Ms Claragh Mulhern:

I will try to cover as much as I can, and the Senator might follow up if she has more specific questions. On the exemptions, the intention is to ensure the measure is reasonable and proportionate for landowners. Currently, for Part V provisions in the planning Act, there are thresholds. The provisions apply only for developments of five or more units and that is the intention here. Because we are also bringing in mixed-use land, where commercial development could end up coming forward, there will also be a threshold of 500 sq. m of commercial development. Anything below those two thresholds will be exempt because, in the context of maximising development potential, they are quite a low level of development and it is proportionate to allow a certain degree of development to take place without this obligation arising. There are, in the general scheme, measures to deal with potential avoidance of the thresholds by subdividing plots.

The other key exemption is social and affordable housing. We all recognise the absolute priority of delivering social and affordable housing throughout the State, so we have been keen to make sure that will be exempted from land value sharing obligations. In particular, that will give the local authorities and the affordable housing bodies the ability to engage more freely in the market. If they know they will not have to pay this obligation when it comes to the granting of planning permission, it will be of significant benefit to them in getting a reasonable price. Those are the exemptions, in high-level terms.

As for the economic appraisal, we are considering releasing a redacted version because some commercially sensitive data are contained within it. We hope we will be able to share a redacted version with the committee. We will revert to it on that.

The Valuation Tribunal has been established and deals with matters under, for example, the vacant site levy. I must confess I do not know the details of who sits on it, but it is an established tribunal and, therefore, the intention is to rely on it rather than setting up another, separate arrangement for this.

The intention behind the register relates to each planning authority’s administrative area, zoning and development plan. They are the experts in receiving information, cross-checking what is on the register and so on. Nevertheless, as we have done for the residential zoned land tax arrangements, we have worked closely with the local authorities to publish maps that show the entire country, and we intend to do the same here. The intention is to assemble all the information from each of the 31 local authorities and display it publicly as one data source.