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Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 12 Jul 1983

Vol. 101 No. 8

Local Government (Planning and Development) Bill, 1983: Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time".

The purposes of this Bill are the reconstitution of An Bord Pleanála and the amendment of existing law in relation to planning appeal procedures. The Bill arises from concern about the method of appointment of members of the board and the problems caused by delays in determining planning appeals. On assuming office, I initiated a review of these matters and decided that legislation to improve the method of appointment and to amend the law relating to appeals was necessary.

The Local Government (Planning and Development) Act, 1976, provided for the setting up of An Bord Pleanála — an independent body — to deal with planning appeals. However, it can now be seen, with hindsight, that the 1976 Act did not go far enough to achieve its objective; in particular, it left the appointment of the ordinary members to the absolute discretion of the Minister. No provision was made for a selection or nomination system which would provide assurance that appointments were being made from among qualified and suitable persons. The way in which the power of appointment of the ordinary members has, in practice, been used in recent times has led to a diminution in public confidence in the appeals system. In particular, the circumstances surrounding some appointments, and especially their timing, seriously affected the general public's perception of the board as an independent and unbiased tribunal. The provisions of this Bill are intended, therefore, to restore public confidence in the appeals system by providing for an improved system for the appointment of members of the board. The Bill also includes provisions designed to speed-up the processing of certain categories of appeals and to make the board's operations more efficient.

In setting out in the Bill to provide for the reconstruction of the board, I wish to make it perfectly clear that I am not making any allegations against the individual members of the present board nor am I implying any reflection on them. What I am seeking to do is to substitute for the present tarnished system of appointment a new system which will ensure that justice is seen to be done and that never again can appointments to the board be alleged to be based on political considerations.

It is as a consequence of the proposed changes in the entire structure and constitution of the board that the appointments of existing members are to be terminated in due course under section 10 of the Bill. If all these appointments were to run their normal course, the board could not be reconstituted until December 1987. I am convinced that a new system is needed to allay public concern and to increase efficiency, and that new system must be implemented as soon as possible. That is why the Bill provides that the existing members of the board will cease to hold office when the new board is appointed.

It is not an objective in itself that the existing members should cease to hold office but a necessary consequence of organisational change. It is not the first time that organisational change has had repercussions on individuals in the public or private sector, nor will it be the last time. Obviously, in circumstances such as these, it would be unfair if appointments were to be terminated without compensation. For this reason, the Bill provides in section 9 for the making of schemes by the Minister for the payment of gratuities to former members. It would of course be inappropriate to go into detail in a public debate about the arrangements which might be made in relation to particular individuals but I can assure the House that the intention will be to formulate provisions which will take account of the particular circumstances.

The board which were established in 1977 comprised a chairman and five ordinary members. That continued to be the situation until June 1981 and, during that period, progress was made in dealing with the arrears of appeals and with the intake of new appeals. No representations were ever made by that board, or by any subsequent board, seeking an increase in membership. Indeed, Mr. Justice Pringle, who was chairman of the board from 1977 to 1981, has been reported in The Irish Press of 26 May 1983, as saying that a board of six members, including the chariman, was sufficient.

No action was taken to increase the membership of the board until 29 June 1981 — the day before the Government left office. Three appointments were made to the board on that day. One of these took account of the resignation of an existing member but the other two were additional appointments. If the then Minister had come to the view that an increase in board membership was necessary, it was remarkable that he left it until his second last day in office before taking any steps to provide for an increase.

In December 1982, a few days before Fianna Fáil were again due to leave office, a further two additional members were appointed to the board. Again, these appointments came at the end of a period of about nine months during which neither the membership nor the staff of the board had been increased.

The appointment of additional members to the board on two separate occasions, in similar circumstances, is all the more remarkable when one considers the need and the importance of providing additional professional staff for the board. The fact is that more importance was attached to the appointment of additional members to the board than to the appointment of additional staff. Besides, the increase in membership did not achieve an improvement in the output of appeal decisions. Give the facts as I have outlined them I have decided that there should be a fixed statutory limit on the membership of the board and that the method of appointment of the ordinary members should be depoliticised as far as possible. In addition, I consider that a new method of appointing the chairman is desirable.

Section 4 of the 1976 Planning Act provides that the chairman must be a serving High Court judge or a former Supreme Court or High Court judge. This arrangement is not being continued for a number of reasons to which I will refer in a moment. Instead, the new chairman will be appointed by the Government from among not more than three persons who have been selected as suitable by a special selection committee. Detailed provision for the constitution of this committee is made in section 5 which is based largely on the provisions of the Prosecution of Offences Act, 1974, which apply in relation to the appointmeent of the Director of Public Prosecutions. That Act provides for the appointment of the director by the Government from among persons selected by a special committee. A similar committee is provided for in relation to the chairmanship. The committee will determine the experience and qualifications required of candidates for the position but will not be restricted to considering persons with a legal qualification. Whenever so requested by the Minister, the committee will select three candidates, or a lesser number if sufficient are not found to be suitable for appointment as chairman and inform the Minister of their suitability. The final decision will rest with the Government.

The chairmanship will be a wholetime office. A seven-year term of office is provided for but an outgoing chairman may be reappointed. There will be a salary linked to that of a High Court judge as in the case of the office of ombudsman.

At present, the chairman must be a serving High Court judge or a former Supreme Court or High Court judge. However, there is no evidence that serving judges want the job. Two previous Governments did not get a serving judge to take the position; in one case a person was first appointed a judge and then appointed chairman and on his death, the same procedure was attempted. If serving judges do not want the job, then the only persons eligible for appointment are retired judges whose normal retirement age is 72 years. As a matter of principle, I do not consider it desirable that the full-time chairman of an important public body, with an extremely heavy workload, must be in his seventies.

The post of chairman is a demanding one, involving overall responsibility for a large organisation and involving a large and continuous volume of case work on a daily basis. During the debates on the Bill which became the 1976 Act, Fianna Fáil questioned the wisdom of appointing retired judges to the post of chairman and stated that the job of chairman of the board was not the sort of task which could be undertaken by a man who had retired. The Bill provides that the retiring age of the chairman will be 65. The same retiring age will apply to ordinary members of the board. This is in line with the provisions relating to the vast majority of other full-time public servants and I see no reason why an exception should be made in the case of the full-time chairman of the board.

There has been some discussion of the actual composition of the selection committee. The Bill now provides that it will consist of—

(a) the President of the High Court,

(b) the Chairman of the County Councils General Council,

(c) the Chief Engineering Adviser of the Department of the Environment,

(d) the Chairman of the Council of An Taisce — the National Trust for Ireland,

(e) the President of the Construction Industry Federation, and

(f) the President of the Executive Council of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.

Many groups could make a valid case for inclusion on the selection committee. However, if the committee is to operate efficiently, it must be kept to a reasonable size, its composition must be a balanced one and it must be capable of securing wide public acceptance. I am convinced that the committee as provided for in the Bill will meet these criteria.

I turn next to section 7 which deals with the method of appointment of the five ordinary members of the board. At present, the Minister has an absolute discretion as to the persons who may be appointed to these positions. Section 7 proposes to restrict this discretion severely by requiring that four of the five ordinary members be appointed from panels of candidates nominated by organisations prescribed for the purpose by the Minister and that the fifth ordinary member should be appointed from among the Minister's serving officers. Before deciding on these particular arrangements, consideration was given to other possibilities. For example, a select list of organisations could be allowed to appoint members directly but there would be difficulties and dangers in this. How could we get agreement on such a short list and how could we avoid the danger that members appointed in this way would see themselves, and be seen by others, primarily to be the representative of the body which appointed them? There are other practical considerations: we must, for example, aim to achieve a reasonable balance as between persons with different backgrounds, skills, experience and qualifications and we must, if possible, achieve some geographical balance.

I believe that a system of appointments by the Minister from persons selected by nominating organisations will permit account to be taken of such considerations, and allow reasonable discretion and flexibility in making appointments without giving rise to situations where persons are appointed whose suitability for membership might be called into question. Besides, I think that it is right, in principle, that the final decision should be made by a Minister answerable to the Oireachtas. This should not be seen by the public to involve a party political decision so long as all of those from whom the members are to be drawn have been judged by appropriate nominating bodies to be suitable for appointment. I believe, therefore, that section 7 goes as far as one can reasonably and practicably go to depoliticise the appointment process.

When the Bill is enacted, I will make regulations prescribing the nominating organisations; such regulations must be laid before both Houses and may be annulled by resolution of either House. I can give an assurance that the organisations which I will prescribe will be those which are genuinely representative of the interests listed in section 7 (1) of the Bill.

In addition to providing a new constitution for An Bord Pleanála, the Bill contains provisions relating to appeal procedures which are designed to speed up the processing of certain categories of appeals. These changes, which are contained in sections 15 to 20 have received a general welcome from all sides. I do not, therefore, propose to take up the time of the House at this stage in dealing with these technical matters but I will, of course, be happy to go into them in detail at Committee Stage.

As well as the procedural changes which should enable certain appeals to be dealt with in a shorter period, section 4 imposes on the board a general duty to secure that appeals generally will be disposed of expeditiously and with this end in mind, it requires the board to conduct periodic reviews of its organisation and of systems and procedures. The section also allows the Minister to direct that such reviews be undertaken and, following consultation with the board, to give directives as to the matters reviewed. It also enables the board to consult the Minister regarding any matter pertaining to its functions and enables the Minister to consult with the board regarding his functions or the functions of the board. However, this section, and indeed all the other provisions of the Bill, are subject to an overriding prohibition on ministerial intervention in relation to individual appeals; this is contained in section 23.

I attach some importance to the fact that a clear statutory duty is being imposed on the board to deal with appeals, references, etc., as quickly as possible and to take all practicable steps to ensure that there are no avoidable delays in their processing. This provision, coupled with the specific duty imposed on the chairman to ensure the efficient discharge of business, should make the board more conscious of the need to eliminate delays at all stages in its consideration of appeals.

Before I conclude I would like to refer to the current position regarding the staffing of the board and to the arrears situation. The 1976 Act empowers the board to employ its own staff, who would not be civil servants, and the assignment of staff to the board from my Department under section 21 of that Act was intended to be an interim arrangement. Three years ago, following a survey of the board's organisation, my Department and the Department of the Public Service accepted that the board should set about recruiting its own staff and an overall structure was suggested and accepted in principle by the board. In 1981, a chief officer was recruited by the board but it was not until October 1982 that the board agreed to put into operation the various organisational changes which were necessary to effect the transition to an independent staff organisation. By then, the embargoes on staffing imposed by successive Governments created complications.

Despite difficulties, I have authorised the board to augment its professional staff. I conveyed sanction last January for the filling of two additional senior planning inspector posts and, more recently, I have conveyed approval for a further two such posts. The board has been allowed to recruit these additional inspectors in spite of the fact that an embargo on staffing exists throughout the public service. Indeed, to keep within the overall terms of the embargo, my Department will have to suppress a number of posts. This will create difficulties in relation to other programmes which can only be accepted in exceptional circumstances. However, it illustrates the importance that I have attached to providing for the board an adequate professional staff to enable it to deal with the backlog of appeals and the new intake. As well as this, I am making professional staff of my Department available on a temporary basis to supplement the board's inspectors. Moreover, I have authorised the board to engage up to 15 part-time staff and to seek staff on temporary secondment from local authorities. Temporary staffing assistance has also been provided on the administrative side in recent times to cope with arrears.

My Department and I have no wish to attempt to run the board by remote control or otherwise. We have been pressing the board to make progress in recruiting its own professional staff and, when this is completed, I hope that a beginning can be made to engage separate administrative staff. The arrangement whereby civil servants are assigned to work for the board is a temporary one and there is no wish to prolong it. I should make it clear, however, that while staff of my Department are assigned to serve the board, they work under the day-to-day direction and control of the chief officer and the board. Besides, we have ensured that the various staffing embargoes have not affected the board staff to the same extent as other areas of the Department.

The number of planning appeals on hands at the end of May 1983 was 3,595. The corresponding figure for May 1981 was 1,824. This deterioration in the arrears situation is a matter of serious concern, especially at a time when every effort must be made to maintain and increase employment in the construction industry and in the economy as a whole. It is the responsibility of the full time board not just to deal with individual appeal cases, but also to manage and direct the organisation as a whole. I and my Department have been in correspondence with the board's chairman in recent months about the situation and I am glad to say that, as a result of a combined effort, the output of formal decisions has been increased. It is, however, the responsibility of the board and its chief officer to continue to review systems and procedures and the deployment of staff so as to achieve optimum results. My Department will continue to assist, where possible, in this area but in the last analysis it is only the board which can decide what should be done and set about designing a programme to reduce the arrears to an acceptable level within a reasonable period.

I am confident that a new board selected in accordance with the provisions of this Bill will secure wide public acceptance and be able to get to grips with the backlog of appeals. The various technical changes in appeals law will be of considerable assistance and so too should the strengthened inspectorate and improved procedures. I see no reason why the overall package of measures which I am proposing should not bring results. I look forward, therefore, to a renewal of public confidence in the appeals system, an increased output of decisions and a significant improvement in the arrears situation.

I welcome the Minister to the House. I think this is the first time he has been in this Chamber as Minister for the Environment, his Minister of State having taken most Bills in this House recently.

I want to protest in the strongest possible vein at the way this Bill was rushed through the other House. There seems to be great urgency for this Bill. At a time when we have massive unemployment, the drugs situation is serious, when various other parts of our administration seem to be getting out of hand, with our financial targets not being met, this Bill would appear to be totally unnecessary. It must be remembered that its aim is to abolish the existing Bord Pleanála, a board established some years ago in all good faith by a previous Labour Minister. I believe that board have done a very good job. The personnel have worked diligently in order to achieve decisions. The formula to be used in deciding appeals should have been spelt out by the Minister to the public. The impression has been created in most people's minds that there is something wrong with An Bord Pleanála in its present form. I want the Minister to spell out clearly to the House why he is replacing the existing board and on what grounds. From reading the newspapers one would get the impression that there was something radically wrong with the personnel of the board but that is not true. The Minister should inform the public that everything is well with the board and that the restructuring is merely to bring about quicker decisions.

Our party objected to the depoliticising of appointments to the board. That was our view when the board were set up and it is still our view. It should be indicated that the members of the board made decisions in keeping with the development plans of each local authority. Is the Minister saying that the board took decisions that were not in keeping with the development plans in the areas concerned? I should like the Minister to tell the House the number of oral hearings he requested because he considered the decisions of the board were not of the highest standard.

I should also like the Minister to tell the House the number of times he wrote to the board indicating his dissatisfaction with regard to delays in making decisions. How many times did he meet them to discuss the problem? Did he discuss with them the carrying out of a survey in relation to the board? I understand he has carried out a survey of An Bord Pleanála. If that is the case, will he tell the Seanad the result of that survey? All of this is relevant to the legislation the Minister will ask us to put through this House in the next few days.

Did the Minister discuss the appointment of the four senior planning officers with the board? I realise that these people have not taken up duty yet. When the new board are set up everything will run smoothly because I understand the reason for the delays was not due to the board but to delays in bringing cases to them. Did the Minister discuss the appointment of temporary professional and administrative staff? Did the Minister ever meet the board to discuss all these matters and, if so, on how many occasions? If he was dissatisfied with them, did he discuss the matter with them?

The Minister has indicated that what he proposes will speed up appeals coming before the board. It will if there are four additional appointments plus temporary professional and administrative staff. The appointment of additional staff cannot but result in greater output. However, there was a need for that but the Minister up to now did not make any effort to deal with the matter.

This is a technical Bill and will touch closely on the legal appointment of members in the outgoing board. Has the Minister taken senior counsel opinion about bringing this Bill before the House? He is about to remove a board without telling them the reason for their removal and he should not do this without taking appropriate counsel opinion. Can any action be taken by members of the board in regard to this Bill?

All of this information is relevant. It is the first time a board have been removed from office without giving them a reason for their removal. The Minister must spell out the reason clearly. I cannot see where they have fallen down as a board. I do not think they have been inefficient in their operations. I have been a member of a local authority for some time. I know the length of time that frivolous, vexatious appeals have taken. Many local authorities, who wish to develop amenities in their own counties, have been stymied as a result of serious delays in awaiting decisions but I do not think the blame rests with members of An Bord Pleanála.

The Bill provides for the reconstitution of An Bord Pleanála. On 1 January 1977, An Bord Pleanála were set up to restore public confidence so that the board would work more effectively. The Minister said he will name the organisations from which members of the new board will be selected. I understand that An Taisce, which we in the west love and which I am sure the Minister also loves, have been mentioned in connection with the new board. They have been very critical of local authorities, especially in the west, over the last few years and I do not have much regard for them. I have reason to doubt many of their decisions because, in my own county, they have been reversed. I would not like any member of that organisation to be appointed to the board.

Fine Gael Senators may not be directly involved in framing this legislation but this Bill will affect the integrity of the party who lent their names to it. I should like to give some facts in connection with appeals that came before the board over the last number of years which will give some indication to Fine Gael Senators of what I mean. In 1977, the number of appeals which An Board Pleanála had on hands was about 1,684. In 1978 there were 1,710 appeals awaiting decisions but in 1982 the figure rose to 3,255. There was double the increase of appeals and a reduction from 18 to 15 inspectors during that period. It is obvious from those figures that a backlog would and did accrue although that was not the fault of An Bord Pleanála.

