When the debate adjourned yesterday, I was describing the procedure laid down statutorily for dealing with planning appeals under the present system, the system which the Opposition propose to change. I pointed out it was prescribed that the appeal must be made in writing, that it must state the subject matter of the appeal and the grounds of the appeal. This is in order that the Minister will give a copy of the appeal and the grounds of the appeal to each party to the appeal. The Minister must allow them a reasonable time in which to make any observations they think fit. This is part of the statutory procedure that must be followed. When people make observations on the grounds of the appeal, a copy must be given by the Minister to every other party to the appeal. If the Minister requires any special document or information to be submitted by any party, that document or information may be inspected by any other party to the appeal. I am quite well aware that the facts of the situation do not interest Deputy L'Estrange in the least, but this purports to be a Bill to amend the present system and I thought it might conceivably be that some member of the Opposition would be interested in what the facts are.
Private Members' Business. - Planning Appeals Bill, 1967: Second Stage (Resumed).
What the Minister told us last night. Why not take out his prayer book and read from it and waste another hour and a half?
Unlike what the Opposition have been talking about. this happens to be relevant to the Bill before us.
The Minister was not relevant for the past four days.
For the past four days, I was dealing with the irrelevant matters raised by the Opposition. Since the Minister is obliged to deal with an appeal as if the application had been made to him in the first instance, he may find it necessary to deal with issues other than those raised by the parties to the appeal, but he cannot consider such issues unless he has first brought them to the notice of the parties and afforded them an opportunity to make observations on them.
Any party to an appeal may request an oral hearing either when the appeal is made or at any time subsequently until the appeal is determined and unless the party who requested the oral hearing withdraws the request an oral hearing must be held. In addition, the Minister may on his own initiative decide to hold an oral hearing. This has been done on a number of occasions when it appeared to be warranted by public interest in the particular case. The person appointed by the Minister to conduct an oral hearing is obliged to conduct the hearing without undue formality and to permit any party to appear in person or to be represented by another person. He also has discretion to hear any person who is not actually a party to the appeal and in practice everybody who appears at the hearing and expresses a desire to make a statement is allowed to do so. When the oral hearing has been concluded, the person who conducted the hearing furnishes a report and the Minister is obliged to consider this report before giving any decision in the appeal.
I think it must be accepted that the procedure is as fair and open as anyone could wish. These regulations were laid before each House of the Oireachtas in accordance with the provisions of section 10 of the Act and could have been annulled by resolution of either House. No such resolution was proposed. Although the system when introduced was new and untried, I am not aware that there has been any criticism of these provisions. Deputies opposite have repeated the phrase that not only must justice be done but must also be seen to be done. In my opinion, this procedure ensures this. It is as fair and open as it can be, consistent with the avoidance of unnecessary delay. The appeal system has been devised to operate as fairly as possible for persons from all walks of life. Deputies from all Parties have made representations to me from time to time about various appeals, but I am quite sure the pattern of the results of these representations would be the same in all cases. I say quite definitely that, in deciding an appeal, it is of no concern to me which Party the applicant supported or who made representations on his behalf. This could be clearly shown by an examination of the decisions I have given.
Is the Minister now speaking personally or would he like to say it is of no concern to the Minister for Local Government?
It is of no concern to me and should be of no concern to any Minister for Local Government. I have not implied it was of any concern to any Minister.
I wanted to be clear.
I have pointed out that, if anybody wanted to make similar implications with regard to Deputy P. O'Donnell, it could be done. Cases could be produced that would make it possible to make such imputations. If Deputies opposite were sincere, they would co-operate with me in trying to make this clear to the public rather than trying to make it appear that the opposite is the case. The Act of 1963 is much more specific than the Act of 1934. No Minister for Local Government deciding appeals under the present Act could afford to deal with them in the manner in which Deputy P. O'Donnell said he dealt with them when he was Minister.
As I said earlier, planning appeals involve a heavy load on me, and I would willingly divest myself of the load if I could be satisfied that a satisfactory alternative existed. As I said, I am having the whole question examined afresh. In the meantime, I would like to stress that appeals are not decided primarily on legal questions but on planning questions. For this reason, it should not be necessary for applicants to incur heavy legal costs in pursuing these appeals.
