I would be more than happy to do so. Likewise, I hear people raise legitimate concerns about the lack of clarity for local authorities with respect to wind farms on land. That is not this Department. It is the Department of communications in conjunction with this Department. They have long delayed the release of much anticipated guidelines about wind farms. Sometimes, people find other people to blame for the problems they legitimately raise, when often the responsibility for that confusion rests closer to home.
At the outset, I repeat one of the key guiding principles for our party in approaching planning reform. My colleague, Deputy Louise O'Reilly, said the following in setting out the party's overall position on the Bill at the start of Second Stage. I want to say it again. In judging all planning legislation that comes before us, we are looking to see if that legislation assists us in making good quality planning decisions based on meaningful public participation in a timely manner that allows us to meet the social, economic, environmental and biodiversity needs of our State. For me that sums up what we need our planning system to do. I was one of the first politicians to be able to respond publicly to Monday night's "RTÉ Investigates" programme on planning, alongside the Minister of State, Deputy Josepha Madigan. I say at the outset that I have been involved in discussions about housing and planning for a decade. Not once has any builder or developer - I meet a lot of them - ever told me they had been asked for money to have a planning appeal withdrawn. Many have complained about planning observations and appeals. I was genuinely shocked by the revelations, and the audacity of the individuals involved, to seek significant sums of money to withdraw completely fraudulent and groundless appeals to An Bord Pleanála. On television that night I called for a robust Garda investigation. I believe it is extortion under the Criminal Justice Act and I would like to see those people prosecuted. That is a matter for An Garda Síochána and the courts and I will not comment on it further. I will also say that those people could only do what they did because it currently takes between 12 and 24 months for a decision from the bord. That is the responsibility of a decade of underfunding of our planning authorities, in particular An Bord Pleanála, as well as some very bad legislative decisions by Deputies Simon Coveney and Darragh O'Brien, and former Deputy Eoghan Murphy. I will come to those in a moment.
If the Government wants to play a useful role in this, let us remove the opportunity for potential extortionists to extort money from good builder developers by fixing those other problems. Some of that is contained in this Bill, and I will acknowledge it when I get to it.
I also acknowledge the considerable volume of work put into this legislation by the long-suffering officials in the planning section of the Department of housing. This has been an extraordinarily long and onerous task. I make clear that any criticisms I make are not of officials in the Department, or indeed of any public officials working in this House. I have criticisms to make, but I level them at the Government and not the officials, who have spent an inordinate amount of time engaging with us on the Oireachtas housing committee, as well as on the Bill itself. We thank them for that. Rather than just repeat the speech made by Deputy O'Reilly on Thursday last week, I will make some comments on the process and respond to the Minister's and other contributions from that Second Stage debate last Thursday. I then want to get into a little more detail about some of the issues raised by my colleagues.
Deputy Darragh O'Brien said last week, and again today, that we criticised this Bill for being rushed. Not once have I said such a thing on the public record. Along with the entire Oireachtas committee I have repeatedly asked that the Bill should not be rushed. I am happy to say it has not been, and I hope that continues. However, it has been a remarkable period. When the Minister announced at the start of 2022 that the Bill would be published in September 2022, I remember sitting in the Oireachtas housing committee. The senior official, who has now retired, gave us that timeline and I told her that I was amazed she was able to say it with a straight face. Nobody believed the Bill would be ready by September last year. I was further surprised when we were told the Bill would be ready by January or February of this year, which it was not. We got it in partial form. I was again surprised when the Minister said the Bill would be published in September and be through the House by the end of the year.
That was never going to happen. I say this only because it would be better for everybody if we are straight in saying that this is complex legislation that will take some time to work through. However long is needed, let us take the time necessary to get it right.
It is important to put on the record that the Bill is not yet finished. The officials gave us a detailed explanation in a private session as to what the further changes will be. The Minister put some of them on the record last week. I assume some of the changes are significant and will need Cabinet approval. It is important to note that we do not have the final Bill, which means some of the sections that will be introduced by way of amendments will not have gone through any Oireachtas scrutiny at all. I am particularly concerned by the lack of scrutiny of the transitional mechanisms. We can deal with that if and when we get to Committee Stage.
Other Members raised concerns regarding the explanatory memorandum and the Oireachtas Library and Research Service paper. To be clear, I am not making a single criticism of the drafting of those documents. However, when we ask officials to undertake very heavy work in truncated timelines, which is a demand of the political system, it creates challenges for those of us on this side of the House in trying to grapple with the legislation on Second Stage and beyond. I would have liked to have seen, as requested by many of the people who gave testimony to the committee, a consolidated version of this Bill where it is very clear what provision is existing, what is existing but moderately modified and what is new and significant. Sometimes, we get that in respect of EU legislation. It is a shame we did not get it in this instance. If such a thing does exist, which it may not, I would like it to be shared with us.