The procedure is that an appeal is submitted by a local authority and it sometimes takes from three to six months before a full submission of the case is with the administrative staff of the board. The administrative staff prepare a file and that can take ten months to be laid before the board. I know the Minister will contradict me if I am wrong when I say that the decision of An Bord Pleanála on any appeal before them takes not more than one to two weeks. Even when appeals are decided it could take two weeks or even two months to sign it which would mean that from the start of the appeal to its conclusion would take at least 12 months. In all that time the board have it for only about one to two weeks. Before it goes to the appellant it has to go back to the local authority of the area of jurisdiction and the appellant may not receive it for another four, five or six weeks. Of course, that is not the impression the Minister or the press have created and it is not the impression in the minds of ordinary people. No matter what the press say, unless the Minister contradicts what I said the old board cannot be let off the hook.

The Minister should also apologise to the board for his statement in connection with An Bord Pleanála. The past chairmen of the board, having been members of the Judiciary, from the first chairman, Mr. Justice Pringle down to the present chairman, were men of very great integrity and men who in my view it is necessary to have as chairmen of a board of this nature. Those men had to take major decisions in the past. They were men who whether at the Bar or in private life had the integrity to make important decisions. Those men came through their student days through the Judiciary and up to the position of High Court judge or its equivalent. I believe that it behoves the Minister to apologise to those men of such high legal status for the absence of a statement about what they have done wrong. I would like the Minister to say that it is not because of their integrity but because of the system that the backlog has accrued.

Those men and their families have feelings. If I was a member of the family of any of the members of this board who will now be sacked I would have to be given a very good reason why I was sacked. I do not believe there is any reason for their being sacked. I ask the Minister to make sure that some statement will be made before we adjourn for the summer recess in order to assure the people that there is nothing wrong with the present board and to give a reason why they will be moved aside.

I understand that the board have only one full-time staff officer. In 1977 the board had, as I have already said 18 planning inspectors and in 1978 and 1982 they had 15. The number of appeals has increased and no appeal can come before the board unless an inspectors' file is attached.

I regret very much — I am sure most Senators here regret it also — the absence of provisions for public representatives in this Bill. It seems that they will not have any part in the process of planning in the future. Public representatives have, indeed, given worthwhile service in the planning process. They have held a watching brief at local authority level with planning refusals and have spent many hours discussing section 4's and have been the watchdog for the Government. We see An Bord Pleanála as the result of their failure to satisfy everybody.

It appears from the way the Minister intends to constitute this board that it is likely that no public representative of any status will be involved in this board. I believe that their absence will be a major loss. The Government are being vindictive in sacking a board of decent men who have sacrificed their time for the development of this nation. Those men had no personal interest or, indeed, any alliance with any group or individuals to further their cause. They were men of dedication and ability, who must now have gained a wealth of experience as a result of their time on the board. They were men of expertise, men who have handled various decisions over the years. The experience they have gained must be a valuable asset to our legislation. In future, justice must be seen to be done and in the words of the Minister it will never again be alleged that the board is based on a political consideration.

The new appointments will not be made, I understand, until the termination of the old board. I do not know from what organisations the board will come but I am sure the Minister will know something about that. It is the Minister's own admission that the volume of work did not improve with extra numbers on the board. Of course, this is so. Putting extra numbers on the board could not in any way improve the productivity of the board.

Why did the Senator's party put them on the board?

That is not where the seriousness of this lies. At the time they were put on the board they were put on perhaps with the view of giving a greater output of work. It has been proved now beyond all shadow of doubt that the provision of additional members is not the answer. The Minister has agreed that this is so and that is why he has suggested a reduction from eight to five. I go along with that. It is not there the damage lies at all. It is in relation to the people who bring the appeals to An Bord Pleanála that the trouble lies and appointing a new board will not cure this. I will have more to say on Committee Stage. I am disappointed the Minister has failed to tell the public where the constitution of the new board will come from. We do not want to know the personnel but we should be in a position to know what organisations he will choose the new board from.

I have asked the Minister a few questions about getting legal advice in bringing about this Bill. The outgoing board deserve an explanation regarding their abolition. I hope the Minister will explain why the personnel of the present board cannot do what they set out to do under the former Minister, Deputy Tully. The Act under which they were set up is being rendered obsolete because appeals are not being processed quickly enough.

I warn any person who may be considering accepting a post on this new board that when we are returned to office we will ensure that every member of that board will be removed. If it is necessary to bring in legislation for that purpose, then we will bring in that legislation. The personnel will be replaced by people of experience, integrity and honesty, with a judicial background in the chairmanship of this new board.

And a political background.

No, and to date we have never removed any board or any member of a board appointed by a previous Coalition Government.

What about the future?

We will do so in the future if this obtains.

I will be brief on Second Stage of this Bill because many Members on both sides of the House wish to contribute. This Bill is controversial, to say the least of it. All Members of this House, particularly those who serve on local authorities, have experience of the activities of An Bord Pleanála. I was involved in the legislation which set up that board. Up to the time when they were set up all of the decisions relating to planning were taken by the then Minister for Local Government or his Parliamentary Secretary. Because of accusations that decisions at that time were made for political reasons, we welcomed in 1976 the setting up of an autonomous board who would be outside the political spectrum and could make valuable, judged decisions on appeals that came before them. Generally speaking, that system was satisfactory. Certainly in the first year of their life the board functioned quite well and there was no appreciable backlog of appeals that county councillors could complain about.

As a member of a county council who are involved constantly in planning decisions under the advice of our planning officer, the only complaint I have about An Bord Pleanála concerns the last 18 months or so. Legitimate applications have been made to initiate developments which would create employment and would be of great importance to agriculture. These applications were published and were discussed by the council in conjunction with the planning officer, and planning permission was given. Out of the blue, not from the local authority as Senator O'Toole said, a third party made an appeal which went direct to An Bord Pleanála who in turn requested the planning authority for information on this appeal. The local authority should have investigated this matter and given their decisions to the applicant within the statutory two months. There would have been no delay on their account. They had the file available and should have been able to answer any queries from An Bord Pleanála in relation to it. I know of a case where an appeal was made in June 1982 which was studied by the investigating team of An Bord Pleanála in September 1982. To this date, July 1983, no decision has been forthcoming in that case. I have made repeated representations to the board for a decision. I have not asked them to alter their decision. Even the aggrieved applicant or appellant would not wish them to alter their decision, but at least they are entitled to a decision in that time.

I defend the right of the board to make whatever decision they think right because I accept that the expertise and facilities available to them should be used in the best interest of planning, particularly in the rural areas where it is unlikely that major appeals involving millions of pounds in money will apply. Rural dwellers are amazed at the amount of money available when a planning permission is or is not forthcoming, particularly in the cities. Because of that public perception of what a planning board is about it is imperative that the formulation of that board must be as far removed from politics as possible. In a democratic society in which we all respect one another as politicians——

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Are you sure?

Yes, I respect you very much, a Leas-Chathaoirligh. I tell the Minister that we have these little exchanges occasionally. He should be here more often because he would enjoy this more than the other House. We must ensure that when vast amounts of money are to be made pending decisions, the decisions must be as far removed as possible from the political scene, otherwise the public will not accept them and will be very sceptical about processes.

The present board are autonomous. We know how the members were nominated. We were disappointed that the Minister, having power to appoint certain people to the board, did not increase the investigating staff rather than just the board members. According to Senator O'Toole, the board members come to a decision very quickly when an appeal comes to them but the problem is getting the appeal. Why did the Minister not ensure that there would be proper and adequate staff to do the job? Some of the staff on the road examined an enterprise in September of last year, yet no decision on it has issued from the board. I do not know where the fault lies. I have never made representations to the board either to influence a decision or to alter a decision, but I have begged for decisions and have not got them. I hope that the formulation of this new board will speed up the issue of decisions. If not, we must come back to the Minister and tell him that this board are not functioning as speedily as we would like them to. Perhaps there is validity in setting a time limit on the board for arriving at decisions. County councils must investigate and process them with limited staffs and must issue the decisions to the applicants within two months. In the case to which I have referred, which was an agricultural enterprise, a great quantity of corn was at stake and the same is likely to happen this year because the board have not given a decision. This is completely unacceptable to members of county councils who are trying to encourage people to be progressive, ensuring that all reasonable complaints by third parties are met if possible before the planning officer gives a decision. In south Tipperary discussions take place with the objector and the planner in order to eliminate any disagreement before the decision is given.

I welcome the fact that the chairman of the General Council of County Councils will have a role in the nominations for the chairmanship of the new board. I accept Senator O'Toole's comment that local representatives should have a major input. I have consistently defended their role. I am glad they are to be asked for their opinion because they will be able to vet names coming before them in a very valuable way.

Many derogatory things were said in the other House about An Taisce. I happen to be a member of that organisation but this does not mean that I agree with everything they say. I resent the fact that they recently involved themselves in telling elected representatives what powers they should or should not have in relation to planning. They have a specific function to carry out as a prescribed body, as have elected representatives. I resent outsiders who are selected as opposed to being elected telling people what they should do. However, I accept that they should have an input in the nomination of the chairman, together with the ICTU and some officials of the Minister's Department.

We look to this board for much speedier decisions on planning appeals and if these are not forthcoming we will be very disappointed. I am surprised that the Opposition have treated this legislation as being controversial. Their spirited defence of the existing board makes me somewhat suspicious that they have something else in mind. I was disappointed at the threat to expel members who will be nominated to this board and it is a pity that this spirit has been injected into the debate. Many people are giving very useful service through the semi-State bodies. Such people have been nominated by successive Governments and their services are not automatically dispensed with upon a change of Government. It is a tragedy that such an attitude should be adopted by the Opposition and I would ask them to reconsider their threat. If such a policy were adopted by this Government 250 friends of the Opposition would be dismissed immediately. This would be a pity because many of them are good men.

I was not aware that the Deputy was examining the appointments.

Senator O'Toole has an exceptional record as chairman of Mayo County Council.

On a point of order, I said that we never removed any supporter of a previous Government from any board during our term of office but we will exercise that right during our next term.

I would ask the Senator to reconsider that threat. We are taking planning out of the area of politics. Planning is essential to the welfare of the community and the orderly development of our towns and cities. We must have the best possible board and this legislation will be worthwhile if it enables the board to produce speedy decisions.

I am amazed at the manner in which Senator Ferris approached his contribution to this most sensitive debate. He is trying to pretend that this is not the expulsion of the board appointed by the previous Government. This is political behaviour about which I am sure he feels sick at heart but he must put a brave face on it because of his position in this House — hence the long and detailed performance today. We understand that he had to sit down because he feels sick, just like other county councillors who are sick of this unnecessary Bill.

If this Government wanted to tackle the problems of planning and delays in planning appeals, they should not have sought to find the wrongs in the Planning Board. That is not the place where people have taken decisions for or against particular individuals. The introduction of this legislation was an unreasonable and unnecessary act by the Government. Following seven months in office they have vowed to strip the board of their powers at a time when much more important legislation could have been introduced. Because of our minority position we will not be able to outvote the Government parties but we will resist this Bill as best we can. It was not our action in appointing the Planning Board which was responsible for Fianna Fáil going out of office. The matter was not such a "hot potato" that it had to be dealt with so quickly by this Government.

The whole planning process is a festering sore from local authority level up to An Bord Pleanála. In section 14 there is a prohibition on certain communications in relation to appeals and section 13 contains a prohibition on the disclosure of information. I welcome this but the Government should have stretched it to include the leakages of personal and private information from county council planning offices. I say that for numerous reasons. I made that statement at a meeting of Galway County Council and it was not denied. I and a fellow councillor, Mr. Tom Welby, went through a hell of an ordeal on an RTE programme recently. The name of the programme was "Section 4 Planning, Galway Style". We had a trial by television. It was built up for four or five days beforehand with snippets about what was going on in County Galway as regards planning as though county councillors, and Councillor Welby and I in particular, were the two worst villians of section 4 planning that the country had ever heard of. I produced a file containing my 24 section 4's and handed them to RTE. I told them to go and investigate them all and to talk to me about whichever ones they picked out. They heard in the pubs around town, or in other places where one hears such rubbish, that Galway was peculiar and had their own way of doing things. It was suggested that planning permissions and laws were torn to bits and pieces by a few councillors. It was even suggested by members of the Fine Gael Party that a few of us were taking backhanders for the job. I am sure many Senators saw that programme. The trial it was meant to be did not materialise because most of the information they picked up in the pubs was false and did not relate to what was happening in the council.

Our county council leaked like a sieve to facilitate RTE. Even after all the leaks, we could not be condemned. That was because we were working for people who wanted to build houses on land left to them by their parents. There is nothing in this Bill to protect county councillors from such dreadful talk and interpretation. I am surprised that the Minister of State who knows about this problem has done nothing about it. I would not dare to say that if I did not have evidence of it.

Not alone in our county but throughout the country there seem to be different laws for different people. A very senior person in An Taisce has a house in a scenic area of County Galway, in Oughterard. They changed the garage into a "playroom". The county council wrote to them and told them they did not accept that they should not have to apply for planning permission. The person was not satisfied and jumped over the planning authority and bounced up to An Bord Pleanála. Of course Galway County Council were wrong and the member of An Taisce was right. That person did not have to apply to the council for permission at all. One would have expected the person would have had the courtesy to make an application to the council. We are at present revising our county plan. We will set the snares in such a way that they will spring properly in future on such people who try to duck aside.

I am disappointed with the Bill. I acknowledge that An Taisce may have a role to play in looking after particular places which are of historic or environmental interest. In their journal they have an article by Dr. Emer Colleran stating: "Section 4 planning permissions must go". They have no right to use such a headline. They have no role to play in that area. It was stated that:

Although not originally intended for use in planning affairs, it is not explicitly excluded by the existing Planning Acts.

So it is acknowledged that we have a right under law to use section 4. The article further states that it provides a means whereby elected representatives may direct their manager to grant planning permission against the advice of his planning officials. The article continued:

The increasing use of Section 4 resolution to grant planning permissions in scenic areas in County Galway prompted the Galway Association of An Taisce to table a motion to the AGM in June 1982 seeking the formation of a working party "to compile a dossier on the abuse of Section 4 powers throughout the country and to make appropriate proposals and recommendations which would limit the impact of the section 4 clause on planning procedures."

I do not know how many people attended the meeting but the motion was carried unanimously. They wrote to all the planning authorities asking for relevant recommendations or comments from managers or senior planning officers and replies were received from all except Dublin County Council. Fair play to them. At least we had one set of officials who recognised the authority of An Taisce and the cheek they had to seek such private, confidential and personal information from any county council. Where do they get their cheek from?

I welcome the prohibition on the disclosure of information. They did not write to An Bord Pleanála and ask them for information about the abuse of section 4s. The abuse of section 4 was clearly alleged by them. I speak of this because I feel deeply about it. It is time that there are people in County Galway today living in mobile and demountable houses who are prevented by An Taisce from building a house on a portion of land given to them by their parents. This is horrifying. If the Minister felt that there was anything wrong with planning, surely he should have started at the beginning? We have proved conclusively in County Galway — and I am sure it can be proved in Clare, Kerry, Mayo and every other county where the councils had to use section 4 — that there is no illegal abuse, as is proclaimed by the document distributed through An Taisce.

What this Government should be doing is trying to stop the misinterpretation of the Planning Act and the county plans, drawn up by elected representatives and exercised by officials. The root cause of all our problems with regard to planning is the interpretation given by officials, sometimes directly opposite to the wishes of the councils when they were drafting their county plans. I say that fairly and squarely and have seen it proved time and time again. If the use of section 4 is proof of anything, it is proof solely of that. A certain councillor in County Galway, Councillor Tom Welby, has more section 4s to his name than all other councillors throughout the country. The reason is that he is living in a high amenity area, where the planning officer blatantly and obviously refused to give planning permission on humane grounds to residents of the county and of the locality. We never envisaged for our county the prevention of residents from living in their own community. In fact, it was quite the opposite, but interpretation is where the whole process of planning goes wrong. If it was possible to correct that, there would be no need for An Bord Pleanála. The chairperson could do the job because there would be no appeals. If we could eliminate the problem of what the public representative put down on paper and how the official interpreted it, we would solve our problem. I know it is a difficult and a very broad question but it is the kernel and the root of all our problems.

It is time that the Minister and the Government protected county councils from people like this who had the dare and the dash to pry into the privacy of county councils and the operations of their planning laws. How dare any organisation try to seek that confidential information? Something should be inserted in this Bill to protect county councillors. If that is not possible, then another Bill should be produced as soon as possible which would protect county councillors and individuals who make planning applications from the wrath of those who regard their actions as sacrosanct and who place themselves on a high pedestal as though the human being does not matter. Everything else matters, but not the human being. Yet one of them in a very high position can hop over the county council and not apply for planning permission for the change of use of his own house, or her own house, or their own house.

I like the emphasis.

The evidence is there in a letter to the said councillor, Thomas Welby, from the Galway county secretary and the reply sent back to him by the Galway County Council. Not everybody in this House knows whom I am talking about but the Minister of State knows who it is.

We come to the key phrase which prohibits the disclosure of information and the next phase concerning the county councils or the planning authorities. I want to ask Members of the Seanad or any public representative if they think this fair? An official investigates a planning application and, by his interpretation of the county plan, refuses that planning permission. Then the local county councillors are asked if they can do anything for him. They talk and get nowhere because this interpretation of the Planning Act goes on. They are left with no other option but to bring out the human aspect of the planning application in the form of a section 4. Then that official who refused permission in the first place, places some money in an envelope, sends it off to An Bord Pleanála and the whole process is upset. In that way, we are transferring the power of planning over to one official, regardless of what the manager and the senior or junior people think. That person, with confidential information in his or her hand, then goes and upsets the whole process. That is very low.

It was like the planner who turned up at the Young Fine Gael Ard-Fheis in Galway. He made the declaration — and I am sure the Minister has it on the files in his Department — that the going rate for a section 4 in County Galway is £1,000. That is what the councillors were getting and it was to be given to them in one of three different ways, either directly in cash form, to the party at election time, or to be sent secretly to the headquarters in Dublin, if wished.

