Planning and Development Bill, 1999 [ Seanad ] : Second Stage.

Minister for the Environment and Local Government (Mr. Dempsey)

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

The Planning and Development Bill, 1999, represents the most fundamental reform of planning in Ireland since the enactment of the 1963 Planning Act. The Bill is the outcome of a two year review of Irish planning law which I initiated on coming into office. It has been accepted that the Bill represents a genuine effort to reform and update our planning laws in a fundamental way. It is the result of a great deal of work in my Department and has been greatly assisted by views received from all quarters.

The Bill is timely and could not be more relevant to the issues of the day. It will assist in the implementation of the National Development Plan 2000-2006, the most ambitious plan we have ever had for the development of this country. Crucially, it also makes a radical contribution to increasing the supply of social and affordable housing. Therefore the enactment of this Bill is a priority for the Government and for me. I am sure we can count on the co-operation of the whole House in ensuring the Bill is dealt with thoroughly and expeditiously as in the Seanad.

As well as introducing fundamental reforms, the Bill consolidates in one enactment nine Acts and five sets of environmental impact assessment regulations. It has 245 sections and six schedules in almost 220 pages. When considering the Bill, it should be seen as an integrated package of pro posals which strikes a balance that is right for its time.

The Bill was dealt with in great detail in the Seanad. While it contains a huge amount of detail I do not propose to repeat my Second Stage speech in the Seanad where I elaborated on the principles on which the Bill is based. We will have a detailed consideration of Part V on Committee Stage, as in the Seanad. The explanatory and financial memorandum indicates where new provisions have been introduced into the planning code and where old ones have been re-stated. Almost all provisions of the existing planning code have been subject to some revision.

The Bill before the House has been much improved during its passage through the Seanad. I put forward a substantial number of amendments taking into account the many excellent submissions I received as well as the further consideration given to the Bill in my Department and in the Office of the Attorney General. I also took on board many of the Opposition amendments. The three regional seminars which I convened after publication of the Bill also gave rise to many useful suggestions. These seminars were attended by a wide range of interests and I thank everyone who attended for their constructive comments on the Bill. A supplementary memorandum circulated to Deputies also highlights the major changes introduced to the Bill in the Seanad.

If there is one observation I might make about the debate on the Bill in the Seanad it is that many of the non-Government amendments tabled related to technical and procedural matters which are much more suited to regulations than to primary legislation. It is important in an area such as planning law that primary legislation lays down the policies and principles of the code together with a comprehensive legal framework, but that day to day administrative matters are left to regulations. This gives us the flexibility to adapt to changes and to new situations as they arise. It should be noted that many of the more substantial provisions in the planning regulations have been incorporated into the Bill.

Deputies will be aware that because of recent court judgments, where there is a reference in the Bill to regulations, there is an onus on us to state what policy we want to achieve in the regulations. This has been imposed as a result of a court decision and we have done that in all cases in the Bill itself.

Despite having made improvements in the Seanad, we may be able to further improve the Bill in this House and I look forward to a constructive debate. I have received further submissions since the Bill commenced its passage through the Seanad and having considered these submissions I will bring forward further amendments on Committee Stage to improve the Bill. I will have some further amendments to further minimise delays in infrastructure projects. In the Seanad I undertook to consider measures on the control of quarries and I also said I would bring in anti-avoidance measures related to the housing provisions. I intend to examine positively any amendments put down by the Opposition. We had a positive experience in the Seanad in that the debate teased out a number of matters and we were able to amend the Bill.

When I commenced my review of planning law, I said the planning system of the 21st century must be strategic in approach, be imbued with an ethos of sustainable development and deliver a performance of the highest quality.

In relation to a strategic approach, for the first time the Bill introduces a structured hierarchy of plans from the broad national picture down to the local development level. The local authority development plan retains its status as the anchor of our planning system. However, it will be informed by regional planning guidelines which will provide a long-term strategic framework at the regional level. These guidelines and development plans will be placed in the context of a national spatial strategy which my Department has now begun to prepare as part of the Government's policies for balanced regional development set out in the national development plan. The Bill already allows for national spatial plans to be taken into consideration in the planning system and I intend to strengthen further the references in the Bill to national spatial planning.