I think it is obvious that the Opposition were not serious in putting down this Bill. The debate has shown that the real purpose was to make these unfounded allegations. I am quite satisfied that I have shown that my decisions were justified in the cases that have been mentioned and I have no doubt that the same could be done with regard to any other cases that may be referred to later. I have also shown how easy it would be to make similar charges in respect of an Opposition Minister for Local Government. I appreciate that it might be wise to try to forestall the contributions which are still to come from those Opposition Deputies who have not been not allowed by the Whips to speak so far. But since these cases come in at a faster rate than they could be dealt with here during Private Members' Time, this would mean that there would be no other speakers in the debate and that the debate would never end. I have noticed some slight indications of impatience in the Opposition benches. Because I do not want to do this—desirable though it might be from my own point it might be from my own point of view to anticipate further cases that might be raised—I have decided to cut short my own contribution to the debate.
To establish the case that the Opposition have been trying to make, it would be necessary to establish, as I have shown, that bodies like An Taisce, An Chomhairle Ealaíon, Bord Fáilte, the Irish Mountaineering Club and an assorted selection of people with a close association with the Opposition Parties, not to mention such well-known members of Taca as W. Brendan Allen, Lord Sligo and Deputy Belton are all corrupt. While I am thoroughly satisfied——
What did the Minister say?
I said that to establish the case the Opposition have been trying to make, it would be necessary to establish that all these people who have had appeals decided in their favour, or in favour of the representations they made to me, had been guilty of corruption.
Because one is Fine Gael does not mean one cannot build or work or run a business.
It does not, but Fine Gael have been trying to represent that it is on this basis that decisions on planning appeals are being made. In fact, in the particular case Deputy Belton was interested in——
I will answer that.
——the leader of his own Party——
Read it properly. It is another petrol station.
——represented that was the position because the residents of the area——
I will explain.
——had a different view from the view Deputy Belton had. The Leader of his own Party, Deputy Cosgrave, implied here that it was as a result of corruption that permission was given.
It is a different area.
That was the case Deputy Cosgrave made. As I was saying, I am thoroughly satisfied with the present method of processing appeals but, at the same time, I should like to have a different method of deciding on them. I will make the Opposition a present of the admission that I do not like to be in a position which, because it involves deciding these appeals, makes me a suitable target for their campaign of slander but, so long as it is my duty to decide these appeals, I intend to decide them and, much as it may displease the people who think that their particular view on any matter is the only one that is relevant, I intend to consider all aspects before making a decision and I am not prepared to hide behind the claim that I put my name to what I am told, as Deputy P. O'Donnell stated was his practice.
The most powerful speech in support of the Bill at present being considered by the House has taken seven hours to be delivered and has been made by the Minister for Local Government. I think it is the longest speech we have ever heard in the House. The next longest was made by Deputy Paddy Smith years ago when he spoke for 6½ hours on the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture. The Minister for Local Government has spoken for seven hours on this Bill and the whole burden of his speech, as he himself has said, has been to demonstrate the possibility— and I am sure he did not mean to demonstrate his own ability—of aspersing the integrity of his own predecessor in office. Of course he wound up his seven hours oration by a kind of lame disclaimer of the disagreeable and rather smelly procedure of trying to asperse the reputation of his predecessor in office by reference to the files in his Department.
If all that Deputy Boland, Minister for Local Government, said during the seven hours he has been speaking on this Bill is true, does it not present an absolutely irresistible case for the Bill which we have submitted to Dáil Éireann? The Minister says he dislikes the present system. He says, as Minister, that it interferes with the due performance of his duties as Minister for Local Government and as a member of the Government. He represents himself as burning the midnight oil until 11 o'clock on Christmas Eve deciding planning appeals. He says that, unlike Deputy P. O'Donnell, he has familiarised himself with a summary at least of every file upon which his signature was required. Frankly, I do not believe him. It is like my friend Deputy Chub O'Connor from Kerry who told us last week that he wrote 26,000 letters per annum to his constituents in Kerry. These are flights of fancy which we excuse in such a highly regarded colleague as Deputy Chub O'Connor. I do not think he expects us to believe him. These are the trimmings and frills of a Deputy who is making himself heard in order to fill in the period of time assigned to him by the Whips for obstruction. It is another story when the Minister for Local Government formally tells the House that, unlike his predecessor in office, he has always considered it his duty to consider every single planning appeal laid before him. I do not believe him.
I will repeat it.
I do not believe it.
I am not interested in what Deputy Dillon believes.
Let us be frank——
It is true.
——without being discourteous.
I would not expect Deputy Dillon to believe it.
I do not think the Minister is doing his job if he is doing that. If he is doing that, clearly he is not doing his job as Minister for Local Government because he cannot be giving the kind of consideration that will justify a decision in each specific case, if he takes that to be his absolute duty, and, at the same time, discharge his duties as Minister for Local Government and his duties as a member of the Government. Those three tasks are beyond the time schedule of any living creature, however bovine or sprightly. It is because we know that this is a fact that we are bringing before the House a proposal which would provide the machinery on which such a burden could be legitimately laid. Deputy P. O'Donnell with perfect frankness told the House—why are you pointing, Deputy? What is the matter?