Which address in Mount Street?

In that instance he would be referring to Mount Street. But there are a few on the other side who realise we are right. They are not all as pure as you think and we are not all as impure as you think.

The Senator is lucky that he is not in Gardiner Place.

I do not think much of Fine Gael. I never did and I never will, but for that episode I think a lot of them because they expelled him there and then, fired him out of the party. Fair play to them for one thing. At least they had the guts to deal with a most ferocious and unfounded allegation. I believe that man is no longer in that reputable organisation and that is no harm. It came to our notice in Galway and we dealt with the matter as we normally do in our own way.

It is most important that the prohibition on disclosure of information is carried, not through the county council, not through An Bord Pleanála but right through the whole process of planning. A person's planning application is a sacred document between the applicant and the planning authority. It should not be ballyragged around the country. Instances should not be quoted as claimed in this document by An Taisce, of abuses of section 4. An Taisce wrote to all county councils and every planning authority in this country wrote back to them and must have given them confidential information.

We have nothing to hide.

There was no need to write to them if they had nothing to hide. Fair dues to Dublin County Council.

I never thought I would live to see the day when the Senator would praise Dublin.

Planning is for the people. In these days of financial constraints people cannot walk into the lucrative markets and borrow money to buy houses. I would have thought that planning officers would appreciate every saving which could be made. The Minister is in the wrong place doing the wrong job. He did not start at the beginning. I always thought we should start at the bottom and work up. If I were the Minister I would withdraw this Bill. If we had a proper planning Bill setting out the guidelines clearly and unequivocally, there would be no need for An Bord Pleanála. The Minister would not have to appoint a chairman and members of the board and appoint extra staff. The board were doing their job but they did not have the staff necessary. That was the problem.

I do not know much about An Bord Pleanála because I never got further than the outside office. The problem is in the foothills not on the top of the mountain. Interpretation is at the root of our planning problems. If we had proper interpretation and a prohibition on the disclosure of information, if we had a clear and defined planning law, we would not need An Bord Pleanála. We might need a chairman to sign some documents every few months. Appeals would fall drastically. It costs an enormous amount of money to make a planning application. Value for money should be given. We need clarification of what the ordinary person is allowed, so that people will not have to go to the expense of making an application to the local authority and then appealing to An Bord Pleanála.

This Bill should be postponed. The appointments of the "lads" should be postponed. Two-thirds will be Fine Gael Party members and one-third will be members of the Labour Party. An independent will be thrown in to put a gloss on it. We should forget about political trickery. The Minister knows a good deal about planning. I appeal to him to start at the beginning. The muddy waters need to be cleared. There is little point in self-professed geniuses drawing up glossy documents like this one. County councillors do not get money to print glossy journals every year about themselves and their problems.

On a point of information, they get no direct State grant.

It is stated in this document that the questionnaire solicited information on the number of applications and permissions handled per annum by the local authority, the number of section 4 motions tabled per annum since 1977, the grounds on which refusal was recommended by the planning officials, the number of appeals arising and the eventual decisions by An Bord Pleanála, and any relevant recommendations or comments by the manager or senior planning officers of the authorities concerned. Replies were received from all planning authorities except Dublin County Council. There is no point in saying they were not asked. They were asked for confidential information. Dr. Emer Colleran compiled a report. She came to Dublin and had tea with the Minister.

That is all she got from the Department.

I do not know what she got. They had some cheek to ask for that information. Does the Senator agree?

The Senator will have to read the record.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Senator Ferris and Senator Killilea, this is not a chat show.

On a point of information, Senator Killilea suggested that An Taisce as an organisation were getting a State grant. They are not in receipt of a direct State grant.

I was not sure. I know county councillors could not produce a glossy journal like this every year. Even the General Council of County Councils could not do that, and they have more to do with planning than An Taisce. I would like to hear the Minister comment on that statement when he is replying. He should clear the air. It is important that all these muddy waters are cleared. The Minister should abandon the Bill. There is not one member of a county council in this House today who in his heart does not agree with me.

I ask the Minister to start in that way. If he wants to put his name to some piece of legislation that is where he should begin. That would be giving the Minister and the Government a fair and open invitation to do something positive. The Minister and many people like him know I am right. If the agitation between councillors and local authority officials goes on An Bord Pleanála will be overworked no matter how many staff are appointed.

I do not believe that one member of the existing board has done anything wrong since appointment and I cannot see any reason why the entire board is to be fired out into the street. Senator Ferris beseeched Senator O'Toole not to think in that way, but in what other way can we think? A lot of other legislation should be before the House instead of this nuisance Bill. We should forget about it. The Labour Party and Fine Gael should put their shoulders to the wheel and do something positive about planning so that we do not have any more fiascoes or play acting about certain appointments. None of those appointed to the board will die of hunger if they are not kept on and those proposed to be appointed will not die of the hunger if they do not succeed. What will happen is that we will have a political game played and that serves no purpose. I appeal to the Minister to drop the Bill, put it away and forget about the other Stages. Instead, the Minister should draft proper guidelines for planning officials. If he does that he will not need a Bill like this.

I am pleased to have an opportunity to contribute to the debate on a Bill which I welcome. I say that because of the amount of public disquiet, particularly in the last two years, about the operation of An Bord Pleanála. The Minister is seeking to gain public confidence for the new board. The chairman and members will be appointed in a manner which will put them to a large degree above public criticism. The recent history of the board is similar to the history of suspicion and innuendo that seemed to be part and parcel of the decision-making process operated by the Ministers for Local Government between 1963 and 1976 when that Minister had responsibility for planning appeals. Reforming measures such as that before the House should get all party support because we all want to see changes. The Government are attempting to depoliticise the most sensitive area of decision making here because major financial capital gains can accrue to one party or another if successful at the end of a planning appeal process.

We have heard of the consequences if the Bill is passed and the confusion put out by the media, and promulgated by Fianna Fáil in the other House, in regard to the risks members of other State boards will face; but that is all a great nonsense. This is the most prestigious board we have in that there are a big number of full time board members in receipt of sizeable salaries. Senator O'Toole expressed amazement that the Government needed to take action in this area of great sensitivity but we are aware that before two Fianna Fáil Governments left office in the last two years they appointed on one occasion three members and on another occasion two members to the board. The latter two, as the record will show, had on one occasion or another been involved with Fianna Fáil. In the case of Mr. Tony Lambert, a former salesman, he worked in the personal office of the Minister for the Environment at the time, Deputy Ray Burke, doing his constituency work. Significantly appointed with him was a director of elections of Fianna Fáil.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

I do not think the Senator is entitled to name people who are not Members of the House.

The same name was mentioned in the other House without any objection being raised.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

With all due respect to the Senator, I should like to point out that the rulings in the other House do not have any bearing on any ruling here. The Senator is not entitled to name private individuals.

I have mentioned all of those I had intended naming. I am anxious to illustrate the qualifications of the people appointed by an outgoing administration hours before they left office. Those Governments decided to appoint people who were politically involved with their operations. That was done on two occasions. Those appointments were made in spite of the fact that planning is one of the most sensitive areas which affects everybody who looks for a planning appeal decision. It is important that they have full confidence in those who operate the system. It is also important that the members of the board have a degree of public respect.

The Minister has expressed the hope that, following the passing of the Bill, there will be renewed confidence in the appeal system and a significant improvement in the arrears situation. That is important. If the difficulties in relation to the output of the board did not have anything to do with the membership of the board why was it necessary for the last administration to increase the membership of the board when it had already been established that the problem was in regard to the number of inspectors appointed to the board?

The Bill is an excellent reforming measure but it does not go far enough in a number of respects. It does not attempt to introduce some type of public accountability, as was intended in the 1963 Act as amended. In Britain when a planning appeal decision is undertaken by the Secretary of State for the Environment and he decides that it is necessary to consider overturning the development plan of the county or county borough he must give notice of his intention to all interested parties and allow them the opportunity to react to the proposed change before any decision is taken. Members of a local authority — many Senators are members of such bodies — go through the elaborate procedure of producing a county or city development plan and An Bord Pleanála may rightly decide to change that, not to confine it to a residential development or the protection of a park, for example, but to incorporate some offices or buildings for commercial use, or change it to a mixed development which will contravene the plan. It is essential that in the near future interested bodies should be given the opportunity to react to the planning system, then An Bord Pleanála will reach their decisions having considered the views of interested parties.

There is a system in Britain where any party to an appeal can, within six weeks of the decision, request a copy of the inspector's report which then becomes publicly available. That system significantly improves public accountability and lessens misunderstandings. We are doing something positive to raise public confidence in the members of the Planning Appeals Board, but we must go further. Their decisions must be explained to the public at large. This is a crucial point to which I hope the Minister will give every consideration. I realise that at present An Bord Pleanála have a very big backlog of work; 3,500 appeals, and that this is much larger than they would like — the figure should be around 1,800.

It is essential that an attempt be made to have the planning process understood by all — residents' associations, county councillors and planning officials. Within the next 12 to 18 months the Minister should, with the co-operation of An Bord Pleanála, issue an accompanying letter with every decision of the board explaining the background to the decision. This letter could give far more detail than is given at the moment. The present system is a farce with generalisations being used constantly which explain nothing and give no understanding of what the board is thinking. I hope when the new board have had sufficient time to acquaint themselves with the duties and when the backlog has been dealt with, this accompanying letter will issue. This move would significantly improve public accountability and An Bord Pleanála would be seen to be an open body who explain their policies. In the long run this would be in the interests of the planning process. Perhaps the Minister would tell us at the end of this debate or on Committee Stage next Thursday, if and when this will happen.

As Fine Gael spokesman on planning I want to give the Minister notice that if something does not happen within the next 18 months, I would feel it appropriate to have this matter raised on the adjournment. This is part of the 1976 Act and would give the public a knowledge of the working of An Bord Pleanála. I am not asking that the inspector's report be issued or for the board to institute the process which is used in Britain, but this area should get some attention and even a commitment from the Government.

I would like to deal with section 4 cases, which arise much more often in some counties than in others. I am concerned about section 4 decisions taken by planning authorities and county councils in different parts of this country. The Irish Planning Institute are also very concerned. Bearing in mind all Senator Killilea said a few moments ago about the human situations involved when giving planning permission to people living in areas of scenic importance, there must come a time when it is totally against the interests of the country to put a development on the sea side of the road where it can be a major interference with the seascape and the beauty of the area. Far too often decisions of this kind have been taken by county councils but I am glad to say my own corporation have rarely, if ever, used section 4. We regard it as something which should be used in certain circumstances, but it has been used far too often in other areas.

I would like to join with the Irish Planning Institute in calling on the Minister when amending planning legislation in the future to consider very seriously bringing in a section which would insist that when a section 4 decision is made, it be sent immediately to An Bord Pleanála. The board which will adjudicate on the planning permission and will decide if it is interfering with the natural beauty of the area. This is not solely for the benefit of the people of Ireland; it is also for our tourists.

I welcome this Bill which is a very important reforming measure and hope the Minister will reply to the point I raised.

This Bill is not, as stated by the Minister, a Bill for the reconstitution of An Bord Pleanála and the amendment of existing law in relation to planning appeals procedure, but rather a Bill to abolish the planning appeals board as at present constituted. This Bill is being brought in at a time when we should be addressing ourselves to much more pressing problems. It is with regret that I saw this Bill rushed through the other House.

In certain areas there may be people who are suspicious of the organisation and working of the board. There are major problems surrounding us; the taxpayers and businessmen are facing problems and there are very large numbers of unemployed. This Government are not facing up to these major problems but are rushing through this Bill, which will do nothing to speed up the planning process; rather it will change the composition of An Bord Pleanála and reduce their numbers to a maximum of six. There are much more urgent problems needing to be tackled than the establishment of a new and supposedly depoliticised An Bord Pleanála. It is utterly hypocritical of the Minister to suggest that this Bill will in any way speed up the processing of planning appeals. As a member of a local authority since 1976, I have seen the delays that have taken place with regard to builders and those people wishing to build their own houses in many parts of the country. To my mind those delays have not been occasioned by the composition of An Bord Pleanála. In many cases such delays occurred because of the lack of full information being given to local authorities in the first instance by the people seeking planning permission. In many other cases such delays occurred because developers did not at all times submit proper planning applications to local authorities. On too many occasions planning permission was granted without work having started. I am glad that the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act, 1982 made it mandatory that planning permissions would be granted for specific periods only. Up to then planning permissions lasted indefinitely. In many areas this meant that planning permissions were being used as an instrument to increase the value of land rather than for the purpose for which permission had been granted.

I am convinced that many delays that have taken place in the planning area arose because many applications were opposed on grounds not sustainable in law, equity or on any good planning ground. I am glad to note that in section 15 of this Bill the Minister states that appeals can be disallowed under section 26 of the principal Act if an appeal is lodged on vexatious or other grounds. Indeed in many cases the cost of the appeal bore no relationship to the planning application. Throughout the country there have been many millions of pounds worth of building work held up because of appeals having been lodged, appeals which were totally wrong and in many instances were lodged because of personal, corporate or political animosity.

There is need to speed up the whole of the planning process but essentially I do not see any of the provisions of this Bill doing so, even though sections 15 to 20 might appear to do so. The Minister seems to feel that a smaller board would operate more effectively and speedly. But there are more fundamental problems to be overcome before the constitution of the board is examined. The decision to centralise planning was a wrong decision in the first place and that decision, more than any other, created the problems now being encountered by local authorities and individuals in the area of planning appeals.

The situation obtaining is that a person applies to his local authority for planning permission. That planning application is processed by those local authority officials sometimes in co-operation with members of that local authority and sometimes not, usually they are not if the permission being sought is of a non-controversial nature. It takes some time for such an application to be processed at local level. If an application goes against an appellant, then delays are encountered. At that stage the appeal leaves the local scene and the whole process recommences in Dublin. Not alone does that create enormous time problems but huge costs also, because everything is then duplicated by the officials at the central authority. I am convinced it would be easier to get an official of the planning board to travel to say, Kerry than to, say, Clondalkin, because his travel allowance would be much higher.

The stage is then reached at which officials of An Bord Pleanála have taken their decision and it must be sanctioned by the board members. In the meantime there may have been requests for oral hearings, for postponement because, perhaps, technical documentation may not be to hand. It is easy to see how delays occur but, up to now, under no circumstances can they all be laid at the door of the board members themselves. Unfortunately the technical staff of the board are not geared to deal with the huge and increasing number of appeals being lodged with them. It is an age when people seem to place a premium on progress and will endeavour to have it hampered whenever possible. It must be said also that many of the appeals now before the planning board are there because of the present dire economic state of the country. Many farmers, particularly the more progressive who have borrowed heavily, have been subjected to tremendous pressure by their banks and lending institutions. They have endeavoured to get planning permission on part of their holdings to stave off the bankers. In many of these instances planning permission cannot be given because of various constraints obtaining, whether it be because they may be sited on national primary roads, dangerous bends or whatever. But, because farmers are being subjected to such tremendous pressure, they will continue to endeavour to have their planning permissions granted to the point of appeal.

In ensuing months — irrespective of whether there is established a new planning board, irrespective of whether the committees who will select the ordinary members do their job in a short time, there will be an ever-growing number of farmers submitting planning applications in an endeavour to keep their bankers off their backs. I can foresee continuous appeals against decisions turned down at local level. It is like the example of a publican at present advertising his publichouse in the press when he has no intention in the wide world of selling it. But as long as the advertisement appears in the paper, the bank will stay away from his door.

There have been many appeals lodged by residents' associations and individual residents of areas who consider that their area will be radically changed by the building of additional houses or that the status of their area will be changed. These people should be encouraged to appeal and ascertain what is happening in their areas. Irrespective of whether such appeals are vexatious or emanate from a genuine public feeling in an area, it will still take many months before they reach An Bord Pleanála. Because of this there is public disquiet. It is not disquiet with regard to the board but with the length of time it takes to process planning appeals. Departments of Government are not the most speedy to deal with vexatious matters or to give a decision on any appeal, let alone a planning appeal.

The Minister seemed to suggest that because members of the board were appointed on 29 June 1981 and others in December 1982 there was something sinister in these appointments. It was suggested that because of this the board did not deal with appeals in an independent and competent way. There has been a suggestion that because members were appointed to the board at the end of the term of office of a Government the whole matter must be depoliticised. That is a new word in the Houses of the Oireachtas. The next thing we will be depoliticising the Dáil and the Seanad.

Throughout the country an attempt is being made to denigrate politicians and the institutions of State. Here we have the Minister saying it is essential that the procedure regarding planning appeals and decisions should be depoliticised. However, there is a major change from that set out in section 4 of the 1976 Planning Act which provides that the chairman must be a serving High Court judge or a former Supreme or High Court judge. This arrangement, it is blithely said, is not being proceeded with and it is said that the Government now will appoint a chairman from among not more than three persons who have been selected as suitable by a selection committee. Where is the depoliticisation there? On the one hand we have claims by the Government that they are depoliticising the board but they propose to appoint the chairman from a short list that will be selected by a committee consisting of people who will be the effective nominees of various groups. Of course, these groups will be nominated by the Government. Where is the depoliticisation there?

I am sure that process of depoliticising will have to be taken a stage further to ensure that the President of the High Court, the Chairman of the General Council of County Councils, the chief engineering adviser of the Department of the Environment, the Chairman of An Taisce, the President of the Construction Industry Federation and the President of the Executive Council of the ICTU are depoliticised also. We will have lobbying in An Taisce, in the CIF and in the other groups. I am sure the chief engineering adviser in the Department of the Environment will not go against Government policy in the area of planning. I am sure that the President of the High Court will not like the fact that he will be a member of a committee to select the chairman of a committee that will be selected from a number of unnamed organisations. The depoliticising process here can be changed because the organisations to select the four ordinary members will not be named in the Bill but the names of the organisations will be placed before each House of the Oireachtas. That means the Government will go to organisations who can be seen to have an input in the planning process but, equally, will be organisations who will be asked by the Government to stand in on the selection process.