Both Deputies Bacik and Cian O'Callaghan made some very important points on land use, democratic accountability and unintended consequences of aspects of the legislation, which I want to reinforce. It was clear from the substance of last week's debate that there is a lot more work to do on this legislation. I hate saying that because I am sure the officials start to panic at the idea that it is not near completion. If we are going to get this right and do what the Government is saying is the intention of the Bill, then a significant volume of work needs to be done in committee. I hope adequate time is given on Committee Stage to work through the issues. I look forward to working with the Minister and Minister of State on that.
If I were to summarise the Bill, I would say it may not be the good, the bad and the ugly but it certainly is the good, the moderately problematic, the very problematic and the absent. My remaining comments relate to those four areas. I strongly welcome the proposed changes to An Bord Pleanála in line with the Planning Regulator's report. The governance proposals and the statutory timelines are absolutely sensible in principle and in practice. I am keen to hear more detail on Committee Stage on the logic for the different types of timelines. I understand the general principle but it will be useful to go through all of that. While the Minister has given sanction for additional posts at An Bord Pleanála, only 50 staff have been employed. The remainder have not yet been appointed. Oonagh Buckley told Members of the Oireachtas before she departed to her new position that at least another 30 staff on top of the extra sanction would be required. I hope the Government is giving serious consideration to that.
I fully support the thrust of the Bill in its move towards greater use of plan making. The detail of the urban area plans, the priority area plans and the co-ordinated area plans are not clear enough. I am not saying they need to be changed in the legislation but we do need greater discussion. Ultimately, we need to move increasingly towards three-dimensional planning, like what we have, for example, with strategic development zones. That is not just a matter of legislation; it is also a matter of policy and, crucially, a matter of resources. I am very keen to see the plan the Minister alluded to that will provide our planning authorities with the extra 530-odd staff they requested last year for existing functions, plus the year-on-year increase that will be required for the implementation of those sections of the Bill.
Those are the good bits of the legislation. I turn now to the moderately problematic bits. On the development plans, I have no issue with ten-year timelines. I am glad to see some shift in terms of the strengthening of the mid-term review. That is welcome but I would like to see it going further, which I will deal with when we get to amendments. Likewise, there is a real missed opportunity in the housing plan section of the Bill, which is broadly, if I am reading it right, a crossover from what was there before. We have real problems in terms of the targets, which are far too low. I would like to see local authorities have a far greater ability to argue for increased targets above what the Government is proposing, particularly for social and affordable homes. There are aspects of planning legislation that could assist with affordability. Again, we will tease that out on Committee Stage.
Ultimately, whether in respect of public or private housing, we need to get to a position where our planning system is judging planning applications on the extent to which they meet the local housing need as set out in the granular detail of an effective housing needs demand assessment tool. That is particularly important for groups of people who are often excluded from our housing system, including those with special needs or disabilities, wheelchair users, people who need downsizing and right-sizing, etc. We need a planning system that does not just judge an application on the physical structure or the physical structure's relationship to its built environment, but whether those structures actually meet housing need on the basis of evidence that is there. We are moving some way towards that but we need to move much further.
Let me move to the very bad bits of the Bill. Among the worst things Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have done to our planning system in recent years were Simon Coveney's disastrous strategic housing legislation, the really badly thought through mandatory ministerial guidelines on building heights and design standards for apartments and, while I was a strong supporter of the large-scale residential development, LRD, legislation - in fact, we argued for something similar in 2016 - the transitional mechanisms for those who wanted to enter into SHD have wreaked havoc and are one of the major causes for the current delay at An Bord Pleanála. I can only read the planning policy statement sections of the Bill, setting out the expedited procedures to retrospectively rework them into development plans, in one way. What I am expecting to see in the transitional mechanisms is, that having got all of this so badly wrong but wanting to do the same thing, which is an increased centralisation and imposition of planning policy from the top down, the Government will now try to do it in a much more detailed way.
