Sustainable Communities Bill
Mr. Gormley: Sustainability is something we often discuss but rarely if ever define or put into practice. It first came to prominence in Rio de Janeiro and subsequently in Johannesburg where I attended the summit on sustainable development. We all need to define sustainability and put it in perspective. The Bruntland report defined sustainable development as development which meets the needs of the present generation without compromising those of future generations. It is about defining quality of life rather than standard of living. This Government may be quite good in terms of maintaining standards of living as we define them but its record on quality of life is not good. We have seen that. Quality of life has deteriorated during this Government’s reign.
In the area of holistic and joined-up thinking, the Government is remiss. The Green Party has a “join the dots” campaign to promote joined-up thinking. When it comes to public transport for example it is clear the Government has not got its act together. When we talk of sustainable communities, we are talking of joined-up thinking, of local communities having schools and facilities, and of walking and cycling to school. That is becoming rarer. I recently pointed out in a letter to The Irish Times that there are now more girls being driven to secondary school than cycling there. That is depressing and the situation needs to be tackled quickly.
Local communities do not have any input. This is what agenda 21 was all about. It wanted local communities and representatives to have an input into sustainable communities. This is happening to an increasingly lesser degree. Within my constituency, Terenure has recently drawn up a sustainable plan for the area which includes underground recycling. This is done in Holland and works well there. It means that one can locate recycling banks in the centre of an area without people objecting on the grounds of unsightliness and noise. One can then get a lorry to remove the materials. Dublin City Council’s response however is that hiring the lorry is too expensive. That is short-term thinking because, if we do not take such an approach we will not get the level of recycling which we all want. Local community representatives went to Sintra in Portugal to find out how it could be done, so they have expertise developed at local level.
Instead of local government, what we have is local administration. During the period this Government has ruled, an increasing number of powers have been taken from local representatives. There was a time when there were reserved functions in the environment area. They included the making of management plans for air and water quality and waste along with the making of a development plan. All this has been diluted over a period. One can look in particular at the powers taken away with regard to waste. Despite that an increasing number of councillors are opposed to waste incineration and have put forward plans for zero waste, they are not being listened to. Incinerators are being imposed on local communities.
Councillors have an input into the development plan and can make zoning decisions, but in many cases their input is ignored by city managers. I will give a pertinent example in my constituency. As far back as the early 1980s, Dublin Corporation clearly wanted to develop Scully’s Field, a green space in the middle of my constituency. In 1998, Dublin City Council in its draft development plan recommended that the land at Scully’s Field be rezoned to Z1 status. That would have allowed for residential development. The councillors in the area and all the residents were opposed to this. They objected, and the lands were zoned back to Z9 status. That status is the one which applies to St. Stephen’s Green and Merrion Square, green open spaces which are what we require in the city if it is to be fit not only for children to play in but also for adults. It is about quality of life, not about making a quick buck on a five-storey development. Unfortunately this has been ignored.
I have asked the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to consider this serious problem because it is now quite clear that the Dublin City Council manager has made yet another proposal to build accommodation on the site in question. That is unacceptable. On 11 March 2002 a presentation was made by the campaign committee which received unanimous support from the councillors. It is quite clear that all this has been ignored. If one has a situation in which councillors, local representatives and all the residents of an area are asking that it would be zoned in a certain way and that request is ignored, it means we do not have sustainable development. That is something the Government needs to examine.