Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If we were to instead take the approach some people have suggested and just concentrate on streamlining the decision-making process at local authority level, the reality is that the vast majority of these would be appealed and go to An Bord Pleanála anyway. While I accept that it would improve it, even if we had a guaranteed eight-week decision-making process at local authority level every time, which is virtually impossible, by having more staff and better systems, we would still be going to An Bord Pleanála. Although An Bord Pleanála has an 18-week timeframe in which it is expected to make decisions, there is no statutory requirement. The statutory requirement will be in the legislation. We are trying to condense the decision-making process while ensuring the right decisions are made.

We are putting much more of an onus on developers to do the key work that needs to be done before the pre-planning consultation begins. Developers will have to engage with local authorities before they ask for a formalised statutory pre-planning consultation to ensure they are ready to begin the process before they ask An Bord Pleanála to trigger the statutory timelines. This is a change for the better for developers. It is a temporary change for the local authorities, councillors and An Bord Pleanála for the next three years to try to ensure the housing delivery we are likely to see anyway over the next ten years happens sooner rather than later. That is all. If it is viable to build houses on zoned land, we want them to be built next month and next year rather than in three or four years' time.

Another good point is the question whether the provisions of the Bill that allow for an automatic renewal of planning should apply to developers who get planning permission to build more than 100 houses through the process. There is a proposed amendment on this later. Until this debate, we had thought we should apply the same to everybody. However, there is a fair argument that the whole point of this is to get things moving fast. A Senator made this point. If somebody takes advantage of a streamlined system to get a quick decision and then decides to sit on it for five or six years while property prices increase, we should not tolerate it. As Senator Kieran O'Donnell said, this is about getting houses built and facilitating it. It is about getting the right kind of houses of the right density, quality and design built next year rather than in five or six years' time. I will give a very strong signal to developers that the State is doing its bit in streamlining a decision-making process, and their job is to build the houses once they get through the system. If they do not, their planning permission will not be renewed without going through the process again. In five years' time, we are unlikely to have the fast-track process in place. The incentive will be there to get on and build the houses. We will talk about it in more detail later.