The Bill provides for statutory local area plans which will bridge the gap between the broad objectives of the development plan and actual development proposals. Local area plans will enable communities to get involved in improving and developing their own immediate areas and to ensure the necessary ancillary facilities are planned in new developments.

Turning to my second principle, the concept of sustainable development has been woven into the fabric of the Bill. On first glance it can be seen that the "proper planning and development" of an area has been replaced as the Bill's touchstone by "proper planning and sustainable development". It goes deeper than a change in terminology – the principle of sustainable development has been fully integrated into the Bill.

For example, the development objectives to be contained in development plans reflect modern environmental concerns. Environmental assessment of regional planning guidelines, development plans and local area plans is provided for. These provisions are also intended to meet the requirements of the proposed European Union directive on strategic environment assessment which is nearing completion in Brussels. The interface between pollution control licensing and planning control has been revised to allow a more holistic approach to be adopted in considering development with requires IPC licences. Power has also been taken to bring large scale afforestation and peat extraction within the planning system where necessary and there are new measures to protect the landscape.

I measc na rudaí eile go léir tugtar aitheantas sa Bhille seo don Ghaeltacht agus do chultúr na Gaeltachta sa chóras pleanála. Phléamar an cheist seo go mion sa tSeanad agus neartaíomar an Bille go mór ina thaobh seo. Beidh dualgas an údaráis áitiúla feasta an Ghaeilge mar theanga phobail sa Ghaeltacht a thabhairt san áireamh agus a chur chun cinn sa mhéid is gur féidir sin a dhéanamh sa chóras pleanála.

The question arose in the Seanad of giving a concrete definition of sustainable development in the Bill. I gave a good deal of thought to this but felt in the end that it was such a dynamic and all embracing concept, and one which will evolve over time, that any legal definition would tend to restrict and stifle it. Infusing the concept through the Bill, as we have done, gives effect to it in a holistic and comprehensive way.

My third principle was to ensure that the planning system delivers a quality service. I am seeking quality development plans, quality and timely decisions, an accessible and transparent planning service and proper enforcement; and the Bill makes many changes to ensure that these can be delivered.

The local authority remains the key decision making body in planning control. To strengthen this position, the Bill establishes for the first time in Irish planning law, statutory recognition for any submissions or observations which members of the public make to a local authority regarding planning applications. This is an important new right. In turn, the Bill provides that the right of appeal to An Bord Pleanála will only be available to those third parties who showed an interest in the initial application. The position regarding the right of appeal for third parties will still remain the most liberal in the European Union.

The Bill places an emphasis on timely decision making and tightens up a number of time limits under current law. The statutory recognition given to pre-planning discussion in the Bill should also aid the decision making process.

Strategic development zones are being introduced to provide greater certainty in planning for development which is of strategic importance to the national economy, especially where we have to compete for internationally mobile investment.

The national development plan has provided for further huge investment in infrastructure and the Bill will have a vital role in delivering that infrastructure on schedule. The responsibility for approving compulsory purchase of land, local authority EIA projects and road schemes is being transferred from the Minister to An Bord Pleanála. Procedural deadlines have been introduced to ensure that the process happens within a set time frame. The board will have an objective to deal with CPOs and EIAs within 18 weeks, the same period which applies to planning appeals. The board has shown in the past that it can meet this strict objective when it has the resources to meet the demand placed on it. I am confident the board will perform its new tasks equally well. The transfer of functions underlines the role of the Minister for Environment and Local Government as policy maker, while leaving decisions on individual projects to an independent expert body. This is a sensible division of functions and is in line with the strategic management initiative.

As is the case for any law, if people are to respect the planning laws they must be assured that they will be enforced. The Bill introduces major reforms to the enforcement code. It has been simplified and strengthened. Local authorities will be obliged to respond to people's genuine concerns and the Bill deals once and for all with the long-standing problems of unfinished estates.