I am quite happy.
Then do not fiddle.
Is the Deputy worried about me?
I was doing a calculation. One hundred letters——
Five hundred letters a week.
Five hundred letters a week would give 26,000 a year. would it not? Is that a flight of fancy?
It was a poetic flight of fancy. I want to pursue this.
It does not arise on this Bill. It arose on the Amendment of the Constitution Bill.
What did?
The question of the letters.
I am not interested in that. I am talking about Deputy P. O'Donnell. I do not think the Chair is aware of what was going on. Deputy O'Connor and his colleagues were doing sums over there and, having completed their sums, they started waving at me. Deputy de Valera, being a scientist and a mathematician, intervened to say that he had done the sums and it did not work out right. The matter is now closed.
The Deputy made a direct aspersion on Deputy O'Connor.
Oh, no; I never aspersed Deputy O'Connor. I am now referring to Deputy P. O'Donnell who, when he was Minister for Local Government, adopted what seemed to me the sane and rational approach of selecting a number of officers of his Department whom he considered to be responsible and delegated to them substantially the function of determining whether the decision of the local planning authority should be sustained or reversed. I have not the slightest doubt that, if he got representations from any Member of the Dáil on any side of the House about some particular planning decision, he would say to the responsible officers: "There is a letter from Deputy So-and-So. When you get that, please direct my attention to it as I shall have to give him some explanation of our decision on the appeal."
I remember being in correspondence with the present Minister's predecessor because somebody wanted to build a public convenience under somebody's drawingroom window in the town of Monaghan. I was informed that the planning consultant for the Monaghan locality was a gentleman who lived in Merrion Square. How he could determine where was the appropriate place to erect a public convenience on the Diamond in Monaghan, the Lord knows. I have no doubt that the Minister will find a letter from me on his files written to the then Minister for Local Government to the effect: "No matter what the planning officer says, you have no right to put a public convenience under this man's drawing-room window. He has been living there for years and his father and grandfather before him. I am astonished at this happening and I want to tell you from my knowledge of the town that the objector is perfectly right."
I suppose every Deputy in the House, including myself, gets a variety of representations from local people which he passes on to the responsible Minister. I do so because that is my job. I have no doubt that in cases of that kind, particularly if the Deputy says he has personal knowledge of some flaw in the planning officer's decision and that the appeal should be allowed, or disallowed, as the case may be, the Minister will give the officers of his Department an injunction to draw his attention to that so that he can send to me an appropriate note saying that the appeal is allowed or disallowed and such other information as he thinks it proper to impart. Surely we all know that, unless the Minister for Local Government is a raving lunatic, he must delegate to the trusted officers of his Department the great bulk of the detailed investigation of the substantial files submitted to the Department on planning appeals. It would be impossible for a Minister dealing with 1,500 appeals per annum to go through the file on each appeal with the diligence with which it should be gone through and give a decision.
Nobody said that was done.
I am not saying it is being done, but what this Minister claims is that he requires the experienced officers of his Department to go diligently through the file and attach to the file a summary of the contents and a recommendation as to the decision that should be arrived at and that he himself sat burning the midnight oil until 11 o'clock on Christmas Eve reading the summaries and recommendations. Personally, when Minister, I took the recommendation of my experienced officers and dedicated staff and signed the document on the dotted line. It is very easy to create a great scandale in suggesting that the ordinary method of administration is impermissible.
I remember very well when I was Minister for Agriculture, an old and trusted civil servant who used come to me every Thursday morning and put a document in front of me and ask me for my signature. I said to him. "What is this document? What is it about?" He belonged to the old school—this is 20 years ago—and his attitude was: "Minister, do not bother your head about it; just sign on the dotted line." I said: "I could not do that; it must contain something." After great agitation, this old and respected colleague was persuaded to tell me that it was some old statutory return required by Hogan's Act for amalgamating creameries in 1923. It had lost all significance but a statutory duty remained on the Minister for Agriculture to sign this document once a week. I said: "Let us get rid of this nonsense." He was greatly shocked. He had been arriving in with this return every Thursday morning of his life. But it went out again and nobody ever heard of it since. That kind of thing is always turning up in large Departments—old survivals of statutory requirements which served a purpose in the years immediately after the legislation had been passed but which became obsolete, and, of course, a new broom coming in says: "Get rid of it; I am not going to sign silly chits which have lost their significance."
