Private Members' Business. - Draft Development Plans: Motion (Resumed). – Dáil Éireann (21st Dáil) – Wednesday, 21 May 1980

Private Members' Business. - Draft Development Plans: Motion (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:

That Dáil Éireann calls on the Minister for the Environment to amend section 33 (2), of the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act, 1976, to provide that where a member of a planning authority has a pecuniary or other beneficial interest in the zoning, acquisition or disposal of land by the authority the member of the authority shall attend the meeting of the authority and shall disclose the nature of his or her interest and shall then withdraw from the meeting for so long as the matter is being discussed or considered and further calls on the Minister for the Environment to introduce amending legislation to ensure that any member of a planning authority who wishes to make any proposal relating to the zoning of any lands which are the subject of periodic review under draft development plans shall be obliged to give 14 days notice of motion in relation to any such proposed changes.

—(Deputy B. Desmond.)

Mr. Leyden

When I spoke on this matter yesterday I welcomed the Minister's concluding remarks. He outlined the present procedures and indicated he would look into the matter further. He gave a detailed assessment of the situation and he was open to suggestions regarding any improvements that might be made. The particular Act to which he referred was a very detailed piece of legislation. The Minister has very considerable experience as a member of a local authority and as a Member of this House and I know he will use this experience to effect any improvements in the legislation that may be necessary.

Deputy Fitzpatrick when he spoke on the motion sounded plausible but the Minister showed the proposals contained in the motion would lessen the safeguards in relation to matters other than zoning that could affect interest in land. The Deputy was eloquent in his speech but he was impractical in his approach and the Minister pointed out some anomalies that would weaken the Act.

Reference was made yesterday to the ease with which an important change can be made in a draft development plan. As the Minister pointed out, it is only a draft plan and is subject to scrutiny by the public, the press and interested bodies. Most members of local authorities know of the tedious approach necessary in reviewing and revising development plans. We are engaged in such a process at the moment in Roscommon County Council. Before I was elected to the Dáil I worked as an architect; I find the study of development plans interesting but it is time-consuming. All members of a council are subject to representations from chambers of commerce and individuals generally who are interested in plans for their county. I do not know of any occasion when there was a conflict of interest in my county.

Elected members of local authorities have an important role in planning. It is one of the roles left to them and I hope there will be no diminution of their powers in this respect. It gives them authority and responsibility but with their knowledge of the area they are in a better position to draw up a plan than any Department. Local councillors are more conscious of the reprecussions of change. In my own town, Roscommon, we had the example of proposed changes in the county development plan that would not have been acceptable to the people, changes that would affect the amenities available in the area. Even though the planners and engineers had the best of motives and intentions, they were proposing something that would not be acceptable to the people and the Fianna Fáil members, with all other members of the council, agreed with the chamber of commerce and other interested bodies that changes would be made only to ensure the public interest would be served.

Deputy Barry Desmond who is also a member of a local authority made a point with regard to the 1976 Act about doubts expressed at the time by the Taoiseach as to whether planning was a good or bad thing. In the United Kingdom it is now proposed in the interest of encouraging economic development to set up enterprise zones where there would be relative freedom from planning controls. This is something the British Government are pursuing to create economic development. Although planning controls are necessary, in many instances they can delay important economic developments that would be of benefit to an area.

Deputy Desmond was selective in the quotations he used last night. He did not quote completely what the Taoiseach had to say on the matter. At column 149 of the Official Report of 14 January 1975 the Taoiseach said:

However, we have planning and all we can do when we have a planning apparatus is to try to make sure it is as good and as effective as we can make it ... if we are to have it let us have it as perfect as we can make it.

That is the proper approach and it is something we support wholeheartedly. The planning apparatus is working quite effectively and the only opportunity for changes will come about in the drafting of the development plans. These plans are scrutinised by the public and by all interested parties. Councillors are deeply concerned about the necessity of having good planning and they are aware of their responsibilities in the matter. I am confident that they are discharging their responsibilities in a proper way.

With regard to the question of declaration of interest, it is no harm to remind newly-elected councillors and people with interests in development to complete an up-to-date declaration of their involvements and interests. As I said last night, as an architect and a public representative I was conscious of the need to ensure that architects be clear on their role and responsibility. Deputy Quinn has put his name to the motion before the House and I am sure he shares this view. Architects in their professional capacity in the planning area have a special involvement. I know that the few architects who are involved in local authorities keep their roles separate. Other officials of local authorities should be conscious of their position and ensure that their declarations of interest are comprehensive and kept up to date and are available for public inspection. Any member of the public can go to the local authority offices and inspect these declarations. It is an important aspect of the Act and its inclusion was justified.

