Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Senators. This amendment was in response, not only to representations we received but also to the Second Stage debate on the matter. There has been a great deal of deliberation about this legislation. I am the sponsoring Minister but there has been significant input from the Departments of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. Before the Bill was published there were many meetings between me, the Tánaiste and the Minister, Deputy Gormley, and interaction with the Attorney General's office to try to pull together the various elements. As Senator O'Donovan remarked, many of these are dealt with in the planning area which is the responsibility of local authorities, the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and An Bord Pleanála. The Department issued guidelines in February 2008 in regard to the taking in charge of residential developments and the corresponding management arrangements. These were comprehensive. However, we came to the view that to a certain extent the Law Reform Commission report did not refer to the issue of mixed use developments or deal with it in any great detail. There are significant numbers of such developments around the country, which combine commercial and residential elements and where the residential element may be divided into duplexes, apartments, houses and in some instances even old people's dwellings. We must cater for all those circumstances.

Regarding voting rights, to have a fair voting system we moved away from the norm of one vote per unit because that might give the developer or the developer's interest an opportunity to out vote people. We have left it to the court or the dispute resolution mechanism to decide on what is fair, reasonable and equitable in all circumstances.

Regarding traditional housing estate developments, the practice was that when these were built developers brought in management companies to look after common areas, mar dhea. The owners were then required to pay money. As Senator O'Donovan said, in some cases, they were not particularly sure what they were paying for because they were not getting any service. This is to bring them into the remit of the Bill but to take into account that they are not like the mixed-use developments but normal developments with a different type of residential unit. What we have done here is to comprehensively cover all aspects of our living arrangements. Obviously, if there is anything else that requires to be done over time or issues that arise, we would have to come back to the legislation at a later date.