Speaking in the Seanad on 14 October 1999 on the Planning and Development Bill, I said:

The current buzz word is "sustainability" and it hangs over everything we talk about here. That is why I look at this Bill and ask: does it give us sustainability? 

Does it give us the opportunity to continue what we have been doing in recent years? 

Does it give us the opportunity to make sure that we succeed?

Recently I met newcomers to Irish business, some of whom were Irish nationals. The big threat they saw to our sustainability was the difficulty of being able not, interestingly enough, to be able to pay people but to be able to pay them and attract people to live here because they could not afford housing. 

That was one of the challenges facing them. It was not a question of economics. 

It was a question of whether they could coax people to come here, coax Irish people to come and work with them, manage to succeed on the world market with these people and then discover that they cannot coax them to stay because they cannot afford housing.

This kind of Bill, which is long, detailed and highly important, is precisely the type of Bill I am delighted to see introduced in the Seanad. I hope we will be able to give it detailed scrutiny on Committee Stage.

In a real sense this is an historic Bill because it sets out to take a fresh and comprehensive look at one important area of national life. It is more than 30 years since we tentatively dipped our toes in the planning waters. It is absolutely right at this time that we should stand back and take a long look at the way we have been doing things over the past 30 years.

However, this Bill is so fundamental and wide ranging that is almost inevitable that it will be controversial. 

There will be opposition to almost everything the Minister attempts to do in this Bill and in most cases that opposition will be sincere and rationally grounded. It is our duty, when we come to examine the details of this Bill - we are not doing that today - to assess those arguments on their merits and help the Government choose the best way forward.

This task is difficult because creating a planning regime inevitably means striking a balance.

We have a basic desire to plan well for the sake of future generations and to preserve our environment. We have a desire to make so important a process as open, as transparent and as democratic as possible.

At the same time we have a strong desire to encourage economic development and facilitate change, particularly the changes that will have to occur in the future.

This is where the need for balance comes in. 

If we put economic progress on a pedestal and say it is the most important thing above all else, we will tend to make decisions at the expense of the environment.

There is little doubt now that we made wrong decisions in the recent past. There was a period when our attitude was jobs at any price; let us get jobs, it does not matter what the effects are, but often part of that cost was the environment.

The pharmaceutical industry is one of the bridgeheads into the sunrise industries of tomorrow, where the future economic success of this country lies and where the jobs will come from. If we were starting now rather than 30 years ago, it is debatable whether we would have allowed the pharmaceutical industry in here. I do not think we would. In deciding to go after pharmaceuticals 30 years ago we paid a price in environmental terms that we might not be prepared to pay today.

Today we might look for balance between the conflicting principles in a different way.

We also need balance between the need for democratic involvement in the planning process and the need to provide a reasonable environment for progress.

In recent years there have been times when we have not got that balance right.

I have been involved on a personal basis with retail developments where we have a planning process that can be drawn out almost indefinitely.

More importantly, we have a process whose eventual outcome can be highly uncertain.

If you are seeking an investor you cannot guarantee what will happen because there could be so many different outcomes. This can have two bad effects.

First, planning decisions take longer than they need and that holds up progress and change and adds to cost.

Second, uncertainty over the outcome, the doubt about how it is going to come about, can act as a deterrent to potential outside and inside investors. They can cope with the delay better than with the uncertainty. They can put up with the delay if they know what the outcome is but they have great difficulty putting up with uncertainty. No one likes to invest in a project and, after all that effort, see it aborted.

In recent years Ireland has got a reputation abroad as a country that imposes difficult planning regimes on incoming investors. The same applies to indigenous investors, not just incoming investors.

But this is not a question of how strict we are about environmental protection. We should not, and we do not, need to compromise our environment to attract investment. That is not the problem I am talking about here.

The problem is that an incoming project has to go through a planning process whose length and eventual outcome can be uncertain. This is something we should aim to improve and set ourselves a target.

I want us to look at this Bill in that light. We should ask ourselves if it is will achieve that objective.

The problem is that we can only improve matters by reducing the present level of freedom to object to a planning proposal. We must approach this issue carefully. We are coming back to balance and keeping both balls in the air.

We must see if we can be fair and democratic and seek what is best for the environment at the same time.