Part V – housing supply – introduces a major new dimension to planning legislation and contains the most radical and probably the most contentious provisions of the Bill. Given the time constraints I will not be able to go into individual provisions in great detail, but I refer Members to my Second Stage speech in Seanad Éireann, which I am sure they have read in great detail.

The provision of adequate housing for all members of society has been a major issue of public policy for Governments of all shades since the State gained its independence. It has further been a traditional aim of Government to facilitate people in buying their own homes where this is possible. This has had a beneficial stabilising effect on society, and home ownership is an aspiration which the vast majority of people hold dearly. The Government will continue to support that aspiration, but the State also has a responsibility to assist those who cannot afford to house themselves and this has been done through the provision of local authority or other social housing. Part V is designed to underpin these two planks of the housing policy.

The reasons for the price increases and the effects they have had on the market, and in particular on first-time buyers, have been discussed many times and I do not intend to rehearse them again now. Suffice it to say that the Government is determined to ensure that all our people can attain their aspiration of owning their own homes. The present trends in house prices are, in the long run, profoundly damaging to social cohesion and future economic well being. They are no less damaging to the construction industry which builds the houses and the people who work in it. They will be reflected in wage demands from these workers who see the very houses they are building being priced out of their reach.

The question which must be asked is how can housing on affordable terms be delivered to low or mid income households unless land costs are kept down. The Government considers that the provisions of Part V provide the answer. For many, housing will remain as unaffordable as ever if prices must to include exorbitant site costs such as those which currently prevail in many areas. Yet the high value of this land derives from the action of the local authority in zoning it and partly, if not fully, funding infrastructure services.

With regard to social housing, Part V is vital in ensuring that local authorities have access to a supply of development land for their own housing programmes, without binding the taxpayer to paying high prices for land the value of which arises in large measure from the actions of the local authority in zoning and servicing the land. This provision is critical if we are to deliver on the greatly expanded £6 billion programme of social and affordable housing contained in the national development plan.

The plan will lead to an additional 35,000 local authority units, an increase in the voluntary housing sector provision of houses from 500 a year to 4,000 a year and an increase to 2,000 units per year under the current local authority affordable housing and shared ownership schemes. Without Part V, the Government will get a much lower return for the tax payer's investment, local authorities will find it more difficult to obtain land and we will not have the badly needed housing as quickly.

If we really want to promote the development of more socially integrated and more inclusive communities, we must reflect on the housing policies. Part V will do that by ensuring that in future private developments will make provision for social and/or affordable housing in an integrated way. I hope the days of building vast tracts of one-class housing estates are gone because we can all see the problems, inefficiencies and fractured communities that type of thing created in the past.

In providing the 500,000 homes required over the next ten years, the planning system should be able to prevent the creation of any more addresses which damage one's prospects of a job or deny one the opportunity to participate fully in society in accordance with one's talents and aspirations.

I am anxious, as I said in the Seanad, to ensure that Part V will have effect at the earliest possible date. Local authorities would share that interest and I have asked them to make a start right away on preparing the groundwork for their housing strategies. In order to assist in this, shortly I will be sending to authorities detailed draft guidelines on the implementation of Part V.

The proposals in Part V are designed to meet a clearly identified concern of public policy and the common good. The Government believes the measures are well targeted and clearly defined and will have regard to the prevailing and anticipated housing situation in any area. I assure the House and the public that the measures are proportionate and relevant to the issues being tackled. The Bill has been prepared having regard to the constitutional principles of fairness, equality and proportionality. The detailed nature of the proposals in Part V is quite deliberate and is necessary to meet the constitutional imperative that the intention of the Legislature be spelled out precisely.

I readily acknowledge that the new functions being given to local authorities and An Bord Pleanála and the greater demands of the Bill in regard to some existing functions will require the allocation of greater resources and the ongoing development of planning skills. If a good planning system is seen as an essential guarantor of our future quality of life – I think it is – there would be general acceptance that these resources should be provided. I am committed to providing the necessary resources and my record in this respect speaks for itself. I have also been in contact with UCD, which has the only planning school in the country, about the increased need for professional planning staff.

