Deputy Mark Clinton.
Adjournment Debate. - Erection of Poultry House.
On a point of order, there is an appeal in this matter before me at present and I want to suggest to you that it is completely wrong that this matter should be discussed here in the Dáil. The Planning Act places a duty on me that every party to the appeal must hear any representations that are made. An oral hearing has been requested and it is a scandalous thing that there should be a discussion here in the Dáil on it when other parties to the appeal cannot be present, as they are entitled by law to be present. It is outrageous and I am suggesting that this is completely out of order.
This matter has been carefully considered by the Chair and the Chair cannot rule it out of order on the grounds suggested by the Minister, but if the Deputy feels that it would be better to postpone the question before the House then——
I think when the Minister hears what I have to say he will appreciate that what I am saying to him is going to be more helpful to him than anything else in making his decision. My only reason for raising this matter on the Adjournment was because as it is an involved case I saw no way of clearing it by way of question and answer at Question Time. I am not making a charge against the Minister and in fact I hope to help the Minister in arriving at his decision by giving him some information which he may not already have. I would appeal to the Minister to take the right view in this case. The question related to exempted development and more specifically to exempted development for agricultural purposes. The 1963 Planning and Development Act, in section 4, referred to "development consisting of the use of any land for the purposes of agriculture or forestry, including afforestation, or development consisting of the use for any of those purposes of any building occupied together with land so used.""Development consisting of the use of any land for purposes of agriculture." Today, when we got a partial reply to this question, the Minister admitted that egg production would come within the description of "agricultural purposes". The peculiar thing about this case is that initially this man did not apply for planning permission to the planning authority but he made application for a certificate of exemption. He did this only for the reason that he needs this certificate if he is to get his grant from the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. He needs either planning permission or the certificate of exemption in order to qualify. He put in his application and the peculiar thing is that he did not get a reply to his application for exemption but he got a refusal of planning permission, planning permission that he never really sought. The matter went to the Minister on appeal. It was a case of something being appealed to the Minister that was never sought. The Minister upheld the decision of the local authority in this case, namely he exempted on the grounds that there was no access to this field.
One might ask why was this field purchased for this purpose. It was simply as a result of an advertisement in a newspaper. This man is advanced in years and he has only one son. He put an advertisement in the paper for a small area of agricultural land within six miles of Dublin. The advertisement was answered and he bought this land to set up in business his married son who has three children. These people have been in the poultry business for about 30 years. They know their job and they know what is an economic unit and that this size of unit was necessary. They complied with everything required by the Planning Act and with the Minister's regulations. It was never intended that regulations made by the Minister would completely override what was in fact embodied in the Planning Act, save in exceptional circumstances, circumstances which are stated in these regulations, which I looked up today, one of which is in regard to this question of access.
Since the original application these people applied for access to this site and they got planning permission for this access. Following that they did something which perhaps was wrong, they wrote to the Minister and said: "Now that we have got this planned access will you reverse your decision?" There is no machinery at the disposal of the Minister to reverse his own decision and this is something he could not do. He replied more or less along those lines and that they could carry on with any exempted development in the future. As I see it, there must be a fresh application because the circumstances have changed and it must be appealed to the Minister. I was not aware that it had reached the stage that it was now a planning appeal before the Minister but since the Minister has made that known all I can do is appeal to him. This is agricultural development and agricultural development generally should be exempted. It qualifies because it is the right distance from the road and more than the minimum distance from the nearest house and consent for the development has been secured from the nearest resident who has no objection to it. The question of a traffic hazard can arise under the regulations made by the Minister. It is not necessary for me to quote these regulations because the Minister will have them at his fingertips. All I will say is that on this particular road permission has been granted for many filling stations and garages to be erected and I submit that these stations are much more of a traffic hazard than these poultry houses could possibly be. On that ground it should stand up on appeal to the Minister as not being a hazard in the same sense as a petrol station or a garage is. Even since the original application was refused another petrol station has been permitted on the same road.
As well as that, I would appeal to the Minister on other grounds. This will be an export business. These people have connections in England and they propose to export more than 50 per cent of their total production. As I said, it is a question of a man setting up his family, who were in England, and on the whole it is desirable development and should be permitted. I could go on talking about this matter but I do not think there is anything further that need be said except that when the Planning Bill was going through the House I sat through it and representations were made from many quarters, including all farming organisations, that they be allowed to have the freedom they always enjoyed to erect farm buildings whenever they wished to do so without any sort of restriction of the kind people normally meet with in the building of industry or of dwellinghouses generally. We were given several assurances that this Bill would not apply to agricultural buildings and that we had nothing to be apprehensive about. For all those reasons I hope that the Minister will take a fresh look at this appeal and see that this is a very desirable development.
As I have said, there is an appeal in this case before me and I consider myself precluded from discussing it.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.40 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 19th February, 1969.