But there is no planning appeal which comes properly within the description of an irrelevant chit. It may be a very small matter looked at from the broad aspect of the Department of Local Government but it may be a very vital matter to a very small person who is perhaps confronted by a very powerful interest and that small person, in the kind of society we want to have here, must not only get justice but must, so far as it is humanly possible to ensure, be sent away from the tribunal of final appeal in the knowledge that his case has been fully heard and that, even though the decision is adverse to him, there has been no power in the land strong enough to withhold justice from his claim.
Does anybody here believe that everybody in the country at present is of opinion that substantial justice is done in every planning appeal? I am convinced that there are people going around the city at present boasting that they are in a position to use influence to ensure that a planning appeal will be either granted or withheld and claiming the right to recover monetary reward for the influence they profess to be in a position to use. Is that a desirable situation? I do not think it is.
It is an invention of Deputy Dillon's mind.
The Minister might get a great surprise.
An invention.
I want to suggest to the Minister that the present system——
It is a deliberate, cold-blooded fabrication of Fine Gael.
I can understand the Minister's rage but his rage when I am trying to make a reasoned and reasonable argument, I think, does him more injury than what I am saying. I am saying that people are making these claims and I am saying that the present system creates fertile soil in which to set such claims, because the decisions are taken behind closed doors and ultimately, according to the claim of the present Minister for Local Government, on his desk, at midnight on Christmas Eve. Is there any other circumstance in which the rights of two citizens of this State conflict and they ultimately bring the matter for arbitration to ultimate authority in this country in which it would be seemly or proper that the ultimate decision should be taken, in the absence of both of them, at midnight on Christmas Eve? And the interesting thing is that Deputy Boland, the Minister for Local Government, says that to himself the burden is intolerable and the system undesirable and that he wants to change it but he does not know how.
I would have much more respect for the Minister and he would have done himself a far greater service if he had said: "I am so profoundly in agreement with the proposer of this Bill that I am prepared to agree to its Second Reading," and it would have been a very good thing for the public life of the whole country if the Minister had said : "I agree that the present system is highly undesirable and, therefore, I accept the principle of this Bill but I am bound to warn you that, if you want to persist with this Bill in Committee or on Report, we will have to resist it on the ground that many of its sections do not appear to us to provide the effective machinery that is necessary expeditiously to get this work done."
Is there anybody in the House who considers that the present system is satisfactory? Is there any Deputy who does not agree with me that the present system of determining these appeals in the Custom House has in it the potentiality of corruption and has in it all the surrounding circumstances calculated to promote suspicion in the public mind?
We have all known of cases. I know of a case of a man who went to a widow-woman—she was not a poor woman—and took an option on her land. I do not think he made any appeal to the Minister but he managed by certain somewhat devious processes to get planning permission for this piece of land which had heretofere been withheld while his option continued. Then he employed a fellow to go and search in the back streets of London and he found a firm in London who were prepared to give him £120,000 for the land with the planning permission attached to it. He got the planning permission and paid the widow £20,000 which was all he had promised to pay her and the following morning he sold the land for £120,000.
Did he get that on appeal?
No, I do not think there was any appeal. There is a long story about that. I want to make this clear: the man went to the woman and she offered him the land and he took an option—perfectly legitimate business. He then got planning permission—perfectly legitimate business. He then got the land plus planning permission— perfectly legitimately — and got £120,000 and he then came back and bought the land from the widow at £20,000 and put the £100,000 profit to the credit of his account.
No income tax.
Wait a moment. There are dozens of cases in which people with land sell the land because they cannot get planning permission from the local authority and the man who buys the land sits on it for a while and applies for some different development for this particular piece of land and does not get it from the local planning authority, and then appeals and gets the planning permission; the planning authority and then appeals versed. Now, say what you like, the piece of land for which he paid £25,000 suddenly, overnight, becomes worth £150,000 and that £125,000 accretion in the value of the land derives from a decision taken, not in public court, not by somebody who holds his right of office by the tenure of a judge, but, according to the Minister's own testimony to us here, as a result of a decision taken by him between 10 o'clock and midnight on Christmas Eve.
Does any Deputy consider that that is a desirable procedure? The Minister says he does not think it is desirable. I do not think it is desirable. We as a Party thought it so undesirable that we brought in a Bill to try to set it right. Is there anybody in the House prepared to get up and say: "We would prefer the present system to the establishment of an independent tribunal who would have to carry out the investigation in public and give its decision in public, a tribunal presided over by a person who was irremovable except on the same grounds as a High Court judge is removable?"