The Minister has clearly indicated that he is prepared to consider the amendment of any aspect of the Planning Acts if it would be of benefit to the public in general. I am confident that he will do so and come up with proposals which will have the full support of this Government.

I endorse the views expressed that the local authority members are carefully carrying out their responsibilities and, as is known, without any remuneration whatever. They are a most responsible group of people, dedicated in their approach, who are working extremely hard at present, preparing development plans for the betterment of the public generally. This whole debate was unnecessary to some extent, but it has been proposed by Deputy Desmond who also is a member of a local authority and well aware of the controls and responsibilities of each local authority. Local authority members are very conscious of their position and if they are doing the job properly will ensure that the Act is fully complied with and that no difficulties will be created for anyone.

In conclusion, I express my confidence in the Minister of State, Mr. Connolly, who is looking into this whole matter of planning. He can call on his own personal experience as a member of a local authority, well aware of the responsibilities involved in local authority matters. He will ensure that any amendment brought forward which is shown to improve the situation and not inhibit the work of the council and the councillors will be put into effect to enable them to carry out their statutory responsibility.

Mr. F. O'Brien

I am glad to have been given the opportunity of speaking in this debate. I support the amendments. It is important that from time to time we look at legislation to see if it needs changing. This updating or change should not be done on the basis of panic or fear. It should be done because we believe it is necessary and in this case it is necessary. The law is there to protect the members of local authorities and to ensure that they are seen as above reproach. It is not enough to be right: one must be seen to be right.

We must ask whether, in present circumstances and as presently constituted, local authorities are able to deal with their problems. In areas of major development, where there are parttime elected public representatives, it is extremely hard for them to attend meetings at all times. The time has come when we must look at the whole fabric of local authorities to see whether these are operating in the best interests of the communiy. Can they operate on the basis of their present structure? These are questions which should be asked. Plugging holes here and there is all right but, at the end of the day, that is not the answer. In the whole general area of local authorities, because of the complexity and the vast development of growing towns and areas, we must examine the development of local authorities and local government. The day has gone—and long since gone—when we could expect part-time public representatives to do the job which is required. They do a great job. They are dedicated and conscientiously work long hours without any real remuneration. Is that enough? I do not think it is.

Taking an area like greater Dublin, there must be a greater Dublin authority drawn from the whole area. While everybody wants to guard his own particular authority and see that it is the best and does its business in the most efficient way, that is a parochial viewpoint. These authorities are all complementary to one another, particularly in the whole area of planning, housing, water, sewerage and road infrastructure. In actual fact, Dublin county and the surrounding boroughs are all integrated. There is no great green area between them.

Given that we have this vast area, we must ask if the present local authority structure is satisfactory? Will the amendments put forward and accepted suffice? Is that what is wanted? I honestly do not think it is and I do not think the people who put down the amendments could reasonably insist that it is. A complete overhaul of the greater Dublin council is required, with fulltime public representation so that on matters like drafting development plans, rezoning, infrastructure and so on are dealt with by full-time public representatives who have time to attend meetings and who are not looking over their shoulders towards their place of employment where they should be and dashing off to it. It is only when we get this type of broad authority that we can expect the kind of local government which people expect today. Dublin and its environs have become a vast area. It is ludicrous for the public and this House to think that parttime public representatives can do the job. Of course, they cannot.

These amendments are important, as I said earlier, if for no other reason than to ensure that the public representative is protected and is seen to be protected. It is easy to cast suspicion on public representatives when the law is such that people must make statements about their commitments as regards what they own and are part of and declare any interest that they may have. That is fine, but it is not the whole story.

Questions were asked why members were not in attendance at meetings. This is simply because one cannot expect unpaid public representatives, who must hold down jobs, to act as fulltime members. We must face this fact. In the greater Dublin area, it is high time that we took local government seriously for the first time and said "Here is a vast area that we can break up into small, autonomous groups with authority in the various areas of cleansing and local planning, environmental works within their areas and that sort of thing." They can elect their own councils. We had them 50 and 60 years ago in this city. We had Pembroke, Rathmines and Howth-Clontarf when our population was very much smaller than it is today and people had much more contact. Now we need a great number of these local councils and local community involvement to deal with individual areas and they must send their people to the Greater Dublin local authority who will work fulltime, who will have full-time chairmen of housing committees who will be sole representatives looking after housing development, general purposes, infrastructures, roads and so on. This must be looked at in a positive way to see that people get the kind of local government to which they are entitled at the present day.