Harsh words have been spoken about An Taisce and I can see the reason for this. By their nature the members are, generally speaking, middle-class and are an urban group. If you have a nice middle-class background with a nice job it is easy to suggest that trees should not be cut down along a scenic route but if you have no job and no firewood and no prospect of being able to pay for firewood, you will see planning in a different light. In many instances I have great respect for the work of An Taisce but we must be quite frank about the fact that they are a pressure group on one side of an argument. If we get into pressure group politics so far as planning applications are concerned, we are on a slippery slope and once that happens it will be very difficult to get back to the hill again.

This Bill will pass through this House because we cannot stop it. However, I should have preferred if the Minister had the courage to come here and give us a list of the organisations who will be involved in the selection of the four ordinary members of the committee. Of course, the depoliticising process is taken a stage further because the Minister will appoint a fifth member of the committee.

From within the civil service staff.

I am sure that within that staff one could find a member who would be politically on the side of the Government as one could find a member of the engineering staff who would be politically on the side of the Opposition.

We would need to get the guidance of Fianna Fáil on that matter, having regard to their long tenure of office.

Within An Taisce there is a major debate as to whether it is proper for them to have membership of the committee of selection for the chairman and I am sure that when members of An Taisce hold their meetings throughout the country there will be an expression of this disquiet. They did not ask to be a member of the committee of selection for the chairman and I speak as a member of An Taisce.

You have done marvellous work in Kilkenny during the years.

We have done marvellous work in terms of reconstruction——

And conservation.

It is because of the valuable work of the council and the corporation that this progress has been made.

The Senator should not forget Mr. Gibbons in the Office of Public Works.

I will not leave him out. It is quite obvious that there is a difference in the west where one can see the grave need for the type of work that is being done by the ordinary county councils, when one sees the interests of the local people being over-ridden to a large degree by people who do not live in the area or indeed have very rarely been in the area. If I had a holiday home in Kerry or Donegal I should not like to see a cottage being built beside me. If one goes to Wales, one notes that the people there are rising against the invasion by weekenders into their countryside. Their concern is not so much for the countryside as for their weekend hideaways. When the people from the west criticise An Taisce they are referring to unjustifiable interference by them into areas into which they should not have ventured in the first place. Since the Minister will have the right to nominate the organisations who will, in turn, nominate the short list of members of the ordinary committee, surely this will not depoliticise the board?

There was a need to look at the whole area of planning but there was only a half-hearted look at it. It is a pity that we did not have a Bill which would incorporate sections 15 to 20 of the Bill and also look at the planning area in total to see if we could let local regional bodies decide planning appeals so that the whole process could be speeded up. I am very pleased that the board may dismiss appeals under section 26 of the Principal Act if the appeal is vexatious from many points of view and that, under sections 17, 18, 19 and 20, the process will be further speeded up.

I am sorry that the Minister allowed political considerations rather than those of planning to be taken into account in this Bill. It must surely be the first time that a leader of a political party which is, supposedly, on the side of the workers, introduced a Bill which has, as a deliberate policy, the unfair dismissal of people who have legitimate salary structures and stated working conditions. Under the Unfair Dismissals Act, employers are allowed, under certain conditions, to dismiss people. However, this Bill over-rules the Unfair Dismissals Act because it states there is a sum left in for compensation for people who will be unfairly dismissed. It will be very hard for a Labour Minister to sell this point to his trade union colleagues because it is one of the most important aspects of the Bill. It sets a precedent whereby a Minister can dismiss, unfairly, without giving any reason as to why they are being dismissed except that a new board is being set up.

There was a precedent.

It did not stop Deputy Collins from replacing the RTE Authority.

What about Commissioner Garvey?

The RTE board were dismissed because they refused to carry out the express wishes of the Government provided for under a section of the Act. This is a completely different situation, as the Minister well knows. The constitution of the present board has been mentioned and the fact that there is public disquiet because of the manner in which members were selected. Without naming those who were selected, it is clear they had expertise in the area of planning. One does not have to be an engineer or architect to have an opinion on what is good planning and what is not. What is good planning to one person may not seem so to another.

I know many people who walk around Mountjoy Square and say it was about time that those Georgian buildings were knocked down. They do nothing, aesthetically, for these people. Some people prefer buildings to have symmetry, others prefer them to be higgledy-piggledy. A higgledy-piggledy street is as pleasing to some as the conformity that was given to us in the late 17th and 18th centuries in Dublin. Dublin squares have no more or less to offer than the high streets of the older towns in Kilkenny. When planners get into the area of aesthetics, too often their view is not that of the people who live there. They have a feel for the area and their views should be listened to more than those of the experts. The organisations whose members are to be appointed to the board should have a substantial interest in the planning process. Inevitably, we will have the professional rather than the ordinary man's interest in the matter.

I agree that there has been public concern regarding the operation of An Bord Pleanála. However, public concern has not been about the constitution of the board or the manner in which they have constituted, but rather with delays. There is nothing in this Bill that will speed up the appeals procedure except for small sections which do not state they are going to make any major change, only that they will attempt to speed up the planning process. We believe there is a need for the overhaul of planning and development but we do not think this Bill will help to do this. Therefore, we cannot support the Bill.

I welcome the Bill and I wish to make a few brief comments on matters related to it. I condemn in the strongest possible terms the persistent attack by Fianna Fáil in the Dáil and Seanad on An Taisce. This attack has been reprehensible because they have attempted to find a soft target to cover their own antediluvian attitudes to planning. An Taisce comprises 7,000 people, nationwide, who have a particular interest in the environment and preserving it. We do not necessarily have to agree with every suggestion or proposal they make but we must accept they are serious about their business and that many of the things they have suggested over the years have proven to be beneficial at local and national levels.

It seems to me incomprehensible that in the latter part of the 20th century the main political party can condemn a voluntary organisation dedicated to preserving the environment and our heritage in the way that Fianna Fáil are now doing. Surely it is the right of the people, with an interest in this matter, to come together to form a legitimate lobby interest group — indeed this group are prescribed under the 1964 Planning Act — and to seek to preserve our environment and amenities. We have only to look at the damage that is being caused to our amenities and our environment in Dublin and indeed in Galway, which has figured largely in the debate there today, to see how necessary it is that An Taisce should exist, should have our support and should not be subjected to the kind of attack that they have been subjected to during the debates on this Bill.

It is also interesting to note that at a time when the economy and society generally are facing so many problems that at the end of a Dáil session the issue that Fianna Fáil chose to fight on and chose to filibuster about, is a relatively straightforward matter like the re-constitution of a planning board. They professed concern here today in several speeches about other issues. They asked why the Government had chosen to bring this Bill before the Oireachtas at the end of a Dáil session. Yet this was the issue about which they picked to create obstruction and chaos in the Dáil during last week. I believe the reasons for this are pretty obvious to all of us who wish to know them. I will not elaborate on them today.

What is involved in this Bill is fairly straightforward. It is simply introducing legislation which will create a planning board which is fair and seen to be fair on one hand and which has within it the relevant and essential expertise. The process for selection and appointment seems to me to be as democratic as one could conceive in the circumstances. Surely any fair-minded person will agree that it is better to take the decisions of the planning board or the responsibility for appointing the planning board out of the hands of politicians because of the magnitude of the decisions which this board frequently has to take and putting the selection of a pool of members for that board into the hands of people with varied interests which are beyond party politics. That seems to me to be the simple objective of the Bill. It seems to be a laudable one.

I do not think the need for this Bill would have arisen at all if Fianna Fáil had not chosen more or less to double the membership of the existing board in the days immediately before they left office in June 1981 and December 1982. That action, whereby the then Minister appointed first three and then two more persons to the board, after his Government had been defeated, created disquiet in the public. It created a feeling that something was not quite right. It was precisely because those actions were taken that it became necessary to reconstitute the planning board so that it would be seen to be a board which acted fairly and in a manner which people could trust.

We have heard all kinds of arguments thrown up by Fianna Fáil as to why they oppose this. They suggest that the Bill is being rushed through. The Bill, as I understand it, was debated for a minimum of 20 hours on Second Stage in the Dáil, which is a very long time by normal standards for debate on any legislation. It was published at the end of May, as I understand it, and not debated until the end of June, which again was quite normal and gave adequate time for an Opposition party to consider its contents. The reason the guillotine was put on was quite simply because Fianna Fáil decided to filibuster on Second Stage, not to deal with the Bill or its contents but rather to waste time so that in the end any serious Government had to say that they had had enough of the nonsense, they had a legislative programme to put through.

Proceedings in the other House should not be discussed here.

As far as time is concerned in this House it is the view of the Government side that the Opposition can have as much time as they wish to have to debate this Bill. Time is not the problem. That kind of smokescreen is seen through by the public for what it is. It is an attempt to cover over the real objections which the Fianna Fáil Party have to the re-constitution of this board.

It has also been suggested that the real problem with An Bord Pleanála in the past has not been the size of the membership of the board but rather the shortage of staff at technical level to support the board. There possibly was some truth in that in the past. The Minister and the Minister of State have taken action to rectify that over recent months.

It is curious that the board did not seem to be very committed to the idea of increasing their staff, as far as one can tell, over recent years. It is also curious that at a time when they now suggest they were short of technical staff the then Minister chose to appoint more members to the board rather than to appoint the technical staff which some members of the board and some Opposition Members say is what they really needed. The reality is that Fianna Fáil simply object to the notion that the planning board membership appointment system has now been taken out of their hands in the future as it has been taken out of the hands of this Government now. That is something which will be seen in the future as having been a significant development, particularly when one bears in mind that the membership of this board are full-time executive members with salaries of £19,000 per year, who are expected to do a highly professional full-time executive job. It is not a normal board where there are part-time directors paid £500 per year, or whatever, who serve at one meeting per month. This is a full-time executive board who are expected to have skills, talents and commitments beyond what one normally expects in semi-State bodies or whatever. It is appropriate that this should be taken out of the hands of political patronage and should be put into the hands of the people, which is what the Minister is attempting to do in this Bill. I commend the Bill and support it wholeheartedly.

I honestly believe that this legislation is unnecessary. If the existing board have not been functioning as we wish it is because of the staffing problems and all fair-minded people will concede that. This is generally realised. In the past year or so, we had a series of changes, fees, withering clauses and this seems like another piece of ad hoc legislation. The board are a relatively short time in existence and I feel that in all fairness they should be given a longer period. Indeed, even if it were considered necessary by the Government to bring in this legislation I feel, as Senator Lanigan said, that an opportunity is lost to undertake a comprehensive reform of the planning legislation. It would be of greater importance, I believe, to take more time to try and re-codify the Planning Acts, 1963, 1976, 1982 and, now, the 1983 Act, together with three or four sets of regulations, the main set being in 1977. We had also quite a considerable number of Statutory Instruments. An unfortunate feature of this legislation is that the public may feel that in response to a whim new legislation is jerked off now and again creating a statutory maze in the area of planning. It would be far more important to complete, adopt and bring into use the building regulations which have been in circulation for quite some time.

I am not aware of any widespread public concern such as has been mentioned. Last Sunday week on RTE radio Mr. Justice Pringle, who was the first chairman of the board, stated that on the whole the board had worked well for the first five years and that their membership consisted of five and himself. There was some trouble as regards staff. The Act provided for the board to have their own staff but for an interim period the Department of the Environment would assign staff. Unfortunately, that position still obtains. The staff are all civil servants and, consequently, not entirely under the control of the board. The board felt that they could not make any drastic changes considered necessary because the staff were all employed by the Department. According to Mr. Justice Pringle, this was partly the cause of delays in giving decisions. In those early years decisions were made reasonably expeditiously, the board always trying to reduce the backlog. The difficulty was twofold: the number of appeals increased by 25 to 30 per cent and staff decreased owing to cutdown by the Department on filling vacancies. As an example, one inspector left and was not replaced. Mr. Justice Pringle said that inspectors are the key people in the whole administration of the board. When the board were set up in 1977 there were 19 inspectors and at the end of last year there were only 14. This is very serious. Notwithstanding all efforts of the board, they could not get the requisite number of inspectors and this caused considerable delays. The Judge thought it was important to have a civil servant familiar with planning procedures that took place formally in the Department. They had originally a civil servant in this capacity. It was important also to have professionals such as an architect and an engineer as obtained in the beginning. He did not believe that it was necessary to have ten or nine on the board as at present but he would like to see a judge or an ex-judge continued as chairman. He felt that the Government were not justified in dismissing the existing board and bringing in the new legislation. In his opinion the fact that alleged suspicions have arisen does not justify the dismissal of the entire board, even if this is legal, and he would not express an opinion about that. He agreed that the planning process could have been improved without going to the length of dismissing the entire board.

Two aspects are important. Firstly, the staffing requirement situation should be regulated as provided by section 10 of the 1976 Act. Also, provision should be made for promotion within the staff. Secondly, the numbers of inspectors should be increased as necessary. These arrangements would speed up the decision process. The board cannot make decisions on appeals until reports come before them.

With regard to change possible within the structure of existing legislation the Honourable Mr. Justice Keane read a paper The Planning Acts: Do They Work? to the National Planning Conference in April this year. I will quote two paragraphs. He said:

Again looking at the planning fear from a lawyer's point of view the next area on which one inevitably focuses is that of appeals to An Bord Pleanála. I do not think it would be right for a judge to express any view on some at least of the controversies which have recently arisen in relation to the Bord. I think, however, one can usefully point to certain aspects of its operation in respect of which changes might reasonably be made which would be conducive to the common good. In the first place, there is the question of the publication of inspectors' reports. I believe that the publication of such reports, even on a selective and limited basis, would be helpful for a number of reasons. In particular, it should enable prospective appellants to assess with much greater confidence the likelihood of an appeal succeeding, if they were aware of the general approach adopted by the Bord's inspectors in relation to similar developments. This would not only be in ease of the public generally in whose interests the Bord is after all there to serve, but might also have the incidental benefit of strangling at birth a number of appeals which might be clearly identified as hopeless and thereby reducing the backlog of cases and speeding up to that extent the Bord's operations. I am aware of the reservations that have been expressed as to the desirability of allowing publication in every case; but if the Bord were to adopt the salutary practice of publicising a selected number in each year, I do not think that serious objections could be raised and, as I have said, the consequences could well be advantageous to all concerned.

Another useful change in the Bord's procedures would be, I believe, if the Bord were to avail of the power, which so far as I know they have never yet exercised, of sitting themselves if necessary, in divisions for the hearing of appeals and references of major significance. My late and lamented colleague, Mr. Justice Eamonn Walsh, in the second edition of his book on planning and development law, which I am currently editing for publication, observes that there are again practical difficulties so far as such a step is concerned. I am not convinced, however, that the practical difficulties cannot be overcome; and again the consequences could only be advantageous. The Bord is inevitably in danger of becoming an anonymous and faceless body, part of the apparatus of bureaucracy with no contact with the individual citizen, if it conducts its oral hearings solely through the medium of inspectors. Moreover, from the point of view of the Bord members themselves, it could well be a helpful experience to be directly in touch through the medium of such hearings with the public in general; and such an exposure to the public could well have a beneficial effect on the Bord's approach to the determination of sensitive appeals.

I would welcome the decision to make available the inspectors' reports to the parties concerned. Availability of these reports will minimise the possibility of errors. With regard to the composition of the board it seems to me that, provided the numbers are competent and reasonable people, there should be no reason to question their capacity to fulfil satisfactorily the functions which membership entails. The important element in the process is the inspectorate and, with professional competent inspectors the function of the board would be mainly a rubber-stamping exercise. In this respect a strong case could be made for a senior or supervisory grade of inspector with special qualifications to ensure that the recommendations would be examined and sanctioned before being submitted for consideration by the board.

An area of planning which is causing concern is the situation with regard to section 4 permissions. Section 4 of the City and County (Amendment) Act, 1955, was brought in prior to the introduction of the Planning Acts to strengthen the councillor's position in relation to the executive function of the council as exercised by the county manager. While misuse of this power is regrettable, I feel it would be a serious mistake to reduce in an arbitrary way the already pared down functions of the elected representative. I say this despite the fact that section 4 gives people who have not the required professional expertise the right or power to make a decision against a line of technical advice. At its lowest level it is a waste of time and finances to get reports, sometimes complicated and time-consuming, from architects, engineers and medical officers, among others, and then ignore them. It is costly and in addition is may stifle progress with development plans and all that this entails.

An appeal may be made by a third party — for example, the manager or a member of his staff — against a decision to grant a permission but this causes considerable expense and, perhaps more importantly, a rift which damages the proper relationship that should exist between the manager and the public representatives. However, as the City and County (Amendment) Act pre-dated the 1963 Planning Act it must be presumed that the Legislature was aware of the rights of elected members under the 1955 Act. Further, the procedure to be adopted with regard to section 4 permissions is set out in section 39 of the 1976 Act.

The misuse of this power is not widespread. It is, at the same time, of such concern that An Taisce carried out a study completed in March this year which stated that clearly the procedure is open to political manipulation. The study included a number of recommendations received from county planning officials. I am sure all of these will be carefully considered. One of the recommendations was mentioned by Senator FitzGerald when he said that all permissions granted under this section should automatically go to An Bord Pleanála.

