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

It is great that Senator Victor Boyhan has read the plan. From my perspective, that is very good. I will go through some of the schemes mentioned.

On student accommodation, it is my understanding anything happening on public land which is controlled and managed by a local council is subject to a Part VIII process. It is up to the council to make sure it does this in a way that is responsible and maximises the opportunity to engage in the sustainable development of a parcel of publicly owned land. If the best use of that land involves a mix of student accommodation, affordable rental accommodation and private development, as well as social housing, to achieve a mixed tenure, the Part VIII process has to be used to deal with that complexity and ambition. That is what we mean when we refer to student accommodation being part of a mixed development on publicly owned land.

On construction capacity skills, a major feature of the education policy launched last week by the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Richard Bruton, and the Taoiseach was the need to increase the number of traineeships and apprenticeships, particularly in construction. The way in which we construct buildings and housing estates will change. We may not see the same numbers of bricklayers and so on being used.

In future, we may have many more pre-cast or ready-for-assembly properties being craned into building sites and assembled in a much different way than is currently the case. Some conventional building will undoubtedly continue. If we are to return to building between 25,000 and 30,000 housing units per annum through a combination of social and private housing, we will need more skilled construction workers.

One of the more controversial and ambitious elements of the plan is the proposal to change the decision making process for planning in respect of larger developments. This is one of the reasons we will introduce legislation. I hope to secure Government approval for the heads of a Bill next week. Under the proposed legislation, developers who wish to build more than 100 housing units will be required to engage in an intensive pre-planning consultation process with local government and, for the first time, this must be completed within a prescribed period. Rather than having a developer submit a poor planning application which needs to be reshaped and redesigned through an ongoing pre-planning consultation process, some of which last for 18 months or longer, the onus will be on private developers to ensure their planning applications are in order from the outset. This will result in much higher quality submissions being made for pre-planning consultation with local authorities.

An Bord Pleanála will also be involved at this stage to ensure applications in respect of zoned land are consistent with the relevant local area, county or city development plan. Where there is a piece of land that is zoned for housing, a developer will be required to submit a quality application that takes account of all the policy considerations in the locality. A statutory pre-planning consultation period of between eight to ten weeks will ensue, after which the developer will make a formal submission to An Bord Pleanála. The legislation will impose a statutory requirement on An Bord Pleanála to issue a decision on all such applications within approximately 16 weeks. The Department will gear up and support An Bord Pleanála from a human resources perspective