Tugann an Bille seo uirlis éifeactach dúinn chun córas pleanála níos fearr a chur i bhfeidhm sa tír seo: córas pleanála a ligfidh don fhorbairt atá riachtanach dul ar aghaidh go tapaidh, ach i gcónaí i slí a chosnaíonn ár dtimpeallacht agus ár n-oidhreacht. Dá bhrí sin, molaim go láidir an Bille seo don Dáil.

Mr. Dukes

I assure the Minister that, for the same reasons as him, I also want the Bill dealt with expeditiously. However, the Bill is important enough to require careful consideration, both on Second and Committee Stages. Without wishing to imply any criticism, I hope the Minister will listen carefully to what is said on Second Stage and that when we come to Committee Stage there will be the possibility of a meeting of minds about a number of areas where the Bill needs reinforcement. The Minister has already indicated some of those areas.

I congratulate the Minister, without hesitation, on having organised a series of seminars on the provisions of the Bill. Clearly, the Bill will be very important not only for members of local authorities but also for the many people involved in the planning process. The decision to hold those seminars was an important one. The Minister knows as well as I do – I am sure he has received the same feedback – that those who attended them found them very useful. Even if the seminars gave people reasons to disagree with the Minister, they were a worthwhile exercise and I commend everybody who was involved in organising them.

In general, the more I think about this Bill the more I believe my first reaction to it was correct, that it will be a dead letter unless and until local authorities are given the funding and personnel resources required to implement its provisions. I will go into that point in more detail later.

The Bill provides no democratic reform of the planning system. I intend to table amendments to make the system more open, more responsive to public needs and more amenable to properly exercised political influence by the elected members of local authorities. After all, they are elected by the people to do a job for them.

The housing provisions in Part V are unworkable and any attempt to implement them as they stand will drive up house prices further, not only in the upper end of the market but also in what are called affordable houses. We need adequate resources for local authorities to build houses for rental and for purchase, and to make sites available at reasonable prices. As things stand, An Bord Pleanála simply cannot cope with the current volume of appeals. It needs further strengthening because the job that was done some time ago has demonstrated itself to be inadequate. I will oppose the imposition of charges on community groups that wish to involve themselves in the planning process in the public interest, and I will also oppose the proposals in the Bill to limit their right of appeal. The Environmental Protection Agency, the duties of which are very important to the planning process, is seriously under-resourced. It has now become a part of the planning problem and that must be rectified.

The Bill's provisions on the content and objectives of development plans are incomplete. They can be strengthened by making mandatory the provisions in the Bill that are currently optional. The Government's failure to produce a spatial strategy will rob the Bill's provisions of much of their potential effect for at least the next two years. I suppose it is an accident, but a slightly ironic one, that we should have received on our desks within the last few days a further statement from the Minister about the spatial strategy at a time when we are beginning to consider the Bill's provisions.

The aims of this Bill will not be achieved unless local authorities are given the necessary resources. All over the country decisions on planning applications are being delayed because local authorities simply do not have the necessary staff or in many cases the necessary expertise to deal with applications within the statutory timeframe. Simple applications to build houses are systematically long-fingered in local authorities.

Every Member has received visits from planning applicants who, at 8 p.m. on a Friday night – the final day on which the local authority could act – have received a note requesting further information. Very often the note requests further information that has already been supplied. That is unacceptable. To discover, as we do from time to time, that the communication from the local authority is delivered to the wrong person is even worse. I am not the only public representative who has come across such cases. The country is populated by large numbers of people with names like Murphy and Byrne. It is not uncommon to have large numbers of people with the same surname in townlands and parishes, but it is utterly unacceptable that planning authorities, at the last moment, send communications at the dead of night to the wrong James Byrne seeking more information about his application for planning permission. They are doing this systematically.

Everybody now accepts that it takes at least two months to get a reaction from a planning authority to a simple application for planning permission to build a house. Applications for industrial activities are held up because planning staff do not have the skills necessary to process them. The delays that are now being experienced are not only due to the current boom conditions. Even if the levels of applications were lower, the technical nature of some applications would stretch the capacities of planners. Applications will continue to be held up for as long as local authorities are short on skills and staff.