I am all in favour of giving more power to councillors and not taking away any of their existing powers. It should be possible to make statutory provision to involve public representatives in the examination process of a planning application. This is not possible at present. A greater opportunity for the involvement of elected members would remove the temptation to use the section 4 procedure since they would be a party to all decisions. They have an input at the development plan stage. The Minister said last April at the National Planning Conference that he was sorry that more people did not involve themselves and use the opportunity to exercise their rights in this way. I share that view. He promised guidelines and said the objective would be to achieve properly planned development within the life of the plan. The plan will incorporate only proposals which can reasonably be expected to be completed within the lifespan of the plan. This will involve considerable co-operation between the local authorities and the Government.

The Minister will recall another conference on urban renewal addressed by a Swedish expert who explained how in his country they set about renewing portions of a city. The people from the area are invited to a meeting and asked to make suggestions; there is then a certain input by the professionals and they come back to the people with the plans. In this way proposals for renaissance and development are built up from the bottom, not imposed from the top as is the case here. In considering planning applications the officials must keep to the criteria for the proper planning and development of the area.

We have heard other speakers talk about the process of depoliticisation and I would agree with that suggestion if what they mean is that it should be taken out of the area of party politics or away from unfair political influence. It would be wrong, however, to dehumanise the system because it is all about people. They are the important element. There are some areas where everyone's hands are tied — for example, where the county development plan precludes the building of houses along main roads. We have all experienced these problems and we realise that it is not possible to make an exception without jettisoning the whole plan. There are other areas where the hands of the officials and planners are not completely tied.

I believe that in one county permissions under section 4 have become a problem due to septic tanks. Some research could be done into this matter. Septic tank regulations are fairly strict in regard to percolation. Senator Lanigan has pointed out that people like to build in their own area and it seems unfair that they should be unable to obtain permission due to the unsuitability of the soil. There might be some sense in exploring the possibility of small, inexpensive treatment works which use an alternative system to that of the septic tanks and a different method of disposal. Oxidisation would solve the problem. Such a solution would eliminate these section 4 problems.

Desmond Roche in Local Government in Ireland quotes Baroness Sharp as follows:

Planning policies depend more on political than on technical objectives and they are always in a state of evolution. Planning is essentially a service rather than a science in its own right.

We know that An Bord Pleanála in addition to deciding on appeals in planning cases have the duty of adjudicating on a range of other items under the 1963 Act. These include references on questions of exempted development, demands to remove or alter hedges, tree preservation orders, conservation orders, creation of public rights of way, running cables, wires and pipelines over private land, licensing petrol and oil pumps, vending machines, advertisement signs on or along public roads. This last mentioned power has been extended by the 1977 regulations to include cellars and other underground structures, such as private tunnels under roads. An Bord Pleanála is also the appeals body for the licensing system operated under the Local Government (Water Pollution) Act, 1977.

In a publication entitled Twenty Years of Planning, which is a review of the system since 1963 and published by An Foras Forbartha in March of this year, the appeals system is covered briefly. It stated that there are areas of appeals procedure which are not working satisfactorily. The length of time taken to issue appeal decisions and the absence of a time limit on the making of decisions are a source of severe disquiet. There was a steady improvement in the length of time taken to give a decision between 1977 and 1981 but since then the position has deteriorated. It states that in making a comparison with planning authorities it must be remembered that these do not have the same volume of paperwork to process as An Bord Pleanála. The High Court decision that the grounds of appeal need not be furnished when lodging the appeal has further complicated the process as frequently both local authorities and appellants are slow to provide the material relevant to an appeal. Uncertainty as much as length of time is a cause of common concern to developers and individuals.

A straightforward kitchen extension could take a year to decide, yet an application for a housing estate could be decided in three months. Delays caused by third party appeals can result in considerable costs which are incurred by developers alone and not by both parties. A request for an oral hearing can be genuine or merely a stalling tactic. A refusal leads to further delays if an appeal is made to the Minister to direct An Bord Pleanála to hold an oral appeal. Being aware of this An Bord Pleanála frequently grant such requests to speed up the process.

The allegation of blackmail by third party objectors has been made in Irish business where, in many instances, objectors wish to benefit financially or otherwise at the expense of the applicant. This is hard to prove but the number of appeals judged to be vexatious is extremely small. There was none in 1977 or 1978; 14 in 1979; 13 in 1980 and ten in 1981. There are many people who feel this does not reflect the true position. The right of an individual to object to proposals by a developer which could damage his home or environment is an important part of the democratic process of public participation.

Under this Bill provision is made to appeal a condition. This is a new departure. Previously once an appeal was made it had the effect of starting the process from scratch again. As it will help to reduce delays in building work it must be welcomed but it has other implications. The good feature is that where a condition is appealed it need not hold up the project. Work can start in many cases and continue while awaiting judgment on the appeal. The bad aspect as far as the planning authority is concerned is that it places the applicant in a situation where he would have a choice. In many cases a permission might not have been given were it not for the inclusion of a vital condition. Where an appeal succeeds in such a case the intention of the planning authority would not be sustained.

Reference was made to the Joint Committee on Building Land. Will this Bill come under their terms of reference? Section 4 states that it is the general duty of the board to ensure that appeals, references and other matters with which it is concerned are dealt with as quickly as possible. "As quickly as possible" is a rather undesirable way of providing for these appeals. A time limit should be put on the appeals. Section 5 deals with the procedure for the election of the chairman. The chairman of the council of An Taisce is one of those who will be concerned. I have the greatest respect for An Taisce. It is a voluntary organisation and they do a very difficult job. It is inevitable that they will come into conflict with public representatives on occasion. I saw in the newspapers where there was criticism of An Taisce having this power when they will be a party to many of the appeals. The chairman's term of office is seven years and an outgoing chairman may be reappointed by the Government. Seven years is a long time, as is the period of five years for members. Perhaps that aspect could be considered.

Section 11 contains provisions regarding meetings and procedures of the board. Subsection (6) provides that a member of the board may not be authorised to determine any particular case with which the board is concerned unless it has first been considered at a meeting of the board. That seems to be a reasonable requirement and to be in conflict with item 23 of the schedule attached to the 1976 Act. Section 17 empowers the board to serve on the appellant a notice requiring him to submit grounds of appeal within a specified period. In the event of non-compliance the appeal will be regarded as having been withdrawn. A time limit should also be set regarding the giving of information by local authorities.

Section 19 will make it possible to appeal a condition. I notice that under subsection (2) apart from considering the conditions appealed against, the board will be restricted to considering the proper planning and development of the relevant planning authorities area, including the preservation and improvement of its amenities, having regard to the provisions of the development plan and of any special amenity order relating to the area, the terms of any relevant previous planning provisions of section 26 (2) of the Local Government Planning and Development Act, 1963, and the provisions of section 24 (2) of the Local Government Planning and Development Act, 1976.

If people opt for that condition of appeal then they will lose out on section 14 (8) of the 1976 Act under which the proper planning and development of the area need not be taken into consideration.

Finally, the subsection in section 21 amends section 19 by increasing from £50 to £200 the maximum sum which the board may levy on a party to an appeal without consultation with the Minister, but even £200 seems a very small amount in this day and age.

The greatest challenge facing this House and the Government at present is the restoration of the people's certain belief in our democracy. In recent years there has been unfair critical comment about the Oireachtas — and this House in particular — about the courts and central and local government. In relation to the two latter, if we are to restore some belief in their operation and some faith in the people about how they function, it is extremely important that we tackle the operation and proper administration of our planning and development system.

It is unfortunate that speakers on the other side of the House have suggested a criticism, implied or otherwise, from the Government of the present Bord Pleanála. I do not think that there is any criticism of it. However, it is true that in recent years, because of events which I shall outline shortly, the people have withdrawn their moral support from the board. It is true that there is concern about its operation and about the manner in which recent appointments to the board were filled. In so far as this Bill attempts to remedy that situation and to ensure that An Bord Pleanála, once the Act becomes operative, will discharge its functions in an efficient and proper manner, it must be welcomed. It must be welcomed because it makes a very serious attempt to try to restore the faith of the people in our democracy, operating at local and central government level and through the correct administration of the Planning and Development Acts.

Again, it is extremely unfortunate for our democracy that the Opposition in this House and elsewhere have adopted the attitude to the Bill which was apparent today. It was extremely damaging to our democracy that there should have been a walk-out in the other House. History will judge perhaps too fairly the approach of the Opposition in the other House to this Bill simply because they will be deemed saved by the operation of the guillotine.

I have also been amazed at the critical comments on the speed with which this Bill was rushed through the other House and at allegations that the Bill is again being rushed through this House. That is a very peculiar criticism, bearing in mind that one of the reasons which necessitated this Bill was the filling, with tremendous speed, of appointments to An Bord Pleanála. The Minister for the Environment on Second Stage in this House today made reference to the fact that appointments were made by an outgoing Government on 29 June, 1981 — the day before they left office — when three new members were appointed to An Bord Pleanála. Those appointments can be criticised because they were made after a general election, after the people had said no to that Government and had indicated their preference for another Government. That is why I said earlier that An Bord Pleanála has, in great measure, lost the moral support of the people.

Again, we had a similar performance in December, 1982 — a few days before a Government were to leave office — when two additional members were appointed to the board. Again, the appointments were made by a Government which had lost a general election and the political support of the people. The effect of those appointments was once again to allow, with justification, the people to withdraw their moral support for An Bord Pleanála. In saying that I am not criticising the board as such, or the members of the board, or successive chairmen of the board. They became unwittingly victims of circumstances. They became puppets on a political string, and the unfortunate thing was that they they did not see that. The good thing is that we now have a Government who realise that a vital element in the administration of planning and development has lost moral support and are determined to remedy that situation. I see this Bill as a very definite measure in that direction.

It is extremely unfortunate that statements have been made in this House today and elsewhere to the effect that in the event of a change of Government occurring the first thing which will happen is that the members to be appointed to An Bord Pleanála under this Act will immediately be dismissed. I believe passionately in our democracy, in our form of Government, in our political parties and in the political process. The reason for our being in this House today debating this and various other issues is because Governments are formed on the basis of the popular poll, decisions are taken and accepted. If politicians who are not in Government make decisions and statements of that nature, that whatever decision is taken by the Government of the day will immediately be upset on another day, that is extremely dangerous to democracy and I resent and regret it very much.

Reference has been made also to the operation of our planning at local level in relation to the section 4 procedure. I come from a county — County Mayo — within which the operation of section 4 has been criticised by many. I am a member of a very small local authority, West-port Urban District Council, but an authority which considers a tremendous number of planning applications. It covers the third largest urban area in County Mayo and is one which is rapidly developing. As a member of that authority — it consists of nine members evenly divided between the political parties with one very excellent independent member — I am delighted to say that in four years of membership of that body we have had occasion to introduce only one section 4 motion. We did so because we were acting responsibly and, as we believed, in the municipal interest. I do not think ultimately that the officials disagreed with our attitude on that matter.

I believe absolutely in democracy at local level and that local councillors must have the power to determine certain matters. The reason for section 4 being inserted in the 1955 Act was to ensure that local councillors had certain powers. In the exercise of any power, however, whether it be at Government or at local level, that power must be exercised in a responsible and constructive way. In so far as councillors exercise the section 4 procedure in a constructive and responsible way, I applaud them. However, in so far as it is exercised in a destructive, irresponsible and parochial way, that kind of behaviour cannot be condoned in any way.

One must also look at the operation of our planning and development at national level and I am proud to be the supporter of a Government which in 1976 took the first major step to depoliticise the planning procedure. For some peculiar reason that word has come in for a lot of criticism here today. If it is properly used nobody can criticise it. In 1976, after 13 years of the operation of the 1963 Act, we removed planning appeals from the most political place of all, namely the office of the Minister for the Environment in the Custom House. We did so for a number of reasons. First, because at that time the Irish people had withdrawn their moral support for planning appeals being determined by a Minister. I am sure they were determined properly, but many people did not believe that. Secondly, because the workload was onerous and increasingly heavy on the Minister and his Parliamentary Secretary. At that stage, we established An Bord Pleanála as a non-political body. The other side of the House and all commentators agreed that they worked extremely well for their first four or five years of existence. They discharged their obligations. They discharged their workload reasonably expeditiously and, within the constraints imposed on them they met with very little criticism.

The problems of An Bord Pleanála arose when appointments to the board were made in 1981 and 1982 in the manner I mentioned, which led to the withdrawal of support from the board. I am amazed that the argument about depoliticisation has not been accepted by Members of the Opposition in relation to this Bill. The Minister's powers in the Bill are very few. First, under section 4 he has power to see that the board carry out their statutory functions in an expeditious and proper manner. Under that section he has power to ensure that periodic reviews of the operations of the board are carried out.

That is extremely important because at the end of the day the Minister is responsible to the Irish people. If they are concerned about delays, or that public schemes are being held up due to the malfunctioning of the board, or that the board are not discharging their functions in a proper way, the Minister has power to call in the board, to consult them and see that some remedial steps are taken.

The second power the Minister has under the Bill is to consider nominees for appointment as chairman of the board from the bodies who have power to suggest people for appointment. I am surprised that the bodies specified in section 5 should come in for criticism from the Opposition. The six listed bodies are representative in a very broad way of people of Irish life with the knowledge to make proper appointments. Senator Lanigan referred to the fact that the President of the High Court might be an unwilling member of this board of selection. He did not refer to the fact that any of the specified bodies or individuals can opt out. The Minister also has power to make regulations as to the proper functioning of the board. That is proper.

The new board which the Bill proposes to set up will be established as an absolutely independent board. Members will be independent of political interference in their appointments. Section 4 imposes on the board a general duty to behave in a way which will ensure continued confidence. It is good to have such a statutory duty imposed on the board. That is a welcome departure. It will help to ensure the continuation of credibility and confidence, and it will ensure that the board will respond to what the Irish people want.

Section 6 deals with the position of the chairman. Reference has been made to the fact that the chairman does not necessarily have to be a judge of the High Court. The Minister has been criticised for that. I am quite amazed at that criticism. The involvement of legal people in various tribunals, committees and boards in the past has led to an amount of criticism on the basis that they tend to run these bodies in too legal a manner. It is important that the chairman of this board should have administrative qualities. He should have a knowledge of planning and development and a knowledge of local government. It may not be possible to find all those qualities in one High Court judge.

Some people suggested that the terms of office of seven years is too long. I disagree. A seven year term is too short. Like the Director of Public Prosecutions the chairman of this board should be appointed until normal retirement age. That is the one fault I find in this Bill. If the chairman were appointed until normal retirement age, he would have greater independence in the discharge of his functions. In all other respects the Bill gives the chairman of the board powers and status similiar to those of a High Court judge. If he had a work span until normal retirement age, this would remove from him the fear in his fifth and sixth year that he might not be reappointed at the end of his seventh year. That might create a certain lack of confidence. This should be examined. He should operate as the DPP operates.

The section also refers to disqualification from becoming chairman or a member of the board. There are references to the European Parliament, the Oireachtas and the local authorities. I want to raise again the question I raised on the Housing Bill last week. Why are members of Údarás na Gaeltachta not excluded? I refer in particular to the elected members who, by and large, are political activists. They may not be members of local authorities. Experience in the one Údarás election held showed that those who were elected were politicians of one breed or another. They should be excluded. Perhaps this section was drafted by the same draftsman who drafted the section in the Housing Bill. It should be amended in this respect.

Another section which causes me a little worry — and I know this is a Committee Stage point but I trust the LeasChathaoirleach will allow me to make if briefly — is section 14 which relates to the prohibition on certain communications in relation to appeals. The section provides that it shall not be lawful to communicate with the chairman or ordinary board members for the purpose of influencing improperly the determination of any appeal. I do not know what improper influencing means. How do you distinguish it from proper influencing? Anybody who makes representations believes he is attempting to influence for proper reasons. What concerns me about the section is that there appears to be a statement of fact that such behaviour is not lawful. There is nothing in the section to state that such behaviour is an offence or that there is any penalty for the nonexisting offence. That creates a problem.

Criticism has been levelled at An Taisce and in my view it was unfair. We owe a lot to the preservationist organisations such as An Taisce and the Irish Georgian Society. Their work will stand the test of history and will be judged accordingly. However, those organisations have a duty to act with the utmost responsibility. It is extremely unfortunate and bad for Ireland that a sour relationship has developed between the preservationist organisations, the local authorities and local representatives. As an architect, and a person who is concerned about the preservation of our heritage, I say to the Minister that the duty lies with him to try to ensure that some modus is achieved between the two sides in this dispute. It is damaging for our democracy and the type of thing the Bill is trying to protect in its broadest sense. The Minister should get involved to try to bring these warring factions together. If that is done we will have achieved a lot. I welcome the Bill and I compliment the Minister, and his Minister of State, for getting the Bill before the House so quickly and, above all, for making a serious attempt to achieve among our people a belief once again in the planning and development process.

There is no justification for introducing this measure. The Minister has tried to justify its introduction by outlining the delays experienced by applicants for planning permission to An Bord Pleanála. The blame for this does not lie with the board but with successive Ministers who have failed to provide the necessary staff to enable the board to discharge their obligations and catch up with the backlog. The only motivations for the introduction of the Bill are political, to get rid of the board members appointed by a Fianna Fáil Government. The provisions of the Bill make only a minor contribution towards speeding up the decision-making process on planning appeals. One would have expected, particularly at a time when the building industry is in serious trouble and with many thousands unemployed, that the Minister would apply his talents and endeavour to restore confidence in an industry that is so important to the economy. It is not good enough to tell unemployed craftsmen that the Government are tackling their problem by taking planning out of the political arena. The Bill will not provide one additional job in the building industry and it will not speed up the flow of decisions emanating from the board because unless additional administrative and inspectorate staff are appointed the new board will face similar problems to the existing one.

