Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will try to be brief. I thank the Minister for providing clarification concerning what the commencement will look like and the regulations in that regard. Hopefully, we will have this universal approach that does not now exist.

The other part of the question I asked concerned the completion date. We know that to get an extension it is necessary to have started a development. Is there, though, any completion date specified in this context? I ask this because being allowed to commence projects without such a date accounts for some of the problem. We have seen this happen. With the downturn, there was a specific problem in that regard. We had all these buildings that were sitting there half complete. Some of those buildings still have not been completed. There are even buildings constructed since the crash that are still sitting there. In some cases, that is because the county council will not sign off on them or take them in charge. I refer to the process in this regard.

These are buildings that are basically derelict because nobody is living in them. There is no function to them because the offices they were meant to be or whatever were not completed. Obviously, we have the debacle around the children's hospital and the planning in 2016. That shows, even with building, that for some developments you need longer periods of planning permissions. I am not one to say that all planning permissions should be two or three years. I think everybody accepts in large-scale developments that a longer period is needed. I am not arguing about the children's hospital, but just speaking to the fact that this shows if we were to go down the road of completion, there could be a question around the definition of completion. The builder might say buildings are completed but they are not taken in charge. Is there a series of penalties? A developer will have penalties against subcontractors for not completing their bits of work on a site but is the council - or the public basically - to wait forever for some buildings to be completed? Sin é.