We are coming into this House plugging a few holes here and there in the system. While that is all right in the short term, we are not grasping the nettle, we are not taking on the problems. If we take our local government seriously and give people authority and fulltime status and pay them well, we will have a sense of direction and we will not be coming in here looking for this type of change to be built into their standing orders. We should look at the standing orders of local authorities throughout the country generally and build into those standing orders all such stipulations and protections and in that way we will have the type of structures that modern society wants. We see around us today vast growing towns like Tallaght, Clondalkin, Blanchardstown, Ballymun and its environs without any semblance whatever of local government structures. The people in Balbriggan have the same structure as the people in Tallaght and that on a parttime basis, and they are poles and miles apart. That is not good enough and it is no wonder that we come in looking to plug a hole here and there. If we continue as we are we will come in here from time to time wondering what we will do.

The sooner the Department of the Environment take themselves seriously in this whole area of local government and local involvement, the better. The sooner they devise schemes in which there will be real and meaningful involvement by the people required, on a fulltime basis on a broad and global area like the greater Dublin area, the better. What we are getting now right through is dictation from the Department of the Environment. They hand down decisions without any consultation because they are fully aware that local government is becoming puerile and a bit of a joke. That is very regrettable. Only this week I attended a meeting of the local authority in which I am involved and I said something about two new sports complexes in which the Government are involved and for which they are handing out some money. The local authority were written to and were told exactly the locations of these two complexes, that they would engage the amount of money, they would run the complexes, pay one-third and supply the site. I asked if there was any consultation and I was told that there was none whatsoever.

How can we hope to get any kind of local democracy with this lack of consultation? One may say that this is straying away from what is on the Order Paper. If we had our house in order and proper devolution of power right across we would not be having the debates that we are having here. I am raising the point because I am concerned about what is happening. I ask the Minister to think long and hard on this area of involvement. Let us grasp this nettle. Both sides of the House have been talking long enough about local democracy, involvement, people coming together, councils, infrastructures and so on. These come up generally at local election time and all have different policies on them, but when local elections pass we drift back wearily into the path of doing nothing and one has to look to see if we have a vested interest in not doing anything. Maybe we have, but for goodness sake let us reject our vested interests and get on with it. Let the Department come up to the Minister with a blueprint on the whole area of local democracy and proper structures, and the fears of a large number of people will be allayed. Where you have fulltime commitment and dedication, then local democracy will be run not by officials but truly by fulltime elected representatives. That is the nub of the matter.

I come to zoning and rezoning. There is something wrong with the system when you can draw a line on a map this way or that way and say, "That is now development land and tomorrow it will be ten times dearer than it is today". I do not think that that was ever intended and obviously it must bring tremendous pressure to bear on people when land can rise in price ten- or 15-fold overnight on the basis of moving a line one way or another. If it moves to my side of the road I can be a millionaire and if it moves to the other side of the road I will remain as I am. A system which has that built into it is wrong.

The solution to the problem is not easy. The Americans do not believe in zoning land. They allow market forces to prevail. Whether that is a good idea or not is open to question. This particular system is also open to question. The sooner a policy on land is adopted the better. The sooner the Kenny Report is taken off the shelf the better. That would deal with the whole question of land and rezoning, whether people had interests or not. I believe the capital gains would not be great and so it would not make much difference. While you have a system of rezoning from agricultural to commercial or housing development it raises market value dramatically. That system is not right. The amendment before us to change the 1976 Act represents a plugging operation. I support it. I think it is necessary given the existing circumstances, but these circumstances are not good and we shall have to take some radical steps in this whole area rather than bring in piecemeal amendments to give people time to call a meeting and make certain declarations.