The Government favour the restoration of power to elected representatives in the interest of preserving democracy but the Bill proposes to do the opposite, to shift that power to sectional and nondemocratic elements in society such as An Taisce, the executive of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and the Construction Industry Federation. Is the Minister afraid to give power to the politicians in the planning arena at a time when the Government are trying to restore power in other areas? Is it any wonder that the media and others belittle and smear politicians when the Government and the Minister do not trust them in this sensitive area of planning? We are witnessing the demise of the old planning appeal board. They are being sacked but their only crime is that they were appointed by a Fianna Fáil Government. They have not been found guilty of any misbehaviour and a statement outlining the reasons for their removal has not been placed before the Dáil or Seanad as required by the 1976 Act. Natural justice surely requires that they be given reasons for their sudden departure. That departure was so sudden that the Government found it necessary to use the guillotine to rush the legislation through.

Legislation such as this which introduces a new principle for the establishment and functioning of State boards should be debated adequately in the Houses of the Oireachtas. Such legislation should not be rushed through until every line of each section is teased out. Have we reached the stage when on resuming office an incoming Government will be obliged to get rid of members of State boards, and other public servants, regardless of their qualifications, who were appointed by an outgoing administration? That would be a retrograde step. It would erode still further the power of elected representatives and transfer it to outside vested interest groups. I am pleased that Fianna Fáil have adopted as part of their policy that if and when they are returned to office they will rescind sections 5 and 7. There is no need for this legislation and the Government would be better off applying their energies and talents to trying to solve our serious unemployment problem. The delay in dealing with planning appeals can be solved by additional administrative staff. That is the only way that problem can be solved. The legislation before us is merely to get rid of a board appointed by Fianna Fáil and it will not solve the problem of delays.

Senator Durcan, in the course of his contribution, mentioned appointments made by Fianna Fáil after the last general election. I should like to point out to the Senator that Fianna Fáil were not alone in this alleged abuse of power. If one goes back to the period after the general election of 1977 one will see that the outgoing Coalition Government made a number of appointments, including appointing defeated Fine Gael candidates to vacancies on State boards. They appointed a lay commissioner who was a defeated Fine Gael candidate and another appointment was made to the High Court. Those appointed have fulfilled their roles excellently but it would have been sad had the incoming Fianna Fáil Government abolished the Land Commission, or some other State board, simply because the Coalition had appointed their supporters. I worked with some of those appointed and I would not like to see them sacked like the members of An Bord Pleanála.

There is no need for this legislation and the Government should be applying their talents to the more pressing problems that the country faces. It would be better if they were trying to secure jobs for the many thousands of young people who are unemployed and are not able to find employment even for the summer months when they are on school holidays.

This is the third piece of legislation which has been introduced since the enactment of the 1963 Planning Act which has in many ways provided the framework for planning over the last 20 years and obviously now there is a need for radical change.

The reason put forward for the introduction of this Bill was to allay public anxiety with regard to An Bord Pleanála. I submit that the planning appeals system is only a part of that national problem. The Government have selected a midget for the hatchet treatment instead of addressing the whole area of planning law which is now obsolete and, in many ways, inoperable. It has become a slow, sluggish, inflexible, over-centralised instrument incapable of reflecting the needs of modern Ireland.

I regard the introduction of this Bill as a dereliction of duty which will not cure the low opinion the public have of planning. The public do not perceive this system as functioning properly. The people's perception has changed dramatically since 1963 when the major Act was enacted. At that time we were at the beginning of a major development programme. We were about to see major industrial and agricultural expansion. It is no wonder that, 20 years later, there is public anxiety about our planning laws and the people require that they be changed. Those 20 years have fashioned a new era. Horizons have widened and there is a greater community participation and understanding of the area of planning. This is very necessary.

Why is there so much disquiet? Planning is a sensitive and controversial instrument which can, in its implementation, add enormous value to land by rezoning it for development purposes. It can invade the privacy of an individual to meet the housing needs of another. No bord pleanála, however constituted, will change the competing and conflicting demands of different groups within society. As this sprawling city spills uncontrolled into the country, vast sums of additional value are added to huge tracts of land. No reconstituted bord pleanála addresses the questions of the pressures exerted on public representatives who find themselves in the middle of these conflicting demands. They can dominate council meetings and pressure groups, but in the end some individuals will have enormous sums in their pockets while unfortunate young couples looking for new houses face the additional cost. In what way in this modern Ireland, with these conflicting and competing demands, does this Bill, introduced in the dying stages of this session, try to look at and search for the answers to the questions I am raising? This unnecessary Bill does nothing to match the competing demands of job opportunities and new industrial developments with a clean environment. Unbridled agricultural development where major development can be executed without planning permission by taking it stage by stage and carrying out the work on a floor area below the exempt limits, can enable massive developments in four or five stages to be carried out.

If the planning authority knew at the commencement of some of these schemes what was envisaged, planning permission, although inevitably granted, would have enshrined in it conditions to protect the environment. I mention this point not only in planning interests, but in farming interests. I can visualise a situation developing with the Water Pollution Act and fishery interests where vast sums of money will have to be spent to cure inadequate planning where many people have carried out developments which will not stand the test of time and which can only be improved by the kind of funds which are not available to farmers, but which are necessary for the protection of a clean and free environment.

This Bill in many ways was a neat trick by the Government to out-manoeuvre Fianna Fáil and force a guillotine motion in the Dáil to cover their inadequacy in having no other legislation ready to be debated. This was an attempt to force Fianna Fáil to fight for the constitution of the existing Bord Pleanála and to create an impression in the public mind that we had an ulterior motive in keeping An Bord Pleanála as presently constituted. For most people who have had contact with this board, and in fairness to all members of the board, it must be said that they have operated on a non-political basis and have tried to carry out their functions to the best of their ability. The picture the public see is Fianna Fáil fighting to maintain a structure which gives them access to decision-making processes which are denied to other political parties or to the Government. I emphatically reject that suggestion because it is not in accordance with the facts and is completely unfair.

The suggestion that the board could be manipulated in some way, without substantiating the facts, does no service to the political system. It is in essence a vote of no confidence by the Government in their capacity to select properly constituted State boards and groups to deal with sensitive controversial issues. It is almost akin to the parable of the pharasee and the publican with this Government, through a public relations network, seeking to portray the difference as regards integrity between Fianna Fáil and the Coalition.

I do not want to support or justify decisions of this kind taken by Fianna Fáil or by any Government. Where vacancies are created or filled in the dying moments of a Government they leave us something to be desired. This system has been operated by all Governments and, probably the greatest deluge of appointments by any outgoing Government was made by the 1977 Coalition Government, in which the present Taoiseach was Minister for Foreign Affairs.

No side has a monopoly of right and no side has a totally clear record. Having said that it must be admitted that in spite of the timing of some of these decisions, the appointments were successful. Through this political system of appointments we have an independent and incorruptible Judiciary. I know from my experience in the Department of Agriculture that one of the appointments made by the Coalition Government in mid-1977 in the interval between the general election and the time Fianna Fáil came into power was the appointment of a lay commissioner in the Land Commission. He was formerly a Member of the other House who was selected through the political system in what was and remains a sensitive, emotional area. That political system, with its inadequacies, produced a decision with which I would not agree. But the person appointed has served that office well in an unbiased way, and to the best of my knowledge has never tried to give advantage to one side or the other. Such has been possible over the years and should be in the future. In the final analysis decisions taken by politicians are subject to revision by the public. The people are the final judges and there can be no safer system.

I have endeavoured to illustrate that this Bill merely dabbles in the planning morass of today. Under the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act there are zoned areas in many of our towns and cities for exclusive industrial or housing development. We have sought to have a system of planning which would preclude industry from a housing area and housing in an area zoned as industrial. I am not trying to maintain that both developments are always compatible. But with the many new, clean industries, particularly those in the small developmental area, there is room for the two systems. That would have the effect of eliminating some of the chaos developing in our cities and larger towns with regard to traffic. The system of planning, as it has operated, has forced people to live in one area and work in another, regardless of their choice.

There has been reference to section 4 amendments. Always when there is reference to section 4 in this House or in the media it is done in a way that would indicate indiscriminate use of this power by all local authorities, whereas the abuse of that substantial power is confined to very few members of local authorities. In the final analysis it is the only instrument — however ill-judged at times — councillors have in dealing with over-rigid, out-of-date planning laws. Apart from necessary amendment of the 1963 Act — the lack of which inevitably leads to more appeals being lodged with An Bord Pleanála — I suggest that planning authorities might well establish a screening process whereby all interested parties would be brought together in an endeavour to find a solution and so avoid the necessity for further appeals. That screening process would minimise the difficulties and frustrations being experienced.

In North Tipperary County Council, where the county manager proposed refusing planning permission, matters were brought to light at the public forum which enabled him to change his decision and give planning permission. However, because of the statutory two months limit placed on local authorities, during which time they must take a decision in regard to a planning application, such decisions cannot coincide with council meetings. There is the necessity to have established a regularised screening process by which parties can be brought together to ascertain whether a different solution may be possible or whether an amended application would avoid the necessity for appeal. What I am saying here is based on the premise that very many of the appeals that end up with An Bord Pleanála are unnecessary because of the inflexibility of existing laws or the lack of a screening process which would operate at county council level so avoiding the necessity for decisions of that kind.

What do the provisions of this Bill do to remove the obligation on young couples to pay a huge contribution to development charges for water and sewerage — in some cases amounting to £800 — which completely offsets the value of the £1,000 new house grant? This constitutes a direct charge on development in housing and in employment terms. Different sets of criteria operating differently across the country with regard to planning leave local authorities boggling and county managers in a position in which local finances are so depleted that they must charge excessively while in a similar situation in an adjoining county the charge could be very different. In this connection it should be pointed out that where development commenced more than seven years ago no contribution is necessary, whereas in respect of a development which was commenced six years and 51 weeks ago the full charge can be levied. Of course there should be a different scale of fees applicable in these kinds of situations. Yet we nibble at the forest fire with a half filled bucket of water while an unused hose lies untouched beside a nearby river.

This frustrating situation is caused by a lack of interest in planning on the part of the Department. This is perhaps one of the most critical statements I have made in this House in relation to the Department of the Environment but I make it because I believe there is absolutely no interest in planning in that Department. If one looks at sanitary services, road development and housing development, one sees that a planning inspector will be sent from the Department to local authorities at regular intervals for discussion of plans, of finance available and all matters pertaining to those areas. What happens in relation to planning? Can Members of this House, members of local authorities, or people who have had experience of planning last remember when somebody from the Department of the Environment visited a local authority in relation to the planning process? This attitude is incorporated in this Bill in this way: in spite of an ever-increasing workload on An Bord Pleanála the number of departmental inspectors engaged in the production of reports necessary for the decision of appeals was reduced during the time that ever-increasing workload occurred. I feel that is in line with the official downgrading of planning.

The Minister referred to the delay in the building of certain schemes which arose because of what he called delays in the decision-making process by An Bord Pleanála. I can give the Minister an example of a private development of a fairly significant nature proposed in the town of Nenagh abandoned because of planning controls being exercised by the local authority. The delay there was not occasioned by An Bord Pleanála. In many instances it will be found that the planning application never reached An Bord Pleanála. I am not blaming the local authorities, who have to administer these planning laws in need of immediate revision. But the most frustrating thing about that decision was this: the local authority themselves planned a major housing development on a site adjoining that to which the private development referred but with a greater density of houses, But the local authority did not have any regard to the Planning Acts. The Government themselves, through local authorities and various Departments, can flout the planning laws and do, while at the same time refusing planning permission in respect of other developments unable to meet the criteria they have laid down for everybody except themselves. For example, if one is proposing to extend a house in a rural area in an isolated situation and if the floor area exceeds the exempted limit by two square feet, planning permission is required. Yet, a major development of the kind I outlined can pass virtually without notice.

The Minister referred to frustration and public anxiety. All of that stems from the roots but we are just cutting off the leaves. Ireland is a far different place today from what it was 20 years ago and we require a changed planning prescription. A more human face needs to be put on planning. Its provisions require greater flexibility, public awareness and acceptability. New laws on water pollution and wild life, together with more leisure, have heralded a greater awareness of our cultural, architectural and environmental heritages. Unless the changes that many of us consider necessary in this Bill are made, the same old problems will remain and the same public disquiet will persist. The main thrust of the Fianna Fáil argument is that more pressing problems in need of a solution are being ignored while the Government are introducing a measure of this kind. In so far as this Bill addresses planning problems, it reflects the paralysis and the barren outlook of this Government when they come to tackle problems on anything other than a superficial basis.

Planning has to be seen for what it is, a difficult and serious matter. I accept that it is an important matter in the city but when it comes to a rural setting different standards are required. That is one reason I have concern about the use of section 4. What is used as a section 4 case in one county would not be considered in another.

I am delighted that this new board will be set up and that it will be clear to all that people will not be appointed because of their political beliefs. I was appalled to hear a previous speaker say that one of the things Fianna Fáil would do on their return to power would be to repeal sections 5 and 7. If they do that, surely the obvious conclusion is that they want to make sure the matter is under political control and that they control it. I do not know if that is what Fianna Fáil mean but they cannot blame us for taking that meaning out of their statements.

It would be childish for any Government simply to insist on having their own way of appointing people when the President of the High Court, the chairman of the General Council of County Councils and the chief engineering adviser of the Department are being appointed to advise on the matter of the chairman. People have told me they will not appeal to An Bord Pleanála because it is too political. Whether that is true or not is probably immaterial: people think it is true and they have no faith in the board.

I am glad the question of appointing retired judges has been considered seriously. If the rest of the population have to retire at 65, I do not see any point in appointing people to the boards who have reached that age. I acknowledge that some people may be very active at 65 or 75 but what is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. There should be younger and more active people on the board who can devote their time to the work.

I welcome this Bill because it appears that politics is being taken out of planning. I hope that happens. Planning is a matter that concerns all citizens. People should not think that they must belong to a political party to get fair play. They should not think they have to know a Minister, a Deputy or a Senator to have their cases heard. Every appeal should stand on its own merits. I think that with this board appeals will be considered on their merits.

I consider this Bill to be unnecessary. The board were operating satisfactorily. There may have been delays but, as the Minister said, he is appointing additional inspectors and more staff. It is my view that would suffice instead of introducing a measure to disband the board and appoint a new one. I think the real purpose of the Bill is to disband the present board because they were Fianna Fáil appointees. People should be appointed on their merit. The Government have the right to do that and it is my view that the Bill is undermining democracy.

The Minister said that section 9 provides for the making of schemes by him for the payment of gratuities to former members. He said it would be inappropriate to go into detail in a public debate about the arrangements which might be made in relation to individuals but he assured the House that the intention will be to formulate provisions that will take account of the circumstances. I consider the Government will be going to unnecessary expense to pay the members who will be removed from the board. In the Irish Independent of 2 July it was stated that the taxpayers will have to pay a sum of £1,225,000. This is most unfortunate at a time when our economy is at a low ebb and when local authorities have not enough money to provide necessary services. This legislation is unnecessary and the existing board are capable of doing their job satisfactorily.

In the Bill there is provision for a committee who will appoint the chairman. The committee will consist of the President of the High Court, the chairman of the General Council of the Councils, the chief engineering adviser of the Department of the Environment, the chairman of the Council of An Taisce, the president of the Construction Industry Federation and the president of the Executive Council of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. This selection committee will put three names before the Minister but if the names are considered by him to be unsuitable from the political point of view he can refuse to consider them and ask the selection committee to submit a further three names. The same can apply to the appointment of ordinary members which is provided for in another section. Planning permission is always sought through local authorities and county councillors and elected representatives to county councils are always very helpful when problems arise. They are doing a good job in this respect. Deputy Skelly was like a terrier emulating an alsatian when he castigated members of local authorities and county councils. In a speech in the Dáil on 28 June 1983 he said, at Volume 344, column 674 of the Official Report——

You are not at liberty to quote at length from Deputies' speeches but I will allow you to make your point.

Deputy Skelly was referring to this Bill in the Dáil and I should be allowed to refer to it.

You cannot criticise him.

I will quote what he said and you can judge for yourself:

The standard on our county councils — I am speaking particularly of Dublin County Council — is appallingly low. The statements on the environment made by the Dublin Council make one feel ashamed. This applies also to statements made in the area of the arts where they have blundered and made asses of themselves. It is appalling that these people are elected to serve five years. The local authority elections are not taken as seriously as a general election. A county councillor can be elected quite easily and he does not have to account to his constituents for his actions. Why should any member of the public have to go to a county councillor and beg him not to do something atrocious? I had to beg county councillors not to put a dump between Chapelizod and Lucan — the first phase 132 acres, 25 feet deep.... Why should any member of the public have to go to one of these ignorant county councillors — I use that word, which is in the English dictionary, advisedly — and beg him not to commit an atrocious act on the environment or on the community? During the next year when these local elections are held I intend appealing to people to be careful whom they select and elect to a county council. In Dublin West where I come from we will try to retrieve some element of respect for our county councillors.

It is highly unusual to quote so much from a report of the other House.

I had a right to quote it.

We cannot have a slagging match between the Members of this House and the Members of the other House.

I have the highest respect for county councillors and I am sure members of county councils here feel the same. They are doing good work and are very helpful in planning and trying to ensure that people are fairly treated.

There is no need for this legislation especially in view of the fact that it will cost £1.25 million in redundancy payments when the board are dismantled.

I believe, like many others, that there was an urgent need for the Minister to review planning activities and I compliment him for grasping that nettle. I am sorry I interrupted Senator Kiely. Of course, we should not engage in slagging matches. However, that does not get away from the fact that planning is very important.