The Minister stated that we have only one third level institution producing graduates with the requisite skills. There is an immense problem there. Graduates of that course are quickly snapped up by private enterprise which pays them larger salaries than local authorities. There is another third level institution in Northern Ireland which produces graduates with the relevant skills, but they are also snapped up. There is a case for the Minister for the Environment and Local Government to get together with the Minister for Education and Science to see what can be done to meet these needs. One thing is sure, these delays and shortages are not occasioned only by the current boom. We are, thank God, becoming more conscious of what is needed to protect our environment. We are gradually getting used to the idea of sustainable development. As that becomes a reality and as those concerns increasingly become part of our consciousness, the consideration we give to the way we develop housing, industrial activity and commercial activity and how we assess applications will continue to become more complex and demanding. Our reactions to this must become much more refined. We will need great reinforcement of the skill levels available in local authorities to deal with that, even if levels of activity in the sector begin to decrease. That problem must be dealt with. It is an area where manpower planning could again become fashionable and useful.

The Minister will remember when, not so many years ago, our third level institutions began to provide courses in environmental studies. Looking back on them now, there was a rather naive concept of what constituted environmental studies. That has begun to change. However, because the matter has become more complex, multi-faceted and demanding, some institutions have withdrawn from that area of study and the burden on the remaining ones has become greater. It will continue to be a matter of concern for public policy that the people in our system who must deal with this are, on the whole, less skilled than those employed by applicants and developers to make their cases. That inequality has serious dangers for the quality of public policy and the pursuit of a policy of sustainable development. I encourage the Minister and his Government colleagues to address that issue urgently with our third level institutions.

This Bill seeks to improve the enforcement of planning decisions. I was very pleased to see that part of this Bill is devoted entirely to the question of enforcement. We need to reinforce legislation to deal with abuses of the planning laws, but effective action requires staff resources which local authorities currently lack. It is worthwhile illustrating how bad the situation is. To my knowledge, which I admit might be incomplete, there has been only one case where a developer who built houses without planning permission was required, as he can be by law, to demolish them. I probably should not mention the area, but the case occurred some years ago in the mid-west. The Minister will be delighted to hear I am not laying the responsibility at his feet as it is the responsibility of the local authorities.

Most Members will have encountered cases of unauthorised development where local authorities have been maddeningly reluctant to take action under the legislation they have to back them up. How often have we heard local authority officials say they know something is illegal and that they can take the developer to court, but that it would cost them too much to do so? They do not want to undertake the costs of a possible High Court action because they might have to eventually give permission for retention or for a structure similar to the one built without authorisation. That is utterly unacceptable. I am sure almost every Member can point to at least one or two cases of unauthorised developments in his or her constituency.

Some people feel they are so immune from the provisions of the law that they do not even bother to apply for permission to retain. They think that if they can get away with it for long enough, no one will upset the apple cart by requiring them to demolish the offending structure. As a rule, I like to see the law being applied in a fair, just and even-handed way. However, I am tempted to say to local authority officials in some cases that they should take exemplary action to bring the full weight of even the existing law, which provides for this, to bear on such people to make it clear they must remove the offending structure, to get court orders to apply penalties every day the structure remains in place and to make it clear that no application for planning permission or retention will be countenanced on the site in question.

Lawyers will probably tell me that is going too far. However, that kind of savagery is needed in a few cases to make the point that the law must be respected. In every case in which planning law is flouted in this way, someone else's rights are being infringed. I am glad there has been a reorganisation and reinforcement of the provisions in this Bill and I hope the resources are provided to deal with it.

The Minister indicated in his speech that he felt we now have an answer to the problem of unfinished housing estates that cannot be taken in charge. I do not share his rosy view of the provisions in this Bill. I agree they substantially improve the situation. However, they will not sort out the problem forever because we still have the problem of builders losing one legal personality and acquiring another. The only way to deal with that is to ensure that during the course of construction we can have conditions applied and penalties for non-compliance that will be so painful that people will not be tempted to flout the law. That is the only way we can ensure such practices are stopped.