>Another problem has come to the fore recently.

The dogs in the street know that there has been corruption in the planning process - not occasional, petty corruption but large-scale, systematic corruption.

In creating an improved planning regime, we must ask ourselves whether we have lessened the possibility of corruption in the future? That should be one of our central aims in the planning programme.

>We should not go into denial - I do not think anybody is - about this element in public life. We must face up to it, recognise the reality that has emerged and deal with it decisively. Corruption is a matter we have been shy of talking about until recently and as it has now come to a head something should be done about it.

We want to reduce as far as possible the likelihood that planning decisions can be bought.

We want to increase the likelihood that anyone doing so will be caught and will be punished severely and decisively.

We should punish impartially those who give bribes and those who accept them. It is not a question of being a one-sided challenge - people should not only fear the consequences of taking bribes but also of giving them. In every corrupt transaction there is both a giver and a taker.

I am not so idealistic as to believe that corruption could ever be legislated out of existence. Through legislation, however, a regime and an atmosphere could be created in which corruption could be greatly reduced. If it could be seen to be so unwelcome it would be unlikely to happen.

Close attention should be given to this when the Bill is scrutinised in detail on Committee Stage.

Looking at the planning process from a national perspective, one of our greatest needs is for a more strategic approach.

When we embraced planning we thought of it at the atomistic level, as a multitude of individual decisions which would be based on a fixed set of general planning principles and inside the loose framework of an overall development plan for each local authority area.

That is the way we thought it would work.

I do not think enough attention has been paid to a number of aspects.

The first relates to the fact that planning needs to be harmonised through local areas to the country as a whole.

The second is the way factors in planning interact with one another. For instance, where houses, shops and factories are built determines the volume of traffic. Has consideration been given to that? In other words, the knitting together of the different planning processes.

More importantly, our original planning regime ignored the need to constantly adapt to change.

People talk about change as though it never happened before, but it is happening much faster now. In the past we have not always recognised the speed of change. The planning environment is no longer fixed and is so highly dynamic that it is difficult to keep abreast of it.

Measures must be put in place that are capable of reacting to the changing environment. Town centres that were virtually deserted a decade ago now enjoy the dubious benefit of traffic congestion throughout the day - we all know what it is like. Some years ago towns were deserted but now they are full.

One will recall people's reaction to by-passes. People thought towns would be damaged by by-passes but now every town is looking to have one to ease traffic.

The change has been huge and it will become even greater in the future. Some of it was brought about by the sheer weight of economic growth but more of it comes as a result of deliberate policies, such as urban renewal, which have been greatly successful in most cases.

Planning strategies must be constantly evolving, changing and adapting to extensive and rapidly changing needs.

Our planning system should aim to be fully responsive to those changing needs and this demands a strategic approach. We must take a long-term view to see where we are going, if it fits into our general plan and if we have taken into account how those changes can be adjusted.

For that reason, I welcome the provisions in this Bill which are aimed at improving our planning in that specific direction.

I wish to draw attention to a serious limiting factor on our ability to plan properly and that is the shortage of qualified people in the planning authorities at local level.

The planning function is seriously under-resourced and it is important to realise that if we are to succeed with this new regime.

We can legislate until the cows come home, but if people are not there to carry out our wishes and those of the communities, then we are indulging in wishful thinking.

Something must be done in that regard.

I am not sure it is recognised in the Bill, although legislation may not be the place for this recognition. We must recognise it ourselves because that action has to be taken elsewhere.

The history of planning has been one of a chronic and persistent shortage of planning skills.

I do not think they existed 30 or 40 years ago and, perhaps, it was difficult to anticipate them. This problem is becoming greater, not only because the amount of development is increasing but because the issues are often more technical. There is an increase in the need for quality planning because all the factors that influenced developments are intertwined.

By under-resourcing this sector our environment is being damaged. The quality of our planning is being affected by the lack of resources and the fact they are not available because we have not been willing to invest in them in the past.

At the same time, we are stunting economic growth because decisions take longer than they should and are not necessarily the best and most far-sighted.

We must ask ourselves whether we are willing to put our money where our mouths are and whether we are willing to invest in planning. 

Are we legislating for hopes, aspirations and wishful thinking or are we legislating for action?

I hope we will choose action.