We are resuming on amendment No. 53 in the names of Deputies Gilmore and Dukes. Amendments Nos. 60, 61, 62, 73, and amendment No. 1 to amendment No. 73 are related. Amendments Nos. 53, 60, 61, 62, 73 and amendment No. 1 to amendment No. 73 to be taken together.
Private Business. - Roads Bill, 1991: Report Stage (Resumed).
I move amendment No. 53:
In page 22, line 36, to delete "direct" and substitute "request".
Wexford): These amendments go to the kernel of the debate about the role of the NRA. The issues involved were debated in detail on Committee Stage. For long there has been a call for a single authority to develop the national road network. These amendments now seem to suggest that the national roads authority should be given the task with one hand tied behind its back. Deputy Gilmore's amendments would effectively remove its power of direction altogether, leaving it powerless in the face of a local authority who refused to co-operate with it. As I said before, the buck has to stop somewhere and it is logical that the authority which has been given the overall responsibility for national road development should have the reserve powers necessary to implement the mandate given to it by the Oireachtas.
Section 20 does little more than transfer the Minister's directive powers under section 11 of the Local Government (Roads and Motorways) Act, 1974 to the National Roads Authority, a logical step since it is taking over his Department's management functions in relation to national roads. However, in order to allay the fears which were expressed that the authority could ride roughshod over local authorities, particularly in regard to the alignment of a proposed road, I am introducing an amendment to section 22 which will allow the elected members of a local authority to make representations to the NRA where they object to a proposed road alignment. The authority would be obliged to consider representations and, if having responded to the local authority, the latter is still aggrieved, it can make written submissions to the Minister.
The Minister would have a number of options open to him in such cases following consideration of the representations, including the following: he could reject the representations; he could issue a direction to the NRA under section 41; he could issue general guidelines to the NRA under section 41 (2) which would have a bearing on the case in question; he could intervene on a non-statutory basis and seek to resolve the differences.
I welcome the fact that the Minister is willing to make some move on this issue. As the Minister rightly said, it goes to the kernel of the debate about the role of the roads authority. I think he would have to recognise that taking, for example, the most recent debate on the eastern by-pass where there was a very clear difference of opinion between the local authority and what appeared to be the view of the Department.
The right of appeal to a Minister is hardly going to reassure councillors that their objections will be given proper consideration. Would the Minister not feel it more appropriate that rights of appeal in relation to an issue like this should more properly be heard by a body such as the planning board which has a distinctive and independent mandate and would, therefore, give objectors the feeling that there was due process, that they had an opportunity to request oral hearings if necessary to hear the various issues teased out in public.
Under the amendment which the Minister is proposing the roads authority merely has the obligation to consider objections. It seems to me it should be strengthened by saying they would be obliged to accept some of these recommendations if they were the subject of a local authority's development plan. If councillors were raising objections on foot of a development plan which had been put on public display for the proper duration, on which public opinion in the local authority area had been duly sought and which had been duly adopted under the planning Acts, such a development plan should have the power to override any view of the NRA.
There is the crucial issue of subsidiarity or domestic accountability at stake here and, while the Minister's proposal is an advance in that Ministers at the end of the day are accountable in this House and can at least be called to answer for their decisions, it seems to me accountability cannot be to a House such as this but should be to the people of the local authority area concerned. I ask the Minister, therefore, to consider whether a structure similar to An Bord Pleanála or, alternatively, the legal respect for development plans would be an obligation upon the NRA.
Let us not forget we are on the Report Stage of this Bill.
(Wexford): I envisage that the NRA would work in harmony with the local authorities, that the authorities would generally act on behalf of the authority in acquiring land, designing schemes, letting contracts and so on and I envisage little confrontation. They would be in total harmony and would be working together to resolve problems. I see the Minister having to intervene very little in this area. The matter was well teased out at Committee Stage.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,
We will proceed now to deal with amendment No. 54 in the name of Deputy Flanagan. Amendments Nos. 55 and 59 are related and I suggest, therefore, that we discuss amendments Nos. 54, 55 and 59 together. Is that agreed? Agreed.
I move amendment No. 54.
In page 22, line 44, after "order" to insert ", provided that the consent of the local authority in whose functional area the land is situated has been obtained,".
(Wexford): These amendments will severely restrict the powers of the NRA to issue directions relating to land acquisition. The first amendment states that the NRA can only direct the local authority to acquire land by making a compulsory purchase order or by purchasing it by agreement where the consent of the local authority has been obtained. This is nonsense. In effect, the NRA is being told it cannot use its powers of direction without the approval of the local authority. It is like telling a court it cannot order you to do something without your consent.
The second amendment is ever more restrictive. It proposes that the NRA can direct the local authority to make a compulsory purchase order with the local authority's consent but it cannot direct the local authority to submit the CPO to the Minister for confirmation. This is even greater nonsense; it is rather like saying a judge can impose a fine on you but he cannot insist that you pay it.
The third amendment would require the Minister to approve of any compulsory purchase order, if there was a dispute over the land acquisition between the NRA and the local authority. I cannot see the reasoning behind this. If a CPO is involved, the law as it stands requires ministerial confirmation. Also, the NRA has the reserve power in section 19 to acquire land itself.
I must oppose these amendments. In my view, they make no sense. We have gone out of our way in this Bill to preserve a balance by giving the NRA adequate powers to do its job effectively, while hedging these powers with safeguards and giving local authorities an opportunity to have their views listened to and their interests protected.
My colleagues, Deputies Flanagan and Dukes, are not available in this interim period of five minutes before we go into Private Members' Time. I had tabled a considerable number of amendments on Committee Stage of this Bill and I have particularly fond memories of it.
One of the jackboot tactics of the proposed NRA and the Minister is to disregard the opinions of local councillors. These amendments seek to put an element of local democracy into compulsory purchase orders and into areas of controversy. For example, the eastern by-pass in Dublin was a controversial route for which there was no local support from residents' groups but if the NRA and the Minister were insisting that this go ahead then a CPO could be obtained. I think the consent of the local authority is a commonsense provision and it should be sought.
I know it is the policy of this Government where possible to downgrade the role of local councillors, to diminish their functions at every possible turn. We have seen this with new executive agencies being set up, with the abolition of health committees, agricultural committees and so on. We know the Government's thinking on this but, at the end of the day, the local public representative is accountable to the people who elected him in the first instance. Public representatives must return for a local mandate again and whether they did right or wrong in regard to a particular route, at least they are accountable to the people. The faceless bureaucrats——
(Wexford): I thought we heard the Deputy's leader attacking the officials earlier today.
——and their mandarins are not accountable and never put themselves before the public. I hope the Government will reconsider its position on these amendments.
(Wexford): I am surprised at Deputy Yates because at every council meeting he screams for the NRA to be set up.
Like Deputy Yates, I believe the whole democratic element is being dropped in this Bill. I think the Minister's concession on the last amendment where he agreed there would be the right of some form of appeal should also be considered in the context of this amendment, where local authorities would have recourse to some form of appeal. It is not very satisfactory that the recourse should be to appeal to the Minister. I thought it would be much better if there was recourse to an independent appeals procedure. There is an obligation on the roads authority and on the Minister to devise a system whereby local authorities, the elected representatives locally, would have a real influence over these decisions, that they would not be railroaded through in the way that appears possible under this legislation.
Is the amendment being pressed?
Yes.
I remind the Deputy that he might well be encroaching on Private Members' Time.
That will not happen.
Amendment put and declared lost.
Debate adjourned.