The problem with that is that it misunderstands the issue. I do not dispute for a second that the Government has a responsibility and a right to set central government policy. That is a very important thing but it should be not only discussed but debated in this House. Currently, if the Government wants to change planning law, it does what we are doing here. If it wants to change planning regulations, a motion comes to the House, there is scrutiny in committee and the motion then comes back here. What is being proposed in this Bill, however, would give a Minister, with the approval of Government but with no Oireachtas oversight or approval, the power to make profound changes to what is, in effect, planning law. The measures in question might be called policy but they are planning law. That is unacceptable. Equally, there is no clarity in terms of the range or scope of what those policy statements should be. Representatives of the Irish Planning Institute, which is a very cautious body that represents a broad spectrum of planning professionals in the public and private sectors, were very critical of this lack of definition when they appeared before the committee. They argued for the legislation to be changed to make it clear what is the function of central government, particularly in terms of forward planning in our system, and what are the functions and principles of subsidiarity to our local authorities in terms of development management. Unless we get that correct, the Government is opening itself up to yet another round of very significant levels of conflict between different layers of plans and different actors in the planning system. What happens when there are conflicts in the planning system? They all end up in the courts, with enormous delay, which is the very opposite of what the Government says it wants.
The Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is very keen to use these sections to advance the delivery of renewable energy, including solar and onshore and offshore wind. I 100% want to work with him to achieve those renewable energy targets, which are absolutely key. My fear is that the Minister, who did not live through the appalling messes in the planning system created by Simon Coveney on SHDs and Eoghan Murphy with his two sets of very controversial mandatory ministerial guidelines, is making the same mistake. He thinks he can just impose all of this from the top without creating conflict, litigation and delay. That is very dangerous. In fact, if we want to expedite offshore wind, which I passionately want to do, let us get the marine protected areas legislation fast-tracked. Without that, the scope for conflict and judicial review in respect of offshore wind development is enormous.
To be clear, if things end up in judicial review, that is a failure of the planning system. I want to see far fewer judicial reviews.
I do not think they are a good thing. The Minister mentioned, in his opening remarks last week, a significant increase in judicial reviews. He is right. The overwhelming majority of that increase is in housing. It was through SHD, and conflicts between mandatory ministerial guidelines and city and county development plans. The vast majority of the judicial reviews that were taken were won, and the bord lost, costing, as Deputy Verona Murphy mentioned earlier, €10 million in legal fees annually over the last umber of years.
If we want fewer judicial reviews, what is the best way to achieve it? It is to fix the problem. We should not restrict people's access to the courts because it will not work. The legal professionals from the Bar Council and the Law Society told us it will just lead to increased satellite litigation, increased superior court litigation and further delay. If we fix the problems upstream, fix the conflicts between the various levels of planning law and policy and ensure maximum public participation at the earliest possible stage, we will see, as we are beginning to see with the LRD, a significant drop in the number of judicial reviews taken in large-scale residential developments. Why? Because instead of trying to ram them through SHD, and with questionable mandatory ministerial guideline frameworks, we are doing it the way we used to do before. Before SHD, it was virtually unheard of to have a judicial review of a large residential development, yet from 2020 the number ballooned. I am hoping now that they will begin to recede. That is why a lot of residential developers, including Michael O'Flynn on "The Frontline" the other night and Stephen Garvey earlier this year, are actually saying we should be careful what we do with residential development in this Bill because LRD is beginning to work. Let us see how it goes and then move on.
Finally, on what is missing in the Bill, there is almost nothing on climate. Embodied carbon is the fourth largest contributor to our emissions. We rapidly need changes to our planning system in terms of demolition, reuse and embodied carbon. That is a big omission. It is not a criticism of the officials, but the Government and the Department are way behind the curve on that. The absence of any significant reforms of compulsory purchase order, particularly for the State to buy at below-market value, existing use or existing use plus a margin, as well as land hoarding, as was mentioned by Deputy Bacik, is a missed opportunity. I mentioned disabilities earlier. This was an opportunity to insert the planning recommendations of the expert group on Traveller accommodation. They might not be popular, but they are absolutely necessary if we are going to avoid another Carrickmines. They are not there and they should be. Earlier, my colleague, Deputy Ó Snodaigh, mentioned the very significant omissions of aspects in relation to Gaeltachtaí and the Irish language. Conradh na Gaeilge has been in touch and we will bring amendments with respect to that.
While they might be small issues, community gardens and allotments, something that we raised at the committee and were told would be addressed, are not addressed. I would hope that is going to be addressed in the Minister's amendments. If not, we have a problem.
To conclude, we need a planning system that works. We need a planning system that makes good quality planning decisions based on meaningful public participation in a timely manner to meet the social needs of our society, including houses, schools, hospitals, etc. We need a planning system that meets the economic needs of our society in terms of physical infrastructure and buildings for job creation, that helps us tackle climate change and also halts and reverses the biodiversity crisis. The Government has said it wants to work with us on it. That will be a first in planning legislation since I have been here, but we will take the Government at its word. The test will be whether or not it accepts our amendments on Committee Stage or reworks those amendments for Report Stage. We will judge it by what it does, not by what it says, but we will be very constructive in the time ahead.
