then whether equally so there has not been a lack of sufficient skilled staff to deal with these matters.
This Bill seeks to repeal the various Acts or portions of them. One of the most serious of these repeals affects the portions of the Public Health (Ireland) Act, 1878. Under that Act, the local authorities made bye-laws under which they had to approve or disapprove of plans submitted by building owners within a period of one month. Failing the approval being given, the applicant would obtain the approval by default. That is one democratic right which will go, under this Bill. On reading the Bill, one might think there are sections in it which seem to go very close to being unconstitutional. If that is so, if some of these provisions should be unconstitutional, it would lead to senseless and costly litigation.
Building bye-laws under the Health Act of 1878 are to be replaced by central building regulations which will be made by the Minister. At this stage it is obvious that unless, in the making of these regulations, there is close consultation with all the interested parties, there is a danger that there will be a further period of fruitless local administration and strife between the local authorities and the various professions and trades interested in town planning, building development and even the ordinary day-to-day building, the repair, enlargement or replacement of decayed or obsolete buildings.
In regard to the system of compensation under the Bill, it is, to my mind, inadequate and we must seek to improve it. Part VI of the Bill contains these various provisions, and Section 66 provides that claims for payment of compensation in default of agreement will be determined by arbitration under the Acquisition of Land Act, 1919. The various provisions of that Act are dealt with—I do not intend to deal with them at this stage; it is something that can be dealt with on Committee Stage—and it is pertinent now to ask the Minister how many arbitrators he thinks it will be necessary to appoint to determine the various claims for compensation likely to arise under this Bill. The Minister mentioned in his opening statement that he could give no figures in regard to the compensation which may fall to be paid.
This question of cost will be one of the things which ought to give the Minister and the House some reason for pause. I asked some people who were conversant with the problem in Dublin what figure of expenditure they might reasonably anticipate under the heading of compensation but I could not find anybody who could give me anything approximating to a firm estimate—whether it would be in the region of £10 million, £15 million or £20 million. Perhaps the Minister and his advisers have a figure in mind, but we find ourselves facing such problems at a time when we must be very careful that the type of planning we envisage in this Bill will not subject local authorities to heavy expenditure unnecessarily. Everybody agrees there are problems which must be dealt with and which will involve heavy expenditure on themselves but we must be careful in our estimates that we do not involve ourselves in something that will prove too great a burden on the people.
Another problem in relation to compensation which will fall to be dealt with is the question of small parcels of property which may be taken compulsorily for the purposes of this Bill when it becomes law. I can envisage that even in a rural area a planning authority may decide to take 12 or 14 acres from somebody who has a rather small holding. We have heard already from various other sources of the problems which the smallholders at the present time are facing. The compensation to such people would certainly need to be much more than the mere market value of the land because taking even a little from somebody who has only a small amount can leave that person in uneconomic circumstances, something which is difficult to measure in so far as his future is concerned. However, during Committee Stage we will seek from the Minister clarification of these points and amendments of them, where we consider these necessary.
We are gravely opposed to Sections 31, 32, 33, 35 and 36 because of the phrasing at the end. Take, for example, subsection (2) of Section 31 where we have written into the legislation the words:
... and any other material considerations...
The local authority can decide under this section whether it is expedient to serve notice concerning the proper planning development of an area, the preservation and improvement of amenities and so on, and then comes the use of the words "and any other material considerations". The ordinary layman will have the utmost difficulty in endeavouring to interpret such a phrase. Yet under this legislation there can be no recourse to judicial interpretation of it. We can therefore see the wide powers that may be conferred on officials to include conditions other than those imposed when the person got permission to carry out a plan. Such a person may find himself facing an official who says there were other material considerations. These words are included in all these sections and from our point of view they are most objectionable, considering that so far in this measure we have not secured the type of appeal competent to deal with that sort of interpretation. It is the dangerous sort of incursion which the planning authority might make into the rights of the individual.
Here you have a planning authority being given the power to serve notice on the owner or occupier of property calling attention to a breach of conditions or failure to comply with a permission. The person who gets this notice from the planning authority may, if he does not agree to comply with it, appeal to the Minister. If he does not decide to carry out the requirements contained in the notice, the planning authority can enter on that person's lands and take the necessary steps to demolish a building or make alterations. Not alone may they do that but equally they are entitled to require the owner to pay the planning authority for the carrying out of these works. That type of section is one we should not lightly include in legislation. The rights of property in this country have always been regarded as almost sacred and while, indeed, the greater good at all times determines the right to interfere with the right to private property, at the same time we ought afford to such an owner the right of being protected by legal interpretation or judicial interpretation rather than ministerial interpretation of statute law, to which I have already referred.
The appeal to the Minister as it is at present in this Bill is merely an appeal from the planning authority to the planning approver. The planning authority have already made the plan and under this, if at a later stage they do not like the type of development which has been carried out by a person, under permission from the planning authority, and the person questions this interpretation he may find himself confronted again with these words "any other material consideration." When he appeals he is appealing from the person who has already approved of this.
We agree, then, that the Town Planning Bill is necessary. It is necessary because the previous legislation did not secure the objectives which it was felt it would secure. We believe there are good features in this Bill. The adoption of a development plan lets people know in advance the type of development which is likely to take place in the area. It gives them a general idea of what is in mind in regard to the development of their particular area and as such is some help to them in regard to the ideas they may have about their own property. The amenity area development is welcome and the provisions of Part IV, particularly that portion which deals with the developer who leaves property unfinished, and the provisions which the Minister envisages can be taken under this measure to deal with that problem, are matters which for a long time, it has been felt, should have been available to people who bought such property and then found that they had not got the type of development which originally they had been led to believe they would get.
The question of attachment of ground rents which the Minister has mentioned is something which would need to be discussed again on Committee Stage because very often, as the Minister is aware, ground rents are sold before the developer has completed his work on the property. The manner of attachment of ground rents which would secure the type of development which the Minister, and I am sure, the House, would have in mind is a matter that would require to be discussed fully in order to achieve the type of desirable improvement which is necessary.
Another section which I might mention is that which deals with appeals to the Minister and the setting out of reasons, or the giving of reasons why development is allowed or is not allowed. We will return to this on Committee Stage because equally in that there is the right of the local authority, or the planning authority, in this case, from whose decision an appeal may be taken and the Minister may allow it. I think that equally the planning authority are entitled to hear from the Minister the reasons why he allowed something to happen which the planning authority, in the first instance, were not prepared to permit.
There are, as I mentioned, undesirable features in this Bill. The first of these is that in the formulation and adoption of the town planning, there is the loss of control by the Oireachtas or by the courts. It is as far reaching in this outlook as the legislation it seeks to repeal. The operation of the plan does not allow for the safeguards which should be inserted in so far as the individual is concerned because the planning authority are being made both judge and jury and, as I already mentioned, the appeal to the Minister is only a legislative fiction in as much as it is from one official to another. Naturally, the local officials have to live in good standing with the officials of local government.
In that respect, I think the type of appeal is not the kind which would give the necessary safeguards to the individual. The system will not be effective. If a local authority have to answer in court for their planning decisions they will naturally be much more careful because they would have to submit themselves to the ordinary process of cross-examination as against merely submitting a memorandum from the planning authority to the officers of the Minister's Department. The right to private property is something sacred and we ought to take every precaution to ensure that that right is preserved.
During the Committee Stage, we shall have certain amendments to ensure that nothing will be done which would leave an individual with a sense of grievance, making this legislation obnoxious to a certain degree.
