Parliamentary Secretary Mario de Marco said that he would not agree to a five-year time bar for the revocation of development permits issued before the coming into force of the Environment and Development Planning Bill, which provides for the Mepa reform and any Mepa official would have to answer for his action if an applicant claimed compensation if his permit was revoked because of an administrative mistake.
Speaking during the debate in committee, Dr de Marco said that the five-year term would only apply to new permits. He did not agree to time-barring older applications so that nobody would accuse the government of trying to protect some particular permit.
In an exchange with the opposition spokesman on planning, Dr de Marco said because older permits would not be time-barred, Roderick Galdes could, in future, ask for the revocation of any development permit whether it was issued in Baħrija or anywhere else.
Mr Galdes had earlier said that as the parliamentary secretary responsible for planning, Dr de Marco should have asked for an inquiry following a request by NGO's for Mepa to revoke the permit issued to (former PN executive president) Victor Scerri, following allegations of false information. Mr Galdes said the relevant Mepa file was not found. To date nobody knew what had happened in this case and even the Mepa auditor had said he could not conclude the case.
There were also other cases which were refused or revoked not because of fraudulent information but because of administrative mistakes by Mepa itself. In this way Mepa could use two weights and two measures with the applicants.
On a point of order, Dr de Marco said he was given the environment portfolio in February, well before the Baħrija case. But why was Mr Galdes insisting for time-barring applications issued before the coming into force of the Bill? he asked.
Dr de Marco wanted to make his position crystal clear: there would not be any time-bar for permit applications approved before this Bill so that anyone would be at liberty to ask for revocation.
Mr Galdes said that he was not asking for time-barring for permits. He was making it clear that there existed an anomaly in the Bill on cases where administrative mistakes were taken. He was not talking about fraudulent information. It was unjust that a permit could be revoked because of a mistake by a government authority without any form of compensation.
Dr de Marco warned that if a Mepa official made a mistake which would lead to the revocation of a permit, he would have to answer for his action. The parliamentary secretary said he was resolute that time-barring would apply only to future permits.
Turning to clauses dealing with enforcement, Leo Brincat (PL) said that this was the authority's weakest point and which led to the loss of Mepa's credibility. Seventeen per cent of the auditor's complaints involved lack of enforcement. Mepa had never taken on board the auditor's recommendations. However, there must not be discriminatory enforcement. He also suggested that registration of enforcement notices at the Land Registry.
Dr de Marco said that certain enforcement notices could not be stopped and fines would increase considerably. He said that the message was filtering down that Mepa now meant business: following the issue of a number of enforcement notices, the illegalities were removed without the need for direct action by the authority.
Mr Galdes said that the clause did not distinguish between minor and major infringements. He warned that the statistic quoted by Dr de Marco in effect concerned some aged widows who were found to have garden sheds built 35 years ago.
Ċensu Galea (PN) said infringements had decreased. He was against having two categories, one for minor and another for major infringements because these would lead to abuse.
Dr de Marco agreed, saying all infringements were abusive, whether big or small.
Later, the opposition declared it would be calling for a division on the composition of the Standing Committee on Environment and Development Planning, as detailed in Clause 34.
Originally, the clause provided that the committee, "shall consist of five members, one of whom shall be the Minister, who shall also be the Committee's Chairman, and four other members appointed by the House, of whom two shall be members supporting the Government and the other two shall be members from the opposition".
The government amended the clause so that the committee would not be chaired by the minister but it did not accept an opposition amendment to have the committee modelled on the House Public Accounts Committee, where the majority of members were from the government side but the chairman hails from the opposition.