All this was done and fairly well covered in the 1976 Act. I fully supported it. It is important that any public representative should declare his interest. That goes without saying, but the situation where land can command such an astronomical price overnight is wrong. That is where the problem lies, not with the public representative who is doing a parttime job conscientiously and well. He has to hold down his other job. He has his personal commitments and he has to do a good deal of running and fetching for the people in his area. The onus is then on him to come up on the draft development plan and make these decisions. That system is wrong. If anybody is to blame it is this House because we here are the people who ultimately change the law and make it effective. If we are interested in doing that we must examine the problems. These problems are in the astronomical cost of land when it is rezoned. If we had made radical changes we would not be discussing this matter tonight. It is high time that the Government came off the fence as regards the Kenny Report. If there is lack of Government will to implement it, fair enough. If there are constitutional problems, let us hear them; but let us not pussy-foot, because we see what can happen. I do not believe that is or should be the intention.

This House has the obligation of changing that system. We should not put members of local authorities in positions like this. We are elected to make laws and change them. We will support any radical and reasonable changes in the area of land reform. It is wrong that such a vast profit can be made when draft development plans are changed. That is what puts on the pressure. I would support zoning when land prices are controlled. When we have them controlled whatever way you draw lines the cost will remain the same. There will be no vested interest and no pressure on the owner of the land or on anybody because the price will be the agricultural price. That to me seems to be the only way we can solve this problem. Let us not delude ourselves into thinking that changing this or that will have any real effect. I think we know that it will not.

The Minister said he would look at the matter and see what changes could be made. I am asking him to look at the Kenny Report and implement its recommendations by bringing legislation before the House. If there are constitutional problems let us put them to the test. Let us do something rather than hide behind the Constitution. If the Constitution would stand over a system which allows such dramatic price increases overnight because of a line here or there, I think the Constitution must come into question. Is the Constitution there to protect the people or to protect property? If it is to protect the people the whole question of land and the Kenny Report would stand but if the Constitution is to protect property it would not. Then it would be time to examine property rights under the Constitution and make the necessary changes that would protect people and their rights and so give them a right to acquire sites for houses and homes.

So long as we are prepared to do nothing in this area and with the Kenny Report this will drift and we will have more amendments next time round, but we will not be facing the reality of the problem. I hope the Minister and the Department will take positive action in restructuring local authorities, particularly in the fast-growing areas, giving them full-time public representative status and will look at the Kenny Report and bring before this House concrete proposals of change. If that is done we will not be coming back with piecemeal legislation every other year.

Mr. Tully

First, we should make clear exactly what we are debating. The motion in the name of Deputy B. Desmond and Deputy Quinn says:

That Dáil Éireann calls on the Minister for the Environment to amend Section 33 (2), of the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act, 1976, to provide that where a member of a planning authority has a pecuniary or other beneficial interest in the zoning, acquisition or disposal of land by the authority the member of the authority shall attend the meeting of the authority and shall disclose the nature of his or her interest and shall then withdraw from the meeting for so long as the matter is being discussed or considered and further calls on the Minister for the Environment to introduce amending legislation to ensure that any member of a planning authority who wishes to make any proposal relating to the zoning of any lands which are the subject of periodic review under Draft Development Plans shall be obliged to give fourteen days notice of motion in relation to any such proposed changes.

The terms are very specific. It is right that I should contribute to this debate because I was the person who piloted the 1976 local government planning and development legislation through this House. While I enjoyed most of the time I acted as Minister, there were periods during that debate which I did not enjoy. As a matter of fact, one particular thing disgusted me. Apart from that there was a very substantial element of opposition from the present Government to the proposed legislation. The result is that the Bill dragged on in this House for an inordinately long period. There did not seem to be any good reason why.

Some members of the then Opposition from time to time could be most reasonable and made some very good proposals. Being a reasonable man, if there was any merit in the proposals I was only too glad to accept them. Again and again proposals made were accepted, perhaps not exactly in the form in which they were made, but with the co-operation of the Opposition they were put into the final wording of the Bill and became law.

Why was this Bill so important at that time? Why was this provision in that Bill so important at that time? It was as people here know it well—politicians remember things like this even if others do not—that there seemed to be a campaign of vilification being carried on in one particular newspaper Sunday after Sunday. There were long articles attacking and vilifying not a member of the Coalition parties but a member of the then Opposition. I considered that outrageous. A member of a local authority is doing a job for which he is not paid and he may lose a lot by being a member of a local authority. To be attacked for doing this is all wrong, unless such a member deliberately leaves himself open to attack. As Deputy B. Desmond said last night the only thing I thought was wrong at that time was that the person concerned took these attacks a lot quieter than I would have done. He did not take action against the newspaper. He did not take action to clear his name. I believe that is the way to deal with these people.

