Why I could learn to love the Planning and Development (Strategic Infrastructure) Bill

Analysis of Strategic Infrastructure Bill

The Strategic Infrastructure Bill (2006) is the pinacle of two Ministers’ of Environment contempt for ‘the law’ since this regime came to power in 1997. It was spotted as far back as last September, and again in February of this year. It bodes well for the fast-tracking of pollution projects such as roads and incinerators, and for monuments to pesimism such as prisons. From now on, nothing is sacred in this, once, sacred isle. The Bill is currently making its way through the Houses of the Oireachtas.

Among other things, this Bill intends that: a local group must be active for more than 12 months and have a stated aim and objective of environmental protection, before they can even apply for a judicial review of a particular case impacting on them or thrie community.

From the News Wire: Planning law in this country is a joke. For years the odds have been stacked in favour of unsustainable development and now the FF/PD coalition is making it harder for communities to legally challenge those who are making fortunes out of wrecking the place, be they speculators, developers, multi-nationals, politicans, contractors, quarrymen or even archaeologists (but not this one)....Anarchaeologist continues on wire.

Language is used very effectively here to cloak this attack on a fundamental right to participate in the planning process (even if it costs you €20 to participate, which has in itself been judged illegal by the European Commission). Check out one persion's attempts to get to grips with it at the link below.

I don't claim to understand many of the points that Chris Murray has raised regarding the Bill, however Section 50 strikes me as being particularly significant, where a local group must be active for more than 12 months and have a stated aim and objective of environmental protection, before they can even apply for a judicial review of a particular case impacting on them or thrie community. Because most infrastructural planning cases are taken up by local groups as opposed to individuals.

I should encourage anyone involved in any sort of community organisation to immediately add something to this effect to their constitution, but I won't. The road to a judicial review is a long and expensive one. The only winners here are the legal profession and of course the developers who will invariably have more money, more influence within the judiciary (not to mention the local planning authorities) and at the end of the day more time than you have.

For time is really of the essence. They don't have kids to be looked after, dinners to be put on the table, bills to pay. They can fly from sites on the west coast to judicial hearings in Dublin in an hour. They don't have to spend hours on a bus or 100s of Euro on petrol to participate in the planning process.

Moreover, they can pay the best planing consultants in the country to defend their projects and argue their cases at oral hearings. They don't have to spend long hours into the night researching this shit and typing out a planning observation to the council which will be ignored, or a planning appeal to An Bord Pleanala which will, if you're smart enough, be at least considered.

But surely if your case is founded on points of law, on the EU Environmental Directive or on Local Agenda 21, you can't lose? The recent case taken by An Taisce to An Bord Pleanála in relation to the on-shore development of the Corrib gas field surely had to succeed because it was founded on sound points of law? Well now that law is being changed again.

So what do you do? In Erris the communities around Rossport discovered in the past that their own inspectors' reports don't mean shit with An Board Pleanála. Reports can and will be overruled. In any case, much of the proposed Corrib gas development has by-passed what's piously referred to as the planning process. Basically elements within the County Council have wanted this development to go ahead (for whatever reason...) and simply rubber-stamped it through. Hopefully, they'll all be fucked out of it in the next election, but I wouldn't put any money on it. Anyway, you can't get rid of senior county council officials that easily, unless your local friendly multi-national offers them a job.

What's significant about the Rossport business is that the people of Erris have undertaken a fundamental critique of how planning law interacts with what passes in these parts for local democracy. And they see it's shit. And they're doing something about it by ensuring that no construction work, or development to give it its legal and oddly unsatisfactory definition, takes place along the pipeline route or at the terminal site. They're not sitting on their arses writing letters to the papers and have long since given up on those they've elected to serve them (with the exception I suppose of Cowley).

If the SIB passes into the statute books (as it's surely going to), more communities on this island are going to realise that the law is shit and they're going to fight it. And fighting the law is a serious business, but in Erris it's being done on their terms, in their locality.
And the best place to fight of course, is on your own home ground.

Hopefully the lessons of Erris will be picked up on elsewhere. Fuck the law, it's not going to be a useful weapon in these sort of cases anymore, if it ever was in the first place. If the SIB finally convinces people that the planning system is stacked against them and encourages them to explore other avenues of struggle, then it mightn't be such a bad thing after all.