We have discussed at length the difficulties surrounding section 4 and it is clear that a number of councillors find it difficult to resist the pressures put upon them to sign. This is perhaps the greatest weakness in the system, and I should like to see the power of section 4 being taken from the members of local authorities. Planning must be taken seriously, not only for development but for conservation. I listened with interest to Senator Lanigan earlier. Kilkenny Corporation must surely be outstanding planners. It is a joy to see the detail and dedication which they bring to planning and conservation. Obviously, they also have the political will to put those plans into operation. I hope the Minister in his review of this legislation will be able to take a very strong line because we owe it to those who come after us to preserve all that is best in our environment. Does the Minister consider that the time given to the board to consider appeals is adequate? While I do not believe that decisions should be rushed, there should be some time limit imposed.

With regard to section 16, previous refusals should be taken into account, especially when vexatious appeals are being considered.

I welcome the Bill and support the Government in the difficult task they have of ensuring that planning and development will be given greater priority. I hope very clear-cut decisions will be taken by the people who have the task of adjudicating on the decisions. I do not subscribe to the view that because you are a member of a political party it takes from one's expertise, either from a professional or common-sense point of view. I hope that all the criticism of the Bill from that point of view does not herald a new era as far as appointments are concerned. In planning it is important that we should have independent and highly qualified people to carry out these difficult decisions which may infringe our neighbours' enjoyment of the environmeent.

There is absolutely no necessity for the introduction of this Bill. The Minister's stated reason is concern about the method of appointment of members of the board and the problems caused by delays in determining planning appeals. He further stated that the way in which the powers of appointment of the ordinary member has in practice been abused in recent times has led to a diminution of public confidence in the appeals system and in particular the circumstances surrounding some appointments, especially their timing, seriously affected the general public's perception of the board as an independent, unbiased tribunal.

I question very much if this is the real reason for the introduction of this Bill. I would like the Minister to point out to this House what he found wrong with the existing Bord Pleanála. They worked under specified structures and guidelines as set out and their deliberations were clear in their final analysis.

The board in existence at the moment was set up by a former Minister, Mr. Jim Tully, who was a member of a Coalition Government, a member of the Labour Party and a former TD in my own county. At that time many of us welcomed the setting up of An Bord Pleanála because we felt the Minister in question had made a mockery out of planning. I have been a member of a local authority for many years and many of us are still reeling from the effects of some of that Minister's decisions when he was Minister for Local Government.

I felt, as did many members of local authorities, that the 1963 Planning and Development Act should have been revised or scrapped entirely. In the early seventies, we had entered a stage when development, both commercial and private, had escalated. We felt that there was a justified and urgent need to take stock in real terms of overall planning and development in the entire country. If this had been done a more realistic approach to planning would have been taken and we would not now have the huge backlog of appeals referred to so often in the Dáil debate on this Bill. I ask the Minister if he does not feel even at this late stage that the Planning and Development Act, 1963 should be scrapped or revised in detail? All planning and development is based on that Act. In consequence of the 1963 Planning and Development Act each county prepares its own county development plan. It outlined the manner in which planning decisions were based for that particular county for a number of years. As each county made its own decisions those plans were revised at a given time yearly, two-yearly or every three years. I feel that the same criterion should apply to the 1963 Planning and Development Act as applies at county level.

This Bill when passed will, in effect, mean the sacking of an entire board without warning or with just a few weeks' warning. I feel we will set a precedent where any incoming Government can do likewise with any State board. This is a very serious matter. In the 1976 Act rules were laid down whereby members of the existing board could be dismissed if the need was found to dismiss them. I understand there was never any need to take action against any members of the board who have carried out their duties in an exemplary manner. This poses a very serious question. What is the real motive behind this Bill?

The board now proposed seem not to be representative of the views of the ordinary man in the street. I have been a member of a local authority for the past 17 years and I know that our job is to cater for all aspects of private and public development. We must protect the interests of the ordinary man in the street against vested interests of any kind. Furthermore, I can assert here that the political input in each county development plan has proved vital to the development of this State. I hope the Minister will not contemplate, when this Bill goes through, bringing in legislation that will debar county councillors from taking part in the preparation of county development plans. County councillors have, on the whole, played a major part in development. I sincerely believe that if it were not for the input of county councillors, urban councillors and corporation members, development at some stages would have gone completely out of hand and would certainly have been uncontrolled and invalid. Senator Kiely was right in saying that we take great exception to a remark made by a Member of Dáil Éireann concerning county councillors——

The Senator is not entitled to be critical of Members of the other House. That is an unwritten law here and it is up to me to uphold it.

I respect the Chair and I have no respect for the man who said it.

Nobody might agree with what he said.

The criteria for the establishment of this board should be a cause of grave concern to everybody in this House. Here we have people from selected groups who will be pursuing the interests of the areas to which they are attached and the general overall principle which should apply will be either lost or ignored. The principle to me is commonsense in planning. It is a sad day for democracy that the Bill was even concocted. From the Government point of view, it distracted the minds of the public for a few weeks from the real problems facing this country. If we are all here in 12 months time I would love to hear the genuine views of the people on the other side of the House when we are footing the bill to the tune of £1,250,000 for axing the present Bord Pleanála.

I will be very brief. First of all, I would like to welcome the Bill and to congratulate the Minister on the speed with which he dealt with the very urgent problems that needed immediate action in so far as public concern had reached a stage where appealing to An Bord Pleanála for planning permission was being treated in a very sceptical fashion. When we see how the Opposition have been wailing for the last couple of hours and indeed repeating what they said in the other House it reminds me very much of lambs having been weaned from their mothers in so far as now this overall body, with which they had a great affiliation one way or the other, has been disbanded.

I welcome the speed with which the Minister has dealt with it because now the people's confidence can be restored in a very important board. Many references have been made to the new composition of the board. In particular, unfair criticism has been levelled by the Opposition Members at An Taisce. An Taisce have been singled out among the others for an extreme amount of criticism because An Taisce saw fit to undertake a survey. The survey was undertaken throughout all the councils and planning authorities but my county was singled out. The antics of Senator Killilea in this House today might be new to many here but I have lived with this since 1976. He has been as vociferous in his attack on that body in Galway County Council as he was here in this House today. His rating, of which he says he is proud, in that league of proposing section 4s can be questioned. There are two sides to that question. On the one hand I deplore the abuse of section 4 in Galway County Council, but I respect the right of all local authority members to have that power. I hope it is not the Minister's intention to remove it from the local authorities.

Much of the criticism has arisen with regard to the undemocratic nature of many of these bodies. However, it is to be hoped that the selection committee will produce a board of experts at local authority level. Many of the people in charge of planning are engineers whose training is frequently insufficient to qualify them to reach decisions which are in the best interests of overall planning. Every council and every planning authority should have the opinion of a least two experts and both sides of every case should be investigated thoroughly. I ask the Minister to take into consideration the quality of the personnel involved in planning at all levels.

The Minister has seen fit to make the post of chairman a full-time appointment. It is important that this position should not be seen as a perquisite for services rendered in the past but as a full-time responsible job. We have heard much criticism of the planning laws. Local authorities have the opportunity of revising their development plans and removing many of the restrictions in the county development plan.

I welcome the Bill and hope that it will expedite planning decisions.

We are told in the Explanatory Memorandum and in the Minister's speech that this Bill has two purposes, firstly, the reconstitution of An Bord Pleanála and secondly, the amendment of the existing planning laws so as to enable certain classes of planning appeals to be dealt with more expeditiously. It would be much more accurate to state that the one and only purpose of this Bill is to enable the Government to remove from office or, as the Minister puts it, to terminate the appointment of all existing members of An Bord Pleanála. Under the existing legislation that would not be legally possible before December 1987 so the Government decided to introduce this Bill to enable them to do so forthwith. Perhaps one of the reasons the Minister is not prepared to wait until 1987 is that he realises his Government have no hope of surviving until then.

I will give the Senator even money on that.

The other provisions of the Bill which are stated to be for the purpose of enabling certain classes of appeals to be dealt with more expeditiously are nothing more than window-dressing or a cover-up for a really ruthless and unprecedented hatchet job. That is the only way in which I can describe what is proposed in this Bill. The Minister attempts to justify the removal from office of An Bord Pleanála. He implies that the 1976 Act left the appointment of the ordinary members to the absolute discretion of the Minister. There is nothing wrong with this because planning is a matter of the utmost importance for the whole community and it is not the preserve of any elite or sectional interest. The Minister stated that he wished to make it perfectly clear that he was not making any allegations against any members of the present board nor was he making any reflection on them, yet he refers to the tarnished system of appointment and that the nomination system would provide an assurance that appointments would be made from among qualified and suitable persons. Surely this statement implies that the existing members are not qualified or suitable persons.

The Minister also referred to the diminution of public confidence in the appeals system and the circumstances surrounding some appointments and the general public's perception of the board as an independent and unbiased tribunal. Such references could not be more denigratory as far as the present board are concerned and could not be interpreted as anything other than a serious reflection on every member of the existing board. The Minister stated that the provisions of the Bill are intended to restore public confidence in the appeals system. I suggest to him that it is impossible to maintain public confidence in any system if the very people who should be upholding and defending the system deliberately set out to undermine it. If there has been an erosion of public confidence in the present board and the present system, then the Minister and his colleagues in the Government and other vested interests outside have been responsible for this development.

The Bill provides for a scheme for payment of gratuities to former members. This has been referred to by other Senators. The Minister states that it would be inappropriate to go into detail in a public debate about the arrangements which might be made in relation to particular individuals. The figure of £1.25 million has been mentioned and the general public are entitled to know what arrangements are being made to pay gratuities to members of the outgoing board. We are living at a time of cutbacks and charges for services and the general public are entitled to be assured that any payments will be justified and will not be made simply because the Government are not happy with the board appointed by a Fianna Fáil Minister.

Section 5 provides that the new chairman will be appointed by the Government from among not more than three persons who have been selected as being suitable by a selection committee. The constitution of this committee is interesting. I would seriously question the desirability of having the chairman of An Taisce as a member of the selection committee. I say this because An Taisce are involved in more third party appeals to An Bord Pleanála than any other body or organisation. The general public will not perceive the new board as an independent and unbiased body as long as this is the case. It is hard to expect any individual whose planning application is appealed to An Bord Pleanála by An Taisce to accept that his case will get a fair hearing if he is aware that An Taisce have had a say in the appointment of the chairman of the board. He will have a further basis for his fears if, as seems likely, An Taisce will be one of the prescribed bodies for the nomination of ordinary members of the board.

I have no axe to grind in relation to An Taisce. I am a member of a local authority who have never used section 4 in relation to a planning matter. The only time An Taisce ever came in for criticism by Roscommon County Council was when I raised a matter concerning an appeal brought by An Taisce against a decision by the county council to grant planning permission to a farmer for the building of a dwelling house for himself and his family on his own land. Admittedly the house was to be in an area of scenic amenity overlooking a lake but the planning officials of the county council took all the factors into consideration and decided to grant planning permission to this individual. An Taisce appealed against it and this caused a considerable amount of distress and delay to the person involved. Before the appeal came to hearing it was withdrawn due to discussions at our planning committee meeting. It was obvious from the grounds outlined by An Taisce for their appeal that they had no local knowledge of the area and the action they took was not justifiable. That was the only occasion on which I criticised An Taisce and I am not criticising them now. Their aims and objects are very commendable and I suppose that every organisation will suffer criticism at some time, which I do not think should be resented too much.

This Bill is unnecessary and ill-advised and establishes a precedent which will have serious repercussions for years to come.

I wish to make a brief contribution. The last speaker said the Bill was unnecessary but I believe it is necessary for two reasons. Firstly, it is necessary to clear up public disquiet in relation to An Bord Pleanála. One of the principal factors which caused this disquiet was the appointment by two separate Fianna Fáil administrations in their dying days of five people to the board. The manner and timing of these appointments could not have had any effect other than to cause public disquiet. Secondly, there has been a totally unsatisfactory performance by An Bord Pleanála in processing planning appeals. The delays are inexcusable and they have affected jobs in construction. Building schemes with substantial employment potential have been held up and the backlog of planning appeals has increased substantially during the past few years. There is a crisis of confidence in relation to the functioning of An Bord Pleanála and the Bill will help to rectify problems regarding the appointment of personnel and the output of work from the board.

The Minister has explained the method of selection of the chairman and members of the board. He has spoken of a panel of nominating bodies who will compile a list from which the appointees will be chosen. I am concerned that every possible step should be taken to ensure the correct balance as between academics and the self-appointed planning exports on the one hand and the people of common sense on the other. When I refer to academics I am using an umbrella term to include people who have abstract theories as to what constitute scenic areas and so forth, particularly those who feel that a barren mountainside or a rugged coastline is in some way polluted if there is activity by the native population. We have self-styled planning experts. We must ensure there is a proper balance and that there are people with sound common sense on the board.

Often there are third party objections to the erection of a family home on a site which is considered scenic by people who are from outside the area. One would imagine a bush or tree would never grow again on the site. There have been far too many problems created in such cases by third party objections.

Much has been said about section 4 and the position in County Galway. I represent the Clare side of Galway Bay and, to some degree, can understand the frustration of members of Galway County Council. We on the Clare side would have been subjected to the same frustrations but for the fact that we have a good understanding between the planning officials, Clare County Council and the elected members. Only four section 4s were put down in relation to a planning matter during my nine years as a member of the council and only one ever came to a vote.

I was born on the north Clare coastline at the foothills of the Burren. I reject the theory people from outside the area subscribe to who believe that until the Burren is as arid and as denuded of people as the Arizona Desert it will not have reached its full beauty. People who say that believe they should protect and preserve our heritage. As far as I am concerned, if an area with natural beauty which once supported a thriving population is deprived of the means of retaining that population, then it has lost a vital element.

The Bill is necessary for the reasons I have stated. I hope it will speed up the process. The people appointed to the board must have one outstanding quality and that is common sense.

This Bill received a rough passage through the Dáil. We are somewhat more gentlemanly in this House——

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

And ladylike.

It is likely to get a somewhat easier passage here. However, the remarks made will be as valuable if not more so than those made in the Dáil.

I welcome the Bill. It is long overdue. Even those on the opposite side of the House must realise that a Bill to reorganise planning procedures was necessary.

When An Bord Pleanála was set up in 1976 I did not welcome it. I thought there should have been greater responsibility placed on public representatives to grasp the nettle and ensure that planning decisions were made for the betterment of the community. I still believe that. I know I will not get much support from this House or outside it but I hope the Bill will improve the position.

It is eight years since An Bord Pleanála was set up. I forecast that we will have another Bill reorganising planning procedures within the next eight years. I am not satisfied that the new board will be much better than the old one. One could say that the outgoing board was a failure. The Minister said that the backlog of appeals had increased to 1,595 in May this year. Instead of the Minister's predecessor appointing extra members to the board he should have undertaken a review of the board.

I do not think the new board will do the job it is supposed to do, although it will be an improvement on the old one. I would not be unhappy with the British system of dealing with appeals. They are dealt with mainly by Department inspectors but, in the final analysis, by the Secretary of State at the Department. We had that system for many years. There were many complaints but I do not care if we had St. Peter and a team from Heaven to deal with appeals on planning applications——

That would be sectarian.

It might be, but can any of us be sure what religion St. Peter was or what religion those he chose to take with him would be? Even if we had a team from Heaven there would still be complaints. No matter how perfect the Bill may seem to be I forecast that we will have another one within seven or eight years.

There was widespread public concern at the operation of An Bord Pleanála for many years past. Indeed, shortly after the board were set up in 1976 this concern became quite apparent and came from all sides. It has been voiced pretty loudly, particularly by members of Fianna Fáil in my area over the last few years. I am a little surprised at all the squealing that has gone on in the Dáil and here this afternoon from Members on that side of the House. That is entirely different from what I have been listening to from Fianna Fáil public representatives in my area over the last two to four years. One whom it is not necessary to name said as recently as six months ago "An Bord Pleanála will have to go". Those were his words at a public meeting. I do not think that Fianna Fáil are as surprised as they appear to be at the introduction of this Bill.

I feel sure that some members of that party were pressing the then Fianna Fáil Minister for the Environment to do something more constructive about it, rather than add to their difficulties and to the public concern by appointing extra members to the board within hours of his leaving office. Not only did he do this on one occasion but on a second occasion, to compound public concern. Whatever confidence the public had in the board was shaken by the appointment of in one case two and in another case three members to the board, both within hours of leaving office. It would appear to the public — although I am not saying that that was the reason — that that rush was to ensure that Fianna Fáil decisions were made when appeals were being dealt with.

The occasion of the passage of this Bill through the other House gave rise to some criticism of councillors in general, which is to be regretted. Public representatives at councillor level are the backbone of democracy. I regret that some Members of the House, and in particular one from my own party, used the occasion to castigate councillors throughout the country. The day that county councillors cease to exist, democracy will cease to exist. I hope that the Minister, the Government and successive Governments will give due recognition to the part being played by county councillors everywhere. Of course, you will get county councillors who do not measure up to the standards which I am painting of councillors, but the same can be said of any profession and organisation — that there will always be one or two, and perhaps more, who will be lacking. The vast majority of councillors over the length and breadth of the country uphold democracy and have made a contribution to our planning laws second to no other group of people.

I am concerned that the new board will not carry out as effectively as the Department of the Environment and the Minister at its head did for many years the job of dealing with planning appeals. While the Minister has outlined the number of bodies which he has put on a committee to suggest who should be chairman of the committee, giving him the option of the selection of one person from a panel of three, I am not satisfied that in the event of a resignation, or death, of a chairman, the position will be filled as quickly as the Minister would like. That could happen at this time of the year, when some of the people appointed to that committee are on holidays. Is it necessary, for instance, that the chairman of the county council's general council should be present at this selection of the three names, or that the chairman of the council of An Taisce should be present, or will a quorum be set? I hope the committee will not operate on a quorum basis, but that the three nominations for chairman of the new board will be selected with all the people present — I think six in all. If the quorum basis prevails, we could find ourselves in the position of a chairman having resigned or died at a time when one of these people named in the Bill would be on holidays and another going on holidays and it would be difficult to get the committee together. I know the Minister has made provision in the Bill to appoint a deputy chairman, but are the people going to be happy with that? The board would be working at one under strength, with the principal person, the chairman, not in the Chair. I would like to hear from the Minister in this regard on Committee Stage and I hope that there would be no delay in replacing the chairman.

