Today I asked the following question of the Minister for Local Government:
the reason for his decision to permit office blocks at 44-45 St. Stephen's Green and 18-19 Hume Street and at 46-49 St. Stephen's Green and 1-2 Hume Street, Dublin to be erected by a firm (name supplied).
The name of the firm is the Green Property Development Company Limited. I feel that the Minister's response to the questions put by me and by Deputy Dr. Browne was less than frank, that his reply was evasive and is open to question in the public interest. The Minister and the public at large are fully aware that Dublin Corporation refused permission to the Green Property Development Company Limited to redevelop these particular properties. The general grounds for refusal were that the particular plan submitted did not accord with the extended draft development plan for Dublin city as envisaged at that time. I would point out to the Minister that the draft development plan clearly set down that all the properties in Hume Street had been listed for preservation under schedule B of the plan, with the exception of Nos. 1 and 10 Hume Street which had been listed for schedule C. I would further remind the Minister that notwithstanding the democratic decision of Dublin Corporation to refuse planning permission he ignored this quite democratic local sanction arrived at after the most careful scrutiny and careful consideration by the now defunct Dublin Corporation.
Once again, the Minister set himself up, quite wrongly, and quite open to question, as almost the total arbiter of what is desirable for the future social and physical environment in our capital city. This is something which I deplore and on which the Minister should give more elaboration than he gave in his reply today. I respectfully submit to him, through the Chair, that we have seen an almost total surrender on his part on virtually all the essential points of the appeal by the Green Property Development Company to the Minister. The sanction by the Minister both in scale and in character most certainly was not a judgement in keeping with the concept of the Planning and Development Act, 1963. The Minister conveyed, I think wrongly, an impression of general limitation in the permitted density that he indicated. In the first instance, the phraseology of the original Government statement was somewhat misleading. He conveyed the impression of a restriction of the total office area to blocks of 16,000 square feet and 63,000 square feet. In fact, the company is generally acknowledged to have obtained the maximum possible density, but this is by the way.
I suggest to the Minister that the consideration indicated in his answer this afternoon as to the provision for 50 or more car park spaces and so on, access to and egress from car parking areas by way of Bell Lane and these general pre-conditions certainly do not in any way override the general principle that, where a local authority after due deliberation rejects an appeal by a company and more particularly as that authority is not now in existence or in a position to revoke and rescind the decision of the Minister granting that appeal, it is very much open to question that the Minister should act in such a manner.
I consider that the Minister showed contempt for the responsible and informed views of bodies concerned with general architectural preservation and the future social environment of Dublin. I do not hold any brief for nor am I a member of An Taisce or the Dublin Civil Group or the Irish Georgian Society but I maintain that these bodies had an interest and had expressed their viewpoints right down from 1966, when the sudden demolition occurred in a sector of the properties after outline planning permission was obtained and, overnight, we had this exercise set in train. I suggest that the Minister ignored the responsible comments of these organisations and in that, I suggest to him, he acted contrary to the public interest. We must receive some explanation from the Minister in relation to an assurance which allegedly was given by the then Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Gibbons. I have no firm basis of quotation for it but I am assured and I would like to find from the Minister if, in fact, he gave this assurance that future development would be in line with the Dublin civil plan and if, in fact, he now stands as having somewhat repudiated the general sympathy of Deputy Gibbons in relation to the representations he received on that occasion.
I would stress to the Minister the broader and more important aspects of this decision. I consider it an indictment. It is a positive and a questionable encouragement to any developer from abroad or internally. I am not concerned with the ethics of any developer coming in from outside Ireland at this time but I do suggest that the Minister is openly encouraging developers to flaunt the decisions of local authorities, to speculate, as they did speculate, £200,000 odd and risk very substantial sums of money in the hope of the Minister's liberal, political—I will say political—interpretation and the expectation on their part of an ultimate favourable reaction from the Minister on appeal. This is the kind of speculative gambling which will place on the records of his Department quite questionable precedents and ones which will open for future successors in his office or in terms of case histories for planning appeals and so on, aspects which it will certainly be difficult to apprehend.