It is an advance in the Bill to say it will not be a defence in an action against an unauthorised development to say that an application has been made for permission to retain. However, we need to go further than that. It is my experience and that of many Members that the kind of bonds required from house builders in particular to guarantee their performance in accordance with the conditions of planning permission are derisory.

Mr. Hayes

Hear, hear.

Mr. Dukes

In the vast majority of cases the bond required from someone building 30 or 40 houses would not represent the profit on two of them. It is worth people's while to run that risk and ignore the provisions. They are making such large profits that they feel any penalty applied will be negligible. However, it is not negligible to the people who have to live for years with the results of that in housing estates with uncompleted road surfaces, lights not installed, drainage not properly catered for and other problems. The Bill needs improvement in that regard and I hope the Minister will be open to amendments on Committee Stage.

However, we must find a way of dealing with the many housing estates around the country which are unfinished and will not come within the scope of the Bill, but where the residents are still suffering the effects of this high-handed, cavalier attitude on the part of builders. I am not saying by a long shot that every housing developer is guilty of this but a sufficient number of them have done this for it to be a real problem. Again, I would think there is hardly a Member of this House who does not have this problem somewhere in his or her constituency or, indeed, have a problem which has existed for many years.

That is not to say anything about housing estates which have not yet been taken over by the local authority because the local authority has not got its act together. That is a different day's work. I hope that when we get to Committee Stage we can look at these provisions on enforcement, reinforce them a bit further, if possible, and find a way to deal with the problem which exists in estates which have been left unfinished.

This Bill includes recent new legislation on the protection of our architectural heritage, legislation we went through with some care and which got wide support in the Oireachtas. That legislation also imposes new tasks and obligations on local authorities. I support the legislation on which I think we had a very worthwhile debate. The Minister did not accept all our amendments but we had a reasonable meeting of minds on most of it. I am conscious of the fact that much of what that legislation requires local authorities to do will be new to those local authorities. It will require them to take action of a kind of which, so far, most of them at best have very limited experience. Here again, the effective implementation of this Bill cannot be secured unless local authorities have the necessary personnel and skills.

One would be amazed by the odd things which can happen. I came across a case recently, which will probably fall within the provisions of this new scheme – I recognise the Minister already has the scheme up and running – where it was necessary to carry out extensive repairs to the roof of a house which was over 200 years old. Part of the problem was that over the passage of time, some of the slates had become badly eroded. Yet the local authority planners, who felt they had a job to do under the legislation, wanted the owner of this house to put back in place the old slates which had given rise to the problem in the first place.

That is not really what the Bill set out to do. If it is to do anything, it is to make sure the fabric of these structures is protected. If the protection which is on them at the moment and which has been since they were built is no longer adequate for the job, there is no way out of it but to replace it. That kind of problem is only one of many which arise from the fact that local authorities now have to venture into a new area and take on responsibilities which perhaps we might have believed they always had but which have now become explicit since this legislation has been in place. It is legislation which I fully support and I hope will have the intended effect.

For all these reasons and a great many others, we need to look again at staffing levels in local authorities. I know the Minister told local authorities some time ago that they could recruit new planning staff. The problem has been partly one of supply and partly because some local authorities have not got their act together to go about recruiting people. I am not making a plea to give the local authorities carte blanche in recruit new staff – far from it – but they need more qualified staff. There is, however, more to it than that. The administrative systems of many of our local authorities are antiquated, excessively bureaucratic and downright inimical to communication, both internal and external. The productivity of many of our local authorities could be significantly enhanced by the simple adoption of modern management systems. Modernisation of management systems, of course, will not be enough to provide the range of skills now required in local authorities. We have to deal with the supply of qualified people.

There is a point here of which we have to be conscious. It is high time we realised that we cannot continue to legislate for new tasks for local authorities and impose new obligations on them without also looking at the resources we give them for implementation. For as long as we continue willy-nilly to add new functions to local authorities without a corresponding provision of resources, we are multiplying levels of inefficiency and are adding to the frustrations of elected members, staff and, most of all, the public.