It is said that a politician who goes to court in an effort to clear his name is foolish because the court does not look too kindly on politicians who want to do that kind of thing, even though they might be in the right. There have been cases where very small amounts for damages were granted, where damages were sought. At that particular time and before and since we have had innuendoes, comments and snide remarks about members of local authorities or members of different boards who use their position for the purpose of getting rich.

Let us face facts. This motion has been brought about because it was alleged recently that somebody who was a member of a local authority allowed his colleagues, if he did not persuade them, to support the rezoning of land which he owned for a relatively short time and which overnight would make him a very rich man.

When the Bill was going through the House we had various suggestions as to how it could be improved. In relation to An Bord Pleanála there were suggestions that notice would have to be given and that the member being there, would have to declare his interest and withdraw, but we did not include that type of phraseology when dealing with local authorities with the result that, if we can believe the newspapers, we have had a rather extraordinary situation.

While all the officials of that particular local authority were opposed to the proposal, no advance notice appears to have been given to anybody that the matter would be on the agenda. Therefore, when a decision which enriched one member of the local authority—it enriched many other people as well—was carried it caused a certain amount of unease. The member affected carried out the letter of the law by being absent from the meeting. He knew this matter was coming up although other members said, according to the newspapers, that they had no way of knowing it was coming up.

When there is a big issue like this involved, it is important that the member concerned should attend the meeting and say "I have an interest in this and I am withdrawing" or, as has been suggested here, adequate notice, 14 days, should be given to the chairman so that there could be no question of anybody being able at a later stage to point a finger and say "This is a racket. They are all in it and are making money for themselves".

I want to make it clear that I have always held that because a person is a member of a local authority that should not debar him by right from whatever he would have got if he was not a member of that local authority. The idea that simply because a person is a member of a local authority he should automatically be prepared to do with a lot less than anybody else is all too prevalent here and it is wrong. Having said that, I must make the point that the member, who must have known that there would be a storm about it when it came out, was extremely foolish that he did not do one of two things, publicly declare that he was not attending the meeting because this matter was coming up, or go to the meeting and say that he must leave the meeting because this matter was coming up. A third alternative, if he felt that way, was to resign from the council. The big trouble is that we have here a situation which can be pointed at by those who want to abuse people in public life.

Reference has been made by a number of people here, including Deputy Fergus O'Brien who is very well versed in these matters, to the Kenny Report. I would like to point out that the Kenny Report is not the Bible. The Kenny Report was not handed down by God. It was prepared by a man and, being a man, he is of course fallible. The Kenny Report has many shortcomings and while the Kenny Report was adopted in principle by the previous Government—and I would ask that the present Government would be prepared to do the same if they have not already done so—that does not mean that every line and comma in it should be introduced into the legislation of this land. It would be a mistake to do so because, apart from anything else, there are some clear shortcomings in it and, to deviate for a minute, one of the shortcomings is that while it deals with land outside towns and villages and cities it does not deal with the land within the boundaries of the towns and cities and that is where the greatest scandal occurs at present because people are expecting and getting prices to which they would not normally be entitled. An effort is being made by the Labour Party to try to remedy that situation at present. Indeed, Deputy Quinn has a very big hand in making that proposal.

To go back to the motion before the House I understood from the Minister of State that he was saying that the Government were going to look at this. Did that mean that the Government were not going to oppose this motion? That is what I thought he implied but he did not in fact say it. We should know whether or not the Government are prepared to do something because looking at something in God's own time is a different thing altogether from accepting that the House has agreed, and all sides of the House apparently have agreed, that something should be done to try to ensure that we will not again have a situation where a public representative on any public body can be pilloried because he does not do what he should have done even though the law does not say he must do it.

