Amendments Nos. 13 and 14 are related and may be discussed together by agreement.

Amendments Nos. 15 and 17 are related and may be discussed together by agreement.

Does the Minister wish to come in?

If amendment No. 18 is agreed to, amendment No. 19 cannot be moved. Amendment No. 19 is a logical alternative to amendment No. 18. Amendments Nos. 18 and 19 are related and may be discussed together by agreement.

The core part of the legislation is restoring democracy to local authorities. We either believe in our planning system and our planners, who are eventually the ones to make the decisions regarding these large-scale residential developments, or we do not. I am not hung up on 10%, 20% or 30%. I believe we are being prescriptive and my preferred option would be to leave it to the planners to decide the level of commercial activity on any given site because no two sites are the same. The demands and what is required on…

I will be brief. Having served as a councillor for 12 years, I have some understanding of the role that councils play. If there is one thing they do not have much of, it is time. The Senator has proposed that there would be multiple meetings to deal with multiple projects. I do not agree. Councillors are asked to discuss and adopt a county development plan in one meeting. Councils have the ability to deal with multiple projects at any one time. I have a lot of sympathy for the proposal put forward by Senators Boyha…

The key word the Senator said was "draft".

It had to go to public consultation and then be adopted by the members.

We must acknowledge what the Minister has done here. This Bill restores local democracy. It restores decision making to a local level. That must be acknowledged. We are restoring the county development plan adopted by the council and we are asking the professional planners to understand that and to make sure that their decisions conform with the local county development plans. An Bord Pleanála, with its specialist crew, does not have local knowledge. The people we are speaking about are local planners who, more tha…

No it was not.

I raise two things. Senator Boyhan raises something that is a hit and miss scenario. Each local authority treats this differently. Some do send out a weekly planning list to members, others do not. Weekly planning lists are available to any member of the public. I know the one in Wicklow, other counties may have a different system. This puts it into legislation that the council in the local area must be informed of an application being made under this legislation. It puts it in law where it is not in law now. Inste…

I always looked on a request for further information as an opportunity to secure planning permission rather than the other way around. We have to consider this Bill holistically, however. It involves significant pre-planning consultation that would probably not otherwise happen. The level of additional further information required should be significantly less than if planning had gone through the normal channels. Councillors do not use planning conditions, which could be used rather than seeking further information…

I will be brief because it is the early hours of the morning. The Minister is bringing in a significant amendment. As he said, it is restoring the hope of owning one's own home and putting it into primary legislation. It is also making the chief executive of each local authority calculate the number of affordable homes that will be required and ensuring that forms part of the county development plan. I would like to say a lot more on the amendment but I am conscious of the time. I must recognise that since we went …

Next Tuesday.

At 10.30 a.m. today.

I welcome the Minister and thank him for the informative briefing yesterday afternoon. I sat on the former Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government for four years, for three of them with my colleague, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, and with Deputy Cowen for the year before that. We have always raised concerns about the SHD process and had serious reservations about it. I welcome the legislation that is being brought forward to eliminate that process. At the core of it was the lack of democracy around the …

I welcome the Minister of State and thank my colleague for sharing this Commencement debate with me. It relates to an ongoing challenge facing west Wicklow and my own area of east Wicklow, in the uplands area. The figures speak for themselves. There is tuberculosis, TB, in one in every six herds in Wicklow. Some 4% of herds nationally have TB and have had restrictions placed on them whereas this figure is 18% in Wicklow, four times the national average. Some 5.4% of the cattle herd in Wicklow are reactors. The figu…

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. In all fairness, it is a bit repetitive. I could refer the Minister of State to the joint approach to deer management of 2010, the County Wicklow deer management project 2018 and a number of pilot schemes in between. None of them are addressing the situation. The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage is the largest landowner in the Wicklow Mountains because it owns the Wicklow Mountains National Park. The second largest owner is another State body, Coillte…

Now.

I welcome the Minister of State who has responsibility for public health, well-being and the national drugs strategy but I had hoped a Minister from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage would take this matter. In recent months and even before that, we have both seen the following headlines: "Energy blackouts this winter 'can never be ruled out'"; "European energy crisis a wake-up call for Irish policymakers"; "EirGrid warns of electricity supply shortfalls over next five winters"; "Ireland could…