The Minister made some comments on that in his speech. He wants to ensure the planning system delivers a quality system. We all agree with that, but there is much more to delivering a quality planning system than simply passing legislation. It needs the resources to make it stick and to give us a quality planning system which can implement our ambitions to bring about what we have described or accepted as the notion of sustainable development. Even if, as the Minister said, it has not proved possible yet to decide what sustainable development is, it is a bit like the person who never saw an elephant – he said I do not know what an elephant is, but I can tell you everything it is not. I do not know what sustainable development is, but we have a fair idea of what it is not.

This Bill has been shaped in the very restrictive mould of the current management system in local authorities. That system is utterly undemocratic, bureaucratic, opaque and inefficient. Last Monday night's contributor to the RTE Radio 1 series of Thomas Davis lectures on 100 years of local government in Ireland pointed out that Ireland is unique in Europe in having effected no fundamental change in its local government system throughout the 20th century. I have been in this House for nearly 20 years and have listened to talk about local government reform in all that time, and local government today does not look very different from what it was when I was first elected in 1981.

There has been no fundamental change, no rebalancing of powers and no access of democracy to the system. There have been cosmetic changes. I know I am criticising friends and colleagues on this side of the House when I say that no Government in the past 20 years has really grasped any of the important features of local government reform because no Government throughout the 20th century has ever accepted the fundamental premise that if we are going to reform local government, responsibility for action at local level must be put in the hands of people who are elected at local level to act on behalf of the people. What we have done gradually since 1922 is erode the democratic features of local government.

The Minister may tell me that the local government Bill which we expect to see sometime this month, I hope, might be a more appropriate context to deal with this, but this is very intimately connected with the planning system. There are members of local authorities whose only real connection with the planning system is that it is the body of elected members who decide on the development plan and on various aspects of that plan. Although if one is an elected local authority member these days, one has to be very sure one has a good case if one wants to go for a variation of a development plan. The media have not distinguished themselves in their understanding of the reasons it is sometimes necessary to have a variation of a plan. The context and connotations of that have become very negative. That is the only connection elected local authority members have with planning.

I accept that in the normal course of human relations, people develop systems to allow them, perhaps, to have an influence on planning decisions. However, that is very much sub rosa and it is not the way we should proceed with this business. People will be people, they will do their best for those whom they represent and will expect great things from those who represent them.

It is utterly bizarre that every five years we go to the trouble of electing people to local authorities and informing them that they will have one opportunity to have an impact in the area of planning, namely, when the development plan is adopted. Given that we have agreed to hold local elections every five years, that will happen once in the lifetime of every council. Thereafter, the only opportunity to change matters will be in the form of a variation of the development plan with all the nonsense that attends any proposal to introduce such a variation. I do not believe that is what we are seeking to achieve in terms of local democracy.

The Bill adheres strictly, in every particular, to the old, undemocratic model to which I refer. I hope we will be able to find ways to rectify matters on Committee Stage. I cannot see the logic of electing people every five years, to notionally run the affairs of their local authority area, and then manacling or spancelling them and not allowing them to have any real say on how development plans are implemented. A development plan may be prescriptive but it is aspirational and a great deal depends on the way in which it is implemented. The manner of implementation of a development plan is almost more important than its structure because it translates the plan's aspirations into a living reality for the environment of those it affects. It is totally undemocratic to elect people to a system which does not give them any say in terms of the method of implementation.

We urgently need a fundamental shift in the balance of power between the elected members of local authorities and the managers we employ to implement agreed policies. If I may again stray from the content of the Bill, I invite the Minister to consider that when he is preparing the local government Bill which I understand is to include a proposal for the direct election of chairpersons and mayors. If that fad, with which I do not agree, proceeds, the first thing that will take place will be a ferocious row between the elected chairperson or mayor and the county or city manager. There will be a turf war between them regarding which of them retains responsibility for operating services, making decisions, etc. In many instances, where will be a Mexican stand-off. If such arguments are resolved by the Government intervening and passing legislation to give powers to directly elected chairpersons or mayors, that would be grossly unfair on the other elected members of authorities. If powers are to be transferred away from the management system, they should be conferred on the entire body of elected members of an authority and not on to any one individual.