Is there anything wrong in that proposal? Is there anything unseemly in that proposal? Far from there being anything wrong or unseemly, according to the Minister's own testimony, it would relieve him as Minister from an intolerable burden of what he considers to be almost irrelevant work, irrelevant that is to say, from the point of view of the Minister for Local Government. It would wipe away at one stroke any suggestion that the land speculators of this country are making huge fortunes out of planning appeals. It would make every individual who wanted to do this come out into the open and justify it in public. Would it not be a good thing that the public should know what was going on?
Suppose somebody is getting a capital gain of £50,000 or £100,000 or £200,000 by successfully prosecuting a planning appeal, would it not be a desirable thing for the public at large to know that? I think it would. I cannot see how any rational person can object in principle to letting in light on transactions of this kind. I cannot ask the Minister to say that he does not accept the principle of this Bill because he says he does. I would like to ask: is there any Deputy in the Fianna Fáil Party or any other Party who does not accept the principle of this Bill? Certain Ministers of the Fianna Fáil Government have developed a rather odd disease. Most of them have hides like rhinoceroses, but, like the salmon coming up our rivers recently, they seem to be developing a kind of obscure furunculosis which makes them as sensitive as maiden ladies to reflection upon their virtue if they are questioned about any matter arising out of the administration of their Departments. The introduction of this Bill sent the Minister for Local Government into orbit out of which it has taken us seven hours to bring him. He is worse than Explorer II.
He was trying to enlighten you.
He has taken a lot longer to enlighten us as to his views on this Bill than it took the American rocket to get to the moon. I did not interrupt him today——
The Deputy did not get time.
——though for so old a hand as he, I think it odd that he should read his valedictory address to us here.
He did not read half enough.
He read to us here a relatively reasonable admission that he knew that the principle of this Bill was sound, and all the seven hours eloquence——
I read the regulations in regard to the processing of an appeal.
The Minister read from a typed document an asseveration by himself, which he made at least three times previously in his speech, that he thought the present procedure unsatisfactory, that it was an excessive burden on the Minister for Local Government and that he hoped to be able to devise a plan to take that burden off the shoulders of the Minister for Local Government. I did not interrupt him because I thought he was trying to get back to something approximating rational ground. But what has interested me is his intense sensitiveness to the actual introduction of this Bill. How much more disarming would it have been if the Minister for Local Government had said right from the beginning: "I could not agree with you more. I think the present situation is intolerable. The machinery you are offering to rid me of this intolerable burden will not work, but I am quite prepared to give the Second Reading of the Bill and then refer it to a Special Committee where we will try to work out alternative machinery that will work."
I am not satisfied with the way the planning machinery has been working recently. If the Minister does not know, I am telling him now that this city and rural Ireland, but particularly this city, is full of rumour that vast sums are being made by land speculators as a result of successful planning appeals. It is extremely difficult to establish definitely these facts.
That is the point.
It always is, but there are people claiming publicly that they are in a position to use influence, the value of which could be measured in terms of pounds, shillings and pence. I am warning you that is the situation, and this Bill is designed to remedy it. It is not enough for the Minister for Local Government to say that he agrees that a Bill along these lines is necessary and that some day he will get around to introducing it. I told him more than 12 months ago that one of the regulations which his predecessor made under the Planning Act of 1963 was being used by speculators in this country for the purpose of tearing down buildings in order to force the planning authority to give them permission to make money out of their purchase and that these were buildings that could be used for dwellings and should be used for dwellings rather than torn down to make way for office blocks. All the Minister needed to do was to amend his own regulation. There was no necessity for legislation. It is more than 12 months since he told me in this House that he would not amend this regulation because he intended to bring in legislation and that it was in that legislation he would repair what he himself knew to be a flaw in the regulation made by his predecessor declaring demolition to be a matter outside the control of the planning authority.
I want to say to the Minister for Local Government that I do not accept his undertaking to introduce legislation along these lines as soon as he can get around to it, because that means we shall have too long to wait. I believe the present situation is giving rise to scandal, scandal of two kinds: the scandal of causing legitimate suspicion in the minds of people who feel themselves aggrieved, and scandal in the public mind that a few individual property speculators can make inordinately large profits as a result of getting, on appeal, planning permission which heretofore had been withheld. I believe the Minister, in his own interest, would be wise to accept the principle of this Bill and, if necessary, to refer it to a Special Committee. Whether the Minister accepts the Bill or not, the House would be wise to pass it. But it is necessary to warn the House, the Minister and his Party that the continuation of the present situation is going to do great harm. Sooner or later it must be remedied. We all appear to be agreed upon that. The sooner legislation on these lines is adopted in Dáil Éireann the better it will be for us all.