House prices at present and for the past couple of years have been going up through the roof. We are told materials and wages push up prices and very few people want to admit that in many cases the main reason why House prices have gone up is that the price of a site now is many times more than the price of the erection of a house. That is a bit rediculous and if this is the situation we should make every effort to ensure that that position does not continue. It becomes tied up with this motion when we find that people in the public service, people who are employed in the public service, people who are members of the local authority are in fact involved in this thing, when it can be said that they deliberately acquired property for the purpose of making a fast buck. That is the suggestion which has been coming out. It is wrong that we should leave ourselves open to such suggestions. It is entirely wrong that any Member of this House or a member of a local authority should put himself in the position where he can be pilloried outside and inside this House on the grounds that he was trying to pull a fast one. I do not know the Deputy who was involved in this who is a member of Dublin County Council. I know him to see in the House. I do know that he was only a short time in the House when he made a very snide remark—

It is an old ploy in this House, and has been for a long time, for the Government party to get a back bencher to attempt to prevent a Member, who is making a speech which may be damaging to their image, continuing. The Deputy has almost succeeded as far as I am concerned because I have gone after him instead of saying the things I intended.

Mr. N. Andrews

The Deputy's colleagues spent a half hour disrupting the House last Friday and prevented me from making a contribution.

Mr. Tully

The plain facts of the case are that we had a county council decision which resulted in the newpaper publicity doing no good to the image of public representatives. I have always defended local authority representatives because I believe they are the salt of the earth. I could never understand why people go into public life and do it for nothing, getting more kicks than payment. As Minister for Local Government I defended a prominent member of Fianna Fáil because he was attacked in a worse way than this. For that reason I insisted that this legislation must go in in the way it did. There was a lot of opposition from Fianna Fáil to that Bill. Indeed, it is difficult to understand that opposition. I could not understand why sensible people who at other stages of the debate had been most helpful should in relation to this matter have a blind spot. They deliberately, or otherwise, attempted to prevent certain things being put into the Bill. The Taoiseach then Deputy Haughey, moved an amendment to my Bill and during the course of the debate on it he said: "I want to have a record available to the Minister or any other interested person of what the exact position is in regard to such a matter. What I want is not alone will he have to disclose where he has an interest ...but that he will also disclose that interest in writing to the chairman." That was the thinking of the Taoiseach in 1974. I told him then that I agreed that might be of help to the board and felt it might be better to insert, "shall inform the presiding chairman".

This motion must be accepted by the House. If the Government refuse to accept it people will hold the view that the Government have not changed their minds since they were in Opposition and still hold the belief that there should be no disclosure of the interests of certain people when it might hurt themselves. That would be a tragedy. I do not believe any Government would be foolish enough to try to say they were not in favour of protecting the rights and characters of their public representatives. I have more right than any other Member to insist that the character of public representatives be protected in every way possible because in recent times I was most viciously attacked for political reasons by people on the Opposition side. I dealt with that in my own way and I am perfectly satisfied I cleared my character.

I do not believe that any public representative, councillor or Member of Dáil Éireann, should be in a position when something like this happens of having a finger pointed at him. There is a school of thought that believes that rezoning should not take place in any circumstances and there is one which believes that everything is sacrosanct even if there is a demand for housing in an area or even if it means that useless land left out of the original zoning is included later. I do not agree with that. We must progress with the times. I do not know the area concerned or why we should have this hullabaloo up to now. I believe that once the matter has come to public notice that if there is a loophole in the Act there is only one way to deal with it: the Government at the earliest opportunity should amend the existing legislation to ensure that the loophole is plugged. When the Government looks at this Act they should have a complete review of it. They have excellent officials who gave advice to me when the Bill was being processed in the House and I am sure they recognise the loophole or weakness in the existing legislation. If more than one matter needs to be tidied up an effort should be made to do so now. If it is announced that this review is on the way the public will accept that Members are determined to see that there will not be any loophole for which a public representative can be pilloried. We should be made aware what the Minister of State, Deputy Connolly, meant when he stated that the Government were reviewing the matter. Did he mean that they proposed to accept the motion before the House?

Mr. Quinn

The House is well aware of the background to this motion. The House regrets the fact that such a motion had to be tabled and I believe the House anticipates that politicians will not vote against it. What is the background to this motion and why have the Labour Party sought to put it down at this time? In general terms the background is the ever-increasing price of development land in our urban areas, a price which seems to be beyond control or totally out of control, and a political system that seems incapable or unwilling to attempt to control it. In that context where the demand for housing at all times totally outstrips supply there is no upper ceiling to the potential price development land is likely to make on the market.

It is the local authority that decides whether land should fall within the net of development or not and any member of a local authority or anybody connected with it who has an aye or nay in pushing land into the development category is open to the suggestion, allegation or dismissal that there is individual benefit to be had from such an activity. If this House allows the present situation to continue whereby such an idea or image can be put abroad in the common minds of ordinary people, the entire process of democratic politics will be undermined in general and specifically the participation of public representatives at local level will be seriously undermined.