Part V is cutely entitled "Housing Supply". The casual reader would think the Government is intent on taking action to make more houses available. As it stands, that part of the Bill is doomed to failure. The Minister informs us that the proposed measures are designed to ensure an adequate supply of affordable housing. However, the provisions cannot do that. If these measures are implemented, the result will be to increase the price of houses on that part of the land not earmarked for "affordable housing". I could use a more emotive word than "earmarked" but I will not do so. That, in turn, will push more prospective house buyers into the category seeking affordable housing and this will increase the pressure of demand for it and push up the price of such housing.

A fundamental flaw in this part of the Bill is that it does not contain anything which will increase the total supply of land being made available for housing. If that does not happen, house prices will not be reduced. The problem we face at present is that not enough land is being made available to build houses. There are many ways of dealing with that, but this is not one of them. As it stands, this measure will not increase the supply of land for housing. It will not increase the amount of land that will be serviced and it cannot do anything to reduce the price of housing because it does nothing about the overall supply of land.

Until we take action in this area, house prices will continue to rise. We will be faced with the sad spectacle of members of the Government patting themselves on the back because the rate of increase in house prices is declining. They are getting away with this, to some extent. We have become so punch drunk from seeing house prices rise, we think things are improving if the rate of increase falls from 20% to 15% or 16%. They are not improving, they are getting worse – albeit a little more slowly than before. Any young couple seeking to buy a house will confirm this. Any attempt to persuade people that things are getting better is futile. The measures in the Bill, because they do nothing to increase the supply of land available for housing, will not help resolve the housing problem.

There are many other ways to deal with this problem. For example, local authorities could be given adequate resources to acquire additional land to build houses for rental, to be sold at reasonable prices or to make sites available to people to build their houses. That is an option the Minister does not seem to have considered. He informed us that there are 40,000 households currently in need of local authority housing.

Mr. Hayes

It is more like 50,000.

Mr. Dukes

Yes. We have proposed that local authorities should be given funding so that they could build 10,000 per annum for rental or for sale. At that rate, if further new people did not come on to the housing list, it would take us four years to deal with the backlog. However, we know that more people come on to the housing list every year. We are also aware that, each year, more people resort to asking local authorities to find housing for them because the rate of increase in house prices is outstripping people's incomes. People who, until a number of years ago, could have reasonably expected to purchase a house, can no longer find houses they can afford and are forced to apply to local authorities for houses for rental, for share purchase or for purchase.

There are very few parts of the country where local authorities can make sites available to people to build their own houses. That is where the real problem lies and the measures in the Bill will not solve that problem. There may be other ways of dealing with this issue. I agree with the Minister's concern that we should try, as far as is possible, to get away from the kind of social stratification we have seen in housing developments in the past which has been totally divisive and corrosive within the communities which live in what is now called social housing, and between those communities and their neighbours. Like the Minister, I hope that the days of urban sprawl are firmly behind us, even though we still have to deal with the intractable problems which exist. However, I hope we will not add to those problems.

Has the Minister considered legislating so that local authorities will have the power to require that a proportion of houses built in a given area will be social or affordable housing? That would be an unpopular measure but we will have to implement it if we are serious about getting away from the kind of social stratification which is characteristic of our housing developments. This measure needs to be considered. Has the Minister considered including a provision that made a price comparison part of the operational definition by providing, for example, that 20% of houses in a given development are sold at, let us suppose, 80% of the average price of the whole development? This would create substantial price differences between houses in the same development which might meet the kind of objective we are discussing.

Has the Minister considered legislation to deal with the problem which An Bord Pleanála seems to have found with an attempt to impose this kind of condition? There was an application for a development in Dublin city centre in which Dublin Corporation included a planning condition that, I think, 20% of the space was to be made available for social housing. An Bord Pleanála rejected that condition on the grounds that it could not apply in law because its meaning could not be grasped.

Dáil Éireann debate - Wednesday, 2 Feb 2000