There is one last matter I want to deal with. The Minister speaks contemptuously of the proposal that a judge, sustained by two assessors, should preside over this tribunal. I do not think there is anything inherently desirable in a judge presiding over this tribunal. I believe the inherently desirable element in that proposal is that whoever presides over the appeal tribunal will be a person who holds his position not at the pleasure of the Minister for the time being but on terms similar to those by which a judge of the High Court holds office, that is, unalterably, except for cause stated and then by a majority of two-thirds of this House. The important thing is to get somebody who is not only known to be impartial but who is seen to be impartial and independent from pressure from all sources, but subject to the overriding authority of this House, as is every member of the judiciary, and that, if he should be detected in flagrante delicto in improper conduct, that improper conduct should be reported to this House and, if it were of such character as to deserve the censure of the House, he could be dismissed from his position, the same as any High Court judge or member of the judiciary.
There is a necessity for assessors because of the fact that this whole business of planning is a pretty complex one. It might well be that in the initial stages we might have to set up two such tribunals to get rid of the backlog of planning appeals but my judgment would be that, within a reasonable period, one tribunal might become redundant and the ordinary current of appeals from the planning authority could be handled by one tribunal with reasonable expedition.
The strongest speech for this Bill so far has been made by the Minister for Local Government and it took him seven hours to make it. How much better could he have acquitted himself to this House if in seven minutes he had said: "I accept the principle but need time and consultation to arrange the working details so that we can effect an enduring improvement in the present intolerable situation." It would have been good for our public life; it would have been good for our parliamentary institutions; and it would have been good for public rectitude if he had approached this measure in that spirit. He has not chosen to do so but I do not despair, that grace having touched him today, it may illuminate his mind and he may at some early stage indicate that he regrets his mulish obstinacy so far. He has already been compared to a steamroller; if that be the appropriate comparison, I hope at an early stage he will display his ability to go into reverse.
With your permission, Sir, I should like to answer a comment made by Deputy Dillon. This is the second time he referred to figures which I gave in regard to letters. I have just gone to the Dáil Office to learn that 256 of my letters have gone through the post——
All on town planning?
They are to constituents. In addition, 88 have gone to Ministers and I have handed in 86 on Monday to Kerry County Council offices. That is a total of 430 letters and we have not reached the end of the week. I want to be able to push this down the throats of Deputy Dillon or any other Deputy——
If these do not relate to planning, I do not think——
I asked for permission to mention this because Deputy Dillon challenged what I said. Is it any wonder, if this is the Fine Gael attitude to the public, that they do not get seats?
The Deputy wrote down those figures on the back of an envelope since he came into the House.
I went down to the office to get the figures and I will take the Deputy or anybody else down with me to verify them.
Some Deputies write more than that.
And 500 is a normal figure. However, that is by the way.
He has not time to shake hands.
Fine Gael have tried to deride what we have to do in the country but we are able to get things done. We got things done in regard to town planning and, in Kerry, we have reached a fairly satisfactory position in this regard. This was necessary because we have a lovely county and we are anxious to preserve everything that is worth preserving and, at the same time, develop the county for the benefit of the people and the benefit of progress. We are doing a good job of work.
Tháinig long ó Valparaiso.
We have run into difficulties but we found that, by using commonsense, the difficulties were not so bad as they appeared at the outset. We have fewer refusals in our county than in most other counties and a number of refusals have been reversed on appeal. Here again commonsense prevailed. The matter lies best in the hands of the Minister and it is best to let him straighten out the position. I agree that he needs some assistance but to set up a tribunal would only hold up everything. As it is, matters can very often be straightened out in an office in a few minutes but nobody can tell us that, once you sit down before a judge, matters will be straightened out in minutes.
This planning arrangement is of very real importance, particularly in tourist areas and, where commonsense prevails, it is possible to work out the best system for all concerned. We have had some difficulties and possibly in cases where permission was refused, a certain amount of development should have been allowed. It is not easy to meet the wishes of everybody but there should be some way of curbing the statutory bodies which in the past have been throwing in objections to everything. All too often we have had them objecting and they certainly were not a help to the Minister. In Kerry, we had consistently to use section 4 of the County Management Act to get many of our schemes through even in the very early stages when it was mandatory on the manager to grant permission. All too frequently staff in the office were, behind our backs, conveying the case to the statutory bodies. However, we succeeded in getting that position corrected.