I believe all parties are very definitely and deeply committed to the democratic process. It is something we all share and we all experience similar difficulties in trying to make that process work in a mixed economy in a world where commodity prices and international tensions are frequently fraught with ups and downs which make our open economy highly susceptible to variations in prices with a consequent impact on the living standards of the people we represent. The pressures of trying to make democracy work in 1980 are substantial. We have enough difficulties in terms of the irrationality of the market system from the Ayatollahs of this world without compounding it internally on our part.

We desperately need the support and continued assistance of our people to enable working politicians on all sides to try and resolve democratically the problems that confront society at present. The right to shelter and the failure of successive Governments to provide that basic right is one of the problems that has confronted the State since its foundation. The dramatic increase in the population in the last 15 years has emphasised that problem. The consequent impact of that population growth on the cost of development land is enormous. The kind of allegation that is put forward—politicians are only in it for what they can get out of it; politicians are all the same; the only politicians who survive are those who are getting something from somewhere—is the beginning of the cancer that will eat away at the democratic process if we are not prepared to confront it and remove the grounds on which it has any substance whatever.

The mover of the 1976 Act, Deputy Tully, was the first to concede that there are loopholes in it which can now be closed. We are saying in the light of what has happened in recent weeks that such a gap has been identified, not by us but by the gallery of our society. That gallery is looking at us to see what we are prepared to do as politicians trying to make the democratic system work. We have a very simple choice. The Government have a very clear choice in accepting the motion. There are no time limits to our motion or specific wording attached to it. On that point I should like to refer to the reasonable response that the Minister of State, Deputy Connolly, made to the motion. He drew attention to certain drafting ambiguities that are contained in the motion, if one were to assume that the motion was an amendment in itself to the 1976 Act. That would be a wrong assumption. The critical verb is "to provide". We are asking the Government and the person designated with the responsibility within the Government, the Minister of State present, to provide for the terms of our motion and draft those clauses, sections and subsections to amend the Acts of 1963 and 1976.

The Minister of State has fairly and graciously responded to the motion we put down. He has made valid criticism about its wording. I hope I have responded to that criticism by the out of the proviso contained in the words "to provide". We will leave the detail to the Minister as to how he wants to stitch these two objectives into the legislation. Reading the last couple of paragraphs of the Minister's speech I see stated that he would look into the matter without delay—which I welcome and respect. The very last sentence of the Minister's speech read:

I will look at the matter without delay and if I find that a revision of the provisions referred to is justified I will bring forward draft proposals in due course.

Taking the English language at its face value it would appear that the Minister is not convinced, as of now, that a revision of the provisions referred to is justified. We would argue that not only has it been shown to be necessary by the public response but that the underlying need for their revision has been validated and signalled quite clearly by the very highly publicised action of the Taoiseach in calling in the Fianna Fáil members, the minority of Fianna Fáil members of Dublin County Council, and asking them specifically to reverse a decision on which they had voted at that meeting in unison after lunch when the attendance was different from that in the morning.

It is the Government's responsibility to bring in these proposals. We will allow the Minister every reasonable time in this regard but we would hope that we would see some proposals before the House by the end of this year. Obviously we cannot expect anything by the end of June; we would not even attempt to suggest that there should be. At this stage, having regard to the performance of the Minister of State since he assumed office, I am prepared to accept that he will look at the matter without delay. I believe the actions of the Government in relation to the decision taken by the Taoiseach clearly recognise that the provisions are justified. On the basis of that we will be looking forward—and we will provide whatever technical assistance the Minister may feel we can provide—to drafting adequate proposals to amend the legislation some time in 1980.

Minister of State at the Department of the Environment (Mr. Connolly)

A Leas-Cheann Comhairle——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Minister has already spoken.

Mr. Connolly

I want to clarify a matter. I am entirely in sympathy with the need to protect local authority representatives and to see that the procedures are satisfactory. I have given an undertaking to look into the matter urgently and to bring forward draft proposals to improve the position. I have given that undertaking to the House, and I would ask Members of the Labour Party to accept it.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Dáil Éireann debate - Wednesday, 21 May 1980

Private Members' Business. - Draft Development Plans: Motion (Resumed).

Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 21 May 1980