The system of the existing board made it necessary for the Minister to appoint as chairman a serving High Court judge or someone who had served in that capacity — in other words, someone retired from the Bench. This was most unsatisfactory, as has been found during the period of the existence of An Bord Pleanála when it was found necessary, on at least one occasion, to appoint a judge specially in order to be able to appoint him as chairman of the board. That was a most unsatisfactory situation and should not have been allowed to continue for so long. I am glad we have at least got away from that and that the board have been brought back to manageable size. It was not made any easier for the board when the additions were made to it on two occasions by a Minister just about to leave office. That complicated matters for the board and the number of appeals awaiting decision seemed to rise more rapidly.

I am sorry that a Bill of this nature to improve the appeals procedures was not brought before the House many years ago. Now that it is here we should let this stage go through as quickly as possible and get onto Committee Stage on which no doubt we will have many questions to raise with the Minister and I am sure he will be able to give us greater clarification of what is in the Bill.

I should like to thank Senators who took part in the debate. Many points were raised which are matters for consideration in a general planning review. Such a review is taking place in the Department at present.

I have to refute any suggestion that the Bill was rushed through, as Senator O'Toole and others suggested. It was presented to the Dáil on 30 May and some 20 hours were devoted to the Second Stage discussion. The Second Stage debate on the Bill which became the 1976 Act took only seven hours in that House, and that Bill dealt with far more fundamental matters than the transfer of functions from the Minister for Local Government to An Bord Pleanála. Senator O'Toole also spoke about the possibility that the removal of the present board might be unlawful in some way, or perhaps even unconstitutional. I have consulted the Attorney General about matters such as these, and I have been advised that no question of unconstitutionality arises.

As to the reasons for the removal of existing members, Senator O'Toole seemed to be determined to tempt me into making spectacular allegations about these people. In my opening remarks I went to some trouble to make it clear that I was not making any allegations about individuals, but that their removal was necessary to facilitate a reconstitution of the board which I consider to be essential. I see no point in repeating my opening remarks. Senator O'Toole went on to speak about the procedures within the board's organisation and suggested that the board were not responsible for delays of more than a week or two. I cannot say from the information available to me what time it takes a board member to dispose of any file, but I know from the figures supplied by the board that the total number of files with board members in recent months did not support his contention. It seems the average time files have remained with the board would be nearer to two months than what was suggested by Senator O'Toole.

Senator O'Toole also spoke about the procedures of the board and the factors which he alleged were giving rise to delays. He said in effect that the board had no control over these matters. The board are a full-time board with salaries of over £19,000 per person. Currently there are seven ordinary members and, in the recent past, there were up to nine ordinary members. It has always been regarded as the responsibility of the board to see to it that all possible action is taken to eliminate delays and to modify procedures and redeploy staff as necessary.

It is not the function of a board member or of the board to sit in their room and wait for the files to walk in the door. The board members are appointed to run An Bord Pleanála and the appeals procedures. If the picture painted by the Senator were true, it would be a real indictment of the board. Senator O'Toole further outlined how up to a year's delay could occur in the processing of an appeal. He misled the House and I will now give the facts based on the figures supplied by the board. The average delay by local authorities in supplying the necessary documentation to the board is not three months. The figures supplied to my Department by the board show that, at the end of April, there were approximately 3,600 appeals before the board, and documentation outstanding from local authorities amounted to fewer than 400 of these cases. The average delay involved in the receipt of local authority documents could not be three months in the circumstances.

Another allegation made by Senator O'Toole was that delays were caused by a shortage of inspectors. For the past three years there have been 15 full-time professional staff serving with the board and the total output of those inspectors has increased slightly over the period. We must contrast this with the performance of the board. In 1980 with a four member board for five months, and a five member board for the remaining period, the board were making decisions at a rate of 262 per month. In 1981, when the membership was increased to seven, output dropped to 248 per month. In 1982, with between seven and nine members, output fell further to 215 per month. In the months January to April of this year the board made on average 180 decisions per month. The taxpayers might well ask themselves why a Minister kept adding members to the board at a cost of about £19,000 each per annum while, over a considerable period, output declined and arrears built up. Why did my predecessor not appoint additional inspectors? Senator O'Toole should address himself to that, since he and others blamed the delays on the number of inspectors.

In March 1983 I contacted the board and arranged for my Department to provide assistance to try to improve the arrears situation. Bottlenecks seemed to have built up within the board's organisation and files on which decisions could have been made had piled up. I am glad to say that, as a result of the action taken by my Department, with the board's consent, the output of the board increased dramatically in May, but my Department should not have had to become involved in this way. It is not good enough that a full-time board, with responsibility for planning procedures, should allow such a situation to develop.

Senator O'Toole asked a number of questions about contacts I made with the board since assuming office and the appointment of staff to the board. Despite all the difficulties created by successive governmental embargoes, in the short space of time of seven months I have approved the appointment of four additional inspectors. In order to do this I had to suppress a number of posts in the Department. I also made professional staff available from my own Department and I authorised the board to engage up to 15 part-time staff. I was in touch with the chairman of the board in recent months about the arrears situation and, with his consent, I arranged for a quick review of the board's administrative systems and procedures to see if anything could be done to speed up the processing of appeals. The report on this review has now been made available to the board. It is for them to decide whether to implement the recomendations in that report, or to design their own programme to reduce the arrears to an acceptable level within a reasonable period.

Certain Members of the House spoke about the possibility of imposing a time limit on the determination of appeals. There would be some practical difficulties involved at the very best of times, given the nature of the operations in which the board are involved. For one thing the decision of the board is final. This imposes a special responsibility to observe the rules of natural justice. If the board should fail in this regard by not affording to any party an adequate opportunity to make their case, the decision could quite rightly be set aside by the courts.

We must also take into account the fact that with a backlog of over 3,500 appeals at the moment, it would be totally impracticable to impose a time limit on the processing of appeals. I can subscribe to the theory that it is desirable that a time limit should be imposed so that all parties to an appeal would know what they were letting themselves in for and how much delay there would be. Particularly in the case of developers, they would have their plans ready awaiting the outcome of an appeal. The immediate priority must be to bring the backlog of appeal cases under control. When we bring it down to what I would consider to be a regular and acceptable working through-put of something like 500 or 600 cases, we can look at the question of having a time limit. I will have a look at that within a period of 12 to 15 months by which time I would expect to have the number of appeals at any one time with An Bord Pleanála down to an acceptable working through-put of 500 to 600 cases.

The new board will be required specifically under the terms of section 4 to minimise delays in the processing of appeals. That should cover the situation adequately for the moment. I will be looking at and reviewing the time limit. Under section 4, I am empowered to require the board to carry out a review of their organisation and the systems and procedures operated by them. Following consultation with the board the Minister may give a directive to the board arising from the matters reviewed. The first priority must be top reduce the backlog of appeals to an acceptable level. Once this has been achieved, other improvements in procedures can be considered.

In the course of his contribution Senator Killilea mentioned a survey by An Taisce — they do not seem to be the Senator's best friends — of the use of section 4. Whatever about the merits of the survey it is reasonable to say that it was never envisaged when the Planning Acts were being framed that section 4 resolutions would be used as a means of regularly overruling the manager in the performance of his executive functions under the Acts. The basic purpose of section 4 is to ensure that councils can see to it that their general policies are carried out. In relation to planning the general policy objectives of the council should be contained in the development plan. The making of the plan is a reserved function and where a gap exists between the views held by the elected councillors, the manager and his planning officials in regard to the proper planning and development of an area the fault may lie with the quality and content of the development plan. Despite Senator Killilea's protestations there is evidence that section 4 has been used regularly by some planning authorities to require the granting of permissions in circumstances in which a permission would not be granted if the standard planning criteria were to apply.

I urge councillors to take great care in making their development plans. Many Senators, including Senator Howard, expressed the concern that there would be commonsense in evidence in the decisions of the board and that the personnel would have commonsense rather than be self-appointed experts in the planning field. The crucial role for councillors in the creation of the development plan is, and will still be after the passing of the Bill, a vital and important part in the planning process. I would not at any time set out to undermine the role of elected councillors in the preparation of the development plan. It may be necessary that they go into more detail when preparing the development plan because councillors have local knowledge and, obviously, they share the responsibility and concern for the rights of those living in cities and rural areas. Councillors should ensure that the plan reflects, as far as is practicable, their views on planning. If the plan is sufficiently detailed and reflects the aims and objectives of the council there will not be much need to use section 4.

It should be remembered that section 4 resolutions are used infrequently, if at all, by many planning authorities. The section is an essential part of the balance between managers and councils and it should not be brought into disrepute by over-use.

Last October development control guidelines were issued by the Department of the Environment and they dealt specifically with the relationship between the development plan and development control. I hope the suggestions contained in those guidelines improve the situation in those planning authorities where a gap appears to exist between councillors and their officials reducing the need for section 4 resolutions in the future.

Senator Killilea sought to have provisions introduced to prohibit the disclosure of information about planning applications which, he said, should be confidential matters between the applicant and the local authority. That suggestion amounts to swimming against the tide of current thinking in regard to planning because the demand nowadays is for participation and involvement. Planning laws have always provided for this. In fact, the Supreme Court went so far as to say that there are three parties to every application or appeal, the local authority, the applicant and the public. I do not think we can turn back the clock and attempt to have planning behind closed doors in the future. It would not be desirable or satisfactory.

Senator Killilea also said there were too many appeals to An Bord Pleanála. One may agree with that suggestion but I should like to point out that our appeal rate nationally is about 9 per cent of all planning cases although in some areas it is as high as 25 per cent. We must regard such a high appeal rate as a reflection in one way or another on the local development plans, the extent to which they are accepted by the local councils who made them and by the community at large. High appeal rates can also be a reflection on the way in which planning control is operated locally. My Department have already issued guidelines to local authorities on these matters and I hope we can do more in the future.

Senator FitzGerald suggested that inspectors' reports should be publicly available. I should like to point out that the existing position is that section 23 of the 1976 Local Government (Planning and Development) Act provides that where an inspection is carried out or an oral hearing is conducted on behalf of the board by a person appointed for the purpose the person so appointed shall make a written report to the board and shall include in the report a recommendation relating to the matter which is the subject of the report. The board are required to consider the report and recommendation before determining the matter. The board make the decision and they are not bound to accept the recommendation of the inspector.

It is the decision of the board and not the inspector's report which is of crucial importance and that was recognised at the time of the enactment of the 1976 Act. That Act amended section 26 (8) of the 1963 Act so as to provide that any decision given by the board must contain a statement specifying the reasons for the decision. This requirement applies in the case of a granting or a refusal of permission. The board are responsible for the decision. I agree with Senator FitzGerald that there may be a case for requiring the board to give a fuller statement for granting permission in certain cases. Cases which come to mind immediately are those involving contravention of a development plan or which apparently involve a departure from some general policy or settled approach. I will be taking those matters up with the new board in due course. At that stage I will also examine whether a directive under section 4 or regulations under section 20 of the 1976 Act relating to appeal procedures are necessary to deal more adequately with this matter.

Until the appeals backlog is cleared up any procedural changes which could affect the output of decisions could not be implemented. At a later stage we will be happy to review the position about inspectors' reports and decisions with a view to considering how far we can go towards meeting the objectives listed by Senator FitzGerald.

Senator Fitzsimons questioned the need for the Bill which he described as an ad hoc measure. I agree that that is what the Bill is and I make no apology for it. On assuming office I found it necessary, having regard to the situation that had arisen in regard to the board, to put the preparation of the Bill in hands. In many ways I regret I had to do that because it meant that the review of other aspects of planning which were under way in the Department had to take a back seat for a time. I did not undermine confidence in the existing appeals system but I had to deal with the situation as I found it. I hope that in the autumn it may be possible to continue an examination of the other aspects of planning law and procedure and in that context I will take account of Senator Fitzsimons points.

Many of the points raised are more relevant to a general planning Bill and I will bear them in mind in the general review of the planning laws. I should like to correct Senator Mullooley who suggested that vast sums of public funds would have to paid in compensation to the outgoing board. The Senator was quoting from a recent newspaper article the headline of which bore no relation to the content of the story. A sum of £1.25 million was mentioned. The public will be made aware of any moneys paid to members of the outgoing board but I reject the suggestion that it will be anything like £1.25 million. In reducing the number of board members from ten to five where will be a saving in the region of £80,000 per annum. In that regard there was a waste of public money in the past because I am convinced that a smaller board will function more effectively and will deal with appeals in a more expeditious manner. Savings in the public kitty are to be recommended where possible.

It is regrettable that some Fianna Fáil Members spoke of the Bill as if it was a vindictive measure directed at certain individuals. As I pointed out earlier, before the legislation was introduced in the Dáil I was in a position, had I felt inclined to do so, to appoint three members to An Bord Pleanála without question.

I make no apologies for the underlying thinking behind this Bill. The time has come to move one step further from the 1976 Act and to remove from politics the actual appointments to An Bord Pleanála. Some Fianna Fáil Senators suggested that this was a precedent for appointments to State boards and that persons appointed to a State board now may feel that their appointment will be nullified when a change of Government takes place. Likewise, if that were to be the policy which this Government pursued, something like 265 appointments could be affected within the next number of days. That is not the Government's policy in this area. It was necessary in the area of planning that we allay public concern. This seems to be a fundamental difference in emphasis on different sides of the House. While the control of local planning is very safely in the hands of local councillors in the preparation of the development plan, I think this is necessary. As a politician I would not wish any politician to be subjected to the types of pressures to which we can be in planning matters, if we were to revert to the pre-1976 situation, as Senator McMahon suggested.

Other Senators stressed the desirability to go as far as possible from the pre-1976 situation because of the total control by any particular Minister for the Environment in the area of planning. It is important that planning decisions are based strictly on objectivity. That would be very difficult in the case where the decision would be made by an individual politician or a Junior Minister, as it used to be.

The appointments made to the board in the interregnum period between Governments going out of office and coming into office were totally unjustifiable. I call on any of the Senators opposite to explain to the public why these additional appointments were made on two successive occasions if, as they claim, there was need. As I see it, there was a need to appoint inspectors at that time. If public moneys were to be properly spent in the interests of a more efficient and expeditious planning appeals procedure, then inspectors should have been appointed and not extra board members. As it turned out, the extra board appointments meant a decrease in the output of decisions. It is vital that the board should be above reproach and that any changes which can be made to add to the status of the board and to the public perception of it as an independent tribunal, should be made as soon as possible.

My approach to the whole question of planning appeals is a balanced one. I am not seeking merely to reconstitute the board and provide for changes in the appeals law. Some Members seem to be a little sceptical about the value of the technical amendments to the existing legislation which are encompassed in this Bill, but I look forward to the Committee Stage debate where I can point out the technical side of the Bill, which will be of enormous benefit in the faster processing of planning appeals. We will be able to deal with vexatious appeals and appeals which seem to be without foundation can be dealt with more expeditiously than in the present situation. I believe that by providing for an improved constitution for the board, improved procedures and additional staff, I will have done all within my power to improve what is generally regarded as the present unhappy situation in regard to planning laws.

Question put.
The Seanad divided: Tá, 26; Níl, 14.

  • Belton, Luke.
  • Browne, John.
  • Bulbulia, Katharine.
  • Burke, Ulick.
  • Connor, John.
  • Cregan, Denis (Dino).
  • Durcan, Patrick.
  • Ferris, Michael.
  • FitzGerald, Alexis J.G.
  • Fleming, Brian.
  • Higgins, Michael.
  • Hourigan, Richard V.
  • Howard, Michael.
  • Howlin, Brendan.
  • Kennedy, Patrick.
  • Lennon, Joseph.
  • Loughrey, Joachim.
  • McAuliffe-Ennis, Helena.
  • McDonald, Charlie.
  • McGonagle, Stephen.
  • McMahon, Larry.
  • O'Brien, Andy.
  • O'Leary, Seán
  • O'Mahony, Flor.
  • Quealy, Michael A.
  • Ross, Shane P.N.

Níl

  • Cassidy, Donie.
  • de Brún, Séamus.
  • Ellis, John.
  • Fitzsimons, Jack.
  • Honan, Tras.
  • Hussey, Thomas.
  • Kiely, Rory.
  • Killilea, Mark.
  • Lanigan, Mick.
  • Lynch, Michael.
  • Mullooly, Brian.
  • O'Toole, Martin J.
  • Ryan, Eoin.
  • Ryan, William.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Belton and Howlin; Níl, Senators de Brún and W. Ryan.
Question declared carried.

When is it proposed to take Committee Stage?

We had arranged this morning that we would order Committee Stage for Thursday. We can order it sooner if the Opposition desire. We are prepared to facilitate them in any way.

Thursday morning.

Is Thursday morning agreed?

We will order it for tomorrow in case time permits although we have three Bills to take tomorrow. But in the morning we might order it in case time permits.

It cannot be ordered for tomorrow if the House does not agree. Of course, the House can vary the order tomorrow morning or tomorrow at any time if it suits them.

I take it that it is the wish of the House to deal with it as expeditiously as possible. We will order it, if necessary, by agreement with the Opposition, at some time tomorrow if time permits.

Committee Stage ordered for Wednesday, 13 July 1983.
Barr
Roinn