As I said, by and large, we are satisfied. We have a planning office manned with officials to look after planning projects. The bulk of these projects are being granted. That is as it should be. The elected representatives are the best people to judge as to what should or should not be erected in County Kerry. It is our task to develop our county to the utmost. It is the shop window of the country. It is to Killarney the tourists come, to the Ring of Kerry and the Dingle Peninsula. We want to develop the county to the maximum for the benefit of the people in the county and for the benefit of the tourists. We think we are best fitted for that job, not some outside body. We are doing a good job. At the moment 25 new hotels are listed throughout the Ring of Kerry and the Dingle Peninsula. Some of these will be very large. Every hotel is a small factory; a 100-bedroom hotel will employ on an average 65 people. That is welcome additional employment.
We would not like any outside body interfering in our plans. I do not think a judge would be likely to give quick decisions.
A judge gives decisions on the spot.
Agreed, but only after a very lengthy and cumbersome procedure.
On the spot. There is no report furnished to anybody else.
Just think of 1,400 cases, which is the number the Minister had, piling up waiting for the judge to give a decision in each case. That would obstruct development. There could be some improvements in the present position, some cutting down on the number of objections voiced by the statutory bodies. I think the statutory bodies should be compelled to substantiate their objections. In Kerry, they seem to think they must object to every project within three or four miles of Killarney. It is easier to object, I suppose, than to examine each project on its merits. It is easier to object and then let others take the case up with the Minister. If these statutory bodies had to substantiate their objections, they would be less prone to object.
That position does not, I think, arise really in Kerry. We have laid out a plan which will permit us to develop the county to the very best advantage. We are an important tourist area and our ambition is to sell this lovely showpiece to visitors from abroad, to entice them to come to Kerry and spend their money there. The existing situation suits us perfectly, as far as anything can be perfect in this imperfect world, and I should be rather worried about this proposal in this Bill. I think it would slow down instead of speeding up development. It would have the opposite effect to that intended and that would be detrimental to our interests.
The last speaker said that a judge or any other body would slow down development. I do not think it would slow it down, but it would certainly improve the present position to the extent of allowing the Minister a great deal more time to plan for this city and what I say in regard to Dublin applies to most other areas. The man at the top in any business plans ahead. He does not become bogged down in detail. I do not suggest the Minister is bogged down in detail but this proposal would allow him to shed a certain amount of work and that would allow him more time for more important work.
In the past 12 or 18 months, I have heard repeatedly from the Taoiseach and his Ministers the word "productivity". This word has been bandied around time and time again. It is an important word when it is put into operation because productivity is probably the one thing that is going to get Ireland out of its troubles and the one way in which we can make up for our lack of resources if we get into the EEC. Since this matter has become important, the workers, through their trade unions, and the employers, through their various bodies and federations, have put it into operation by amalgamation and planning but the Government have failed to give a lead.
The local authorities and the Department of Local Government are responsible for the servicing of new developments. They service land and, if that land is eaten up by builders, it becomes dearer all the time. Local Government should plan at least ten years ahead and should have land available for building at least ten years ahead all the time. It took ten years to get rid of 50,000 acres for building, so that the local authority should service 100,000 or 150,000 acres and have it ready for the builders to move in. At the moment land is jumping in price daily and a person does not know how much a house is going to cost next week because of the dearness of the sites. If you service 100,000 to 150,000 acres, you will have a supply greater than the demand and the price will go down. If you put a sewer from the north side of the city to Malahide or Donabate, sites would be cheaper as you moved out from the centre of the city.
The Deputy is getting away from the Bill before the House, which deals with planning appeals.
Deputy O'Connor spoke and he never mentioned appeals. This matter has to do with planning. At the moment about 1,000 applications per annum are coming in and many of these are coming from local authorities which are completely under-staffed. In Dublin Corporation, they require 32 or 33 people; they have only about 13 who are regular employees. They get in an occasional two or three people who are newly qualified and when these have got some experience, they go out into private enterprise where they get more money. The same applies to Dún Laoghaire Borough Corporation. I have frequently gone in there and discussed a plan with an official but, when I went back the following week, he was gone. The man in charge of that office hardly has time to look at a plan. I do not know what the salary is but I do know that they cannot get men for more than a couple of weeks at a time. They build up experience and then they get promotion to country areas and the plans they have been dealing with go back to the top man in the place.
In the Department of Local Government, they are fully staffed and, when plans and appeals come in, they can go through them and get them out fairly quickly. The local authorities are not in the position to do this. At the moment they have to pass or reject a plan inside two months and, if the plan presents any difficulty, all they can do is refuse permission in case they might make some mistake. They cannot go through a plan in detail as the officials in Local Government can do. Many of the cases which come before the Minister are only a matter of form, although some of them may be quite difficult because the local authorities have not got the staff to process them before they go to the Department.
