I move amendment No. 23:
In page 10, between lines 45 and 46, to insert the following paragraph:
"(d) direct the local authority to take such steps as may be necessary so as to ensure that a development objective or objectives for the purpose of reserving land for roads or parking places or for any of the purposes of reserving or preserving land indicated in Part IV of the Third Schedule of the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act, 1963, does not result in any land subject to any such development objective becoming or continuing to be a derelict site,".
My reason for proposing this amendment derives from the intent of the legislation, which is designed to bring to an end the problem of dereliction, particularly in our cities. It confers on the local authorities a series of powers which are welcomed by all sides of this House with regard to properties in private ownership which are in a state of dereliction.
One of the problems, particularly in Dublin — this has been a problem in other parts of the country such as Cork — is that the Dublin Corporation development plan has made a major contribution to dereliction within our city. It was not uncommon for the plan to contain long-term road widening objectives that the corporation think — I emphasise "think"— might, possibly, perchance implement in 20, 30, 40 or 50 years' time. From inquiring into the matter, it is quite clear that if the corporation's road engineers think they want a small bit of land on a street in the city, it is not unusual for them to simply mark the entire portion of the street down for long-term road widening. The impact this has is to cause serious urban dereliction. It means if property falls into disrepair, the owners see no purpose in investing in their property because they do not know, even if they do make such an investment, whether, within a couple of months, a compulsory purchase notice might be served. It might not be served for ten or 15 years. Nobody knows, but there is little point in conferring power on local authorities to take proceedings regarding dereliction against the private owners of property if on occasion the local authority is the cause of urban blight itself. This amendment is designed to deal with that problem, it is designed to ensure that where a local authority prescribes objectives in a development plan those objectives are realisable within a reasonable period and that where an objective is inserted in a development plan — for example, long-term road widening — that that is not repeated willy-nilly in each further development plan regardless of the possibilities of its implementation or, indeed, regardless of whether there has been a change of policy within the local authority.
I would urge the Minister to consider this amendment as we now seem to be reverting to the position we were in when Governments have majorities, that Ministers now take the view that they simply rule out any amendment proposed by Opposition parties for the sake of it. If the Minister agrees with the difficulty I describe as requiring a resolution but disagrees in any particular way with the substance of the amendment for any technical reason, I would invite the Minister to consider tabling his own amendment to deal with this problem on Report Stage.
In conclusion, I would be interested in not merely hearing the Minister's view of the technical drafting of the amendment but his view as to how we overcome the problem I describe in the contents of the Bill we have before us, which I do not think addresses that problem. If the Minister has an alternative solution to the means with which we can address it that could result in a different type of amendment being incorporated, we would obviously be pleased to hear of that.