The Minister is missing the point I am making. Any member of the Garda Síochána standing on the Stillorgan road may say I am travelling too fast and he may have radar evidence of an incontrovertible character in his hand that I have travelled too fast. Therefore, I ought to be fined or, if the statute provides it, imprisoned. But that does not give the Garda the right to come up and levy a fine on me or, again, to seize my person and deliver me to the Governor of Mountjoy. He has to prosecute, to go before a court, and describe what I have done. The court will hear me and then, if I am guilty, determine my guilt and appoint the appropriate penalty. The Constitution invests me with certain rights of appeal to courts of superior jurisdiction in order to ensure that justice is done.
I am not arguing that, if the planning authority has said that there are to be no shops in that street and seven residents seek permission and are refused it and comply, the eighth resident who does not seek permission and opens a shop should be kept inviolate. All I am arguing is that, when the planning authority application is directed to the eighth person who has not sought permission and who has set up a shop in defiance of the plan, he should get a notice to cease and desist. I think the time can be as short as a month. At the end of the month he does not cease and desist. Under the proposed subsection, the county manager can arrive with six corporation workers and, as far as I can see, break down the door if the door is closed, unscrew the shelves off the walls, tear out whatever little counter has been erected and tell the person to remove the stock or certainly to cease displaying it for sale.
All I am asking is that before that is done the county manager will go to a court of competent jurisdiction and report the facts, which I admit are facts: (1) that there is a plan controlling this street; (2) that in defiance of the plan, this person has opened a shop; (3) that this person has received a notice warning him that he is in breach of the plan and calling on him to cease and desist within the 30 days; that 30 days have elapsed and he has neither ceased nor desisted and has not given any indication of his intention to conform with the order; and that, in these circumstances, the planning authority asks the permission of the court to go into that person's property to take whatever steps are necessary to give effect to the town plan.
Is that an unreasonable request? The Minister charges me with trying to bolster this argument with hard cases. Quite honestly, I am not. I can imagine a situation where I am erecting a television mast in my garden. The town planning authority say the mast is too high, that there are too many stay wires on it or find some fault with it in any case. If I am a reasonable man, which I hope I am, I imagine that I would meet the appropriate officer of the town planning authority and say: "What is wrong with it and let me put it right?" Supposing I am a crotchety man and I say: "I have got leave to put up a television mast and I shall put up any television mast I like." After remonstrating with him the officer from the town planning authority will say: "I have to serve a notice on you that the mast must be adjusted within 30 days" and I tell him to go to blazes. I want to ask the Minister for Local Government does he think it reasonable that thereupon there should be conferred on the county manager the right to break into my home, force his way into the garden with the county council workers, root up the mast and remove it? Or should there be upon the county manager the obligation of saying: "Very well. I shall have to summon you and get a notice from the district court." I have to appear before the district court and the district justice will make the appropriate order and everything proceeds according to law.
I am making the very opposite of the soft case. I am making the case of a person who is a prominent person in a rural community and who ordinarily expects to be treated as a law-abiding citizen and with the reasonable deference due to him as a citizen of a community. Is that not a reasonable case to make? I do not think the county council employees have the right to break into my house on the order of the county manager who is probably a very junior person to me and who was a minor clerk in the county council when I was a member of the county council 30 years ago.
I advance this argument to the Minister not on the hard case but on the very softest case in which a person of property and local prestige is involved. Now let us state the fact that if we are dealing with a hard case, such a person is bringing upon himself or herself all the additional costs of legal proceedings plus the cost of removal if he acts in a cantankerous way. Take the very soft case with the relatively prominent senior person. His house should not be capriciously entered for the purpose of town planning. He is exposing himself to the humiliation of appearing in the district court of his own district and being told by the district justice in the presence of his neighbours: "You are acting the fool. The planning authority is making a reasonable request to you and you are just defying the law for the purpose of defying the law and I am amazed you should allow yourself to be brought before the court in these circumstances and expose yourself to the humiliation of having an order made authorising the county council workers to do what you yourself should do most gladly when asked by the local authority to do it."
Nobody has argued that the person who does not seek leave he knows he should have sought should be allowed to continue, whereas the six or seven neighbours who did apply for leave and were refused have never embarked upon this activity. Nobody is arguing that for a moment. All that is being argued is that if somebody is in breach of the order and has been notified to stop, before the county council workers break down the door in order to enforce the order, an order from a court of competent jurisdiction will be secured. I am putting it to the House that far from hindering the planning authority the suggestion we now make will greatly strengthen their hand because whether you are a widow woman or a respected neighbour, people do not like to see their neighbours gratuitously insulted in that way.
It creates local illwill to see a respectable person trespassed on in that way. Any of us living in rural Ireland knows that if a poor person or a well-to-do person acts capriciously or unreasonably and is suitably admonished by the court, the subsequent action to vindicate the decision of the court will receive universal support. Far from being a hindrance to the planning authority, our suggestion in fact will probably help to get what I hope will be this exceptional procedure rendered acceptable to 999 people out of 1,000 but I solemnly warn the Minister that if the planning authority is to have the obligation of breaking into people's premises for the purposes of enforcing a planning order, it will create, in my judgment, grave dissatisfaction with the whole planning programme in rural Ireland and I rather imagine the same situation will arise in the city.
I most strenuously urge the Minister that we have proceeded with the discussion on this Bill in a reasonable kind of way and we are not pressing on him so grotesquely an unreasonable suggestion that a person who does not conform to the accepted plan but goes his own sweet way is to remain uninterfered with. That is not the case at all. We are quite prepared to say that if a person is in breach of the accepted plan, it is perfectly reasonable, to serve him with an order. And perfectly reasonable, if he does not comply, to take effective and prompt steps to ensure that the order will be complied with. Our only difference is what shall be the approved steps. We say summon him and let the district court or the circuit court order him to comply with the alternative and if he does not, the planning authority may carry out the work as necessary and he will have to bear the cost. In my judgment, such a procedure will carry with it the consent and approval of the vast majority of our people, but without that protection, the vast majority of people will bitterly resent the exercise of a right, conferred by the Bill as it stands at present, on a county manager to break into any person's house, whether he is the humblest person in the town or the most responsible.