For that reason, it is up to the Minister to increase the salaries of the local authority staffs to the same level as those operating in the Department of Local Government. In the local authorities, a man is there for about five months and then leaves when he is only halfway through some of the plans. The officials who are left have to recheck the plans and the work done on them, which means that they practically have to start from the beginning. While the staff in Local Government do not get the same salaries as people in private enterprise, they have pension schemes and other such benefits which the staffs of local authorities also have. What is happening is that a number of these people go into private enterprise for a period of years and then, because the local authorities cannot build up staff, they are willing to take back the ones who have left them when they wish to come back. I agree they have a certain amount of experience in private enterprise which they may not have had in the local authority where they were only checking plans. The planning of this sewerage scheme throughout Dublin is taking up a considerable amount of the time of the planners in the local authorities.
I do not want to interrupt the Deputy but that would seem to be a matter outside the scope of the Bill before us.
Surely if the local authority had to refuse plans because they are under-staffed, this is a cause of appeals to Local Government? I am pointing out the reason why some of these appeals are going to Local Government. I would say about 40 per cent of the appeals going to Local Government are caused by this, and I am speaking only of Dublin and not the country as a whole. Surely that is relevant?
The Bill before us deals with the type of board that ought to deal with appeals coming to the Department.
Whether the person concerned is refused because of shortage of staff, or because there is a legitimate reason, there still has to be an appeal.
During the debate, the Minister referred to Raheny. Builders try to work five years ahead so they can have continual work and will not have to leave staff go. Employment in building is up and down. You can be working one month and out the next. Three builders were involved in this appeal against the compulsory purchase order in Raheny. They bought the land and wanted to develop it. Two builders got out of the CPO and I ask the Minister why the third builder was not allowed out as well. He said that two of them had paid for their land while the third had only an option on it. To me there is absolutely no difference. He is in the same position as the man who owns the land. The option is probably subject to the Corporation allowing him to build. They may not allow him to build a certain type of house.
The option in this case was by a builder who had planned ahead for a period of three or four years. He could not plan ahead any further because building land was not available at the right price. Two other people came along. They went to arbitration and got the CPO taken off them. If I could describe this land: a man called Forkin had land on the west side of the railway. The other two builders had it on the east side of the railway. Forkin may have had some bit on the east side of the railway as well. Forkin had already built right up to where his land was. At the time all those houses were in the £3,500 to £4,000 bracket. They are now probably in the £5,000 or £6,000 bracket. He did not appeal, but he did approach the previous Minister and made the plea that, if two were getting out, he should get out too. He did not.
I know the Minister knows this part of the country quite well. The Corporation generally keep their schemes near one another. As they develop the land, they are inclined to try to keep their schemes together so that the cost per house is less. On one side there were private houses plus Corporation houses and, on the other side, only those houses in the £3,500 to £4,000 bracket. Now they have bits and pieces. Eventually they may build a bridge to get out of this. Right in the middle of the scheme you have this Corporation bit. To me, looking at it as a builder and a layman, the person who should have got out of the CPO first was Forkin and not the other two. We all know the Corporation are looking for land. They have bought a tremendous amount of land but it is not serviced yet. Instead, Forkin is the one man who has to stay under the CPO whilst the other two have got out. Surely in that area it should be a question of all out or none?
I come now to the Minister's reference to the following statement by Deputy Cosgrave:
I am aware of one case in my own constituency where at the junction of two roads there was a petrol filling station already established which had access to both roads. Although the residents objected and the local authority refused permission, on appeal, permission was granted to build another petrol station. Justification for decisions of that character is not obvious.
What Deputy Cosgrave said has nothing to do with what happened afterwards. The Minister spent his time trying to bring in Ministers and personalities, people outside this House who were in business in this city. I am quoting from column 2013 of volume 232 of the Official Report of 28th February, 1968. The Minister stated:
I promised Deputy Belton I would deal with the case which his leader utilised as his contribution to the Opposition campaign in this regard.
He went on later:
This site has quite a long history. It starts in 1953 when one Dr. R. Belton appealed against refusal by the planning authority of permission for four shop dwellings, a garage and a cinema.
The Minister was trying to make a case that there was a certain amount of politics in this. This programme started in the Glenageary-Killiney area in 1946 and not in 1953. There were discussions with various planners in Dún Laoghaire.
- Committee on Finance. - An Bille Um An Tríú Leasú Ar An mBunreacht, 1968: An Dara Céim (Atógáil). Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1968: Second Stage (Resumed).
- Ar ais chuig clár ábhair
- Private Members' Business. - An Bille um An Tríú Leasú ar an mBunreacht, 1968: An Dara Céim (Atógáil). Third Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 1968: Second Stage (Resumed).