I do not particularly set out to attack the Green Property Development Company. It could be any company. It could be native or it could be foreign. It is the general principle of the question involved. One must say that there has been in relation to the Green Property Development Company the particular involvement of the late Mr. Marcus Leaner, former Chairman of the Allied Land and Investment company of London. Admittedly, the man has died. I do not wish to cast any aspersions on his particular activities but he was one of the leading speculative London merchant bankers engaged in land speculation, who came here when the going got rough in Britain and when there was no capital gains tax in operation in Ireland—something we in our Party have repeatedly called for. One can come to Ireland, invest as much money as one wishes and then leave with a tax-free gain. With no land development tax in operation in Dublin as would operate in London, with no rigid restrictions in operation in Dublin as would operate in London, then, quite frankly, the Minister seems to have been fair game for what happened on that occasion and, certainly, in my opinion, succumbed to the representations made to him.
It is said that there were State properties involved within the properties concerned. I will give only one case where that is alleged: No. 19 Hume Street. One must ask the Minister who authorised the sale of those properties and could the Minister, in relation to any State legal involvement in respect of those properties, say did anybody authorise the sale of the ground rents relating to those properties prior to their eventual occupation by the Green Property Development Company. One must ask explicitly for far greater detail than we got in the brief repetition of the Minister's statement here. One must ask for greater elaboration in the public interest from the Minister in that regard.
These, then, are some of the disquieting aspects which we must point out. This is not a small speculation. If one takes an area of 200,000 square feet, and works it out at 30s a square foot in rental, one talks in terms of rentals of £300,000 per annum and if one multiplies that by ten one reaches the figure of £3 million which would be a nice figure to collect in terms of the sale of that property following the expenditure of, say, £1 million to build the place and another expenditure of, say, £¾ million to purchase the land— not a bad picking, I would say, for anybody with the money to become involved in that kind of operation, provided one had some assurance, some anticipation, that one would not be caught on the question of planning permission in regard to that development. It automatically brings into question the involvement of the State, the extent to which the Cabinet was involved in this decision, in view of the involvement of the other areas in St. Stephen's Green, government-wise, and that is something in respect of which we are entitled to more general explanation.
Unfortunately, Dublin Corporation, now being extinct, does not have the normal powers and circumstances to again overrule the Minister's decision on this matter. I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that were Dublin Corporation now in existence, within a matter of days, the Minister's decision to grant the appeal would, in fact, be further rejected by that corporation. It is my considered opinion that the effect on the public representatives no longer in formal office and, indeed, the effect on the staff of local authorities whereby a Minister acts in such a cavalier manner can only be disappointing.
It would be futile for me to speculate that the city commissioner, Mr. Garvan, will be given the opportunity to overrule the Minister in relation to this particular appeal because if he were to do this he would undoubtedly find himself redundant within a number of hours. Therefore, the only protection that can be had is within this House and it falls to us to endeavour on the Adjournment of the House to provide that measure of protection. The whole procedure with regard to planning appeals in this country is coming in for very serious public criticism. It is a procedure which cannot be tolerated and is one which would not be accepted in any democratic form of local government. It certainly is a procedure which must give rise to more than just a measure of disquiet.
I am also concerned with what the Minister said in his report to the effect that he would have regard to the evidence tendered in writing, to that given at the oral hearing of the appeal, which took 23 hours to hear, and to the report of his inspector on the proceedings. In some respects I think the Minister has been maligned for some things that developed in public life purely perhaps because of temperamental reaction by him on some occasions. I suggested to him this afternoon that he could satisfy us on the questions we have raised here by placing the evidence tendered in writing and the full report of his inspector on these proceedings in the Library of the House, together with the details of the appeal by the Green Property Planning Company, so that our fears could be allayed or confirmed, as the case may be. But in the present situation we have a public obligation to raise the matter. With that I let it rest in the hope of a more constructive and more general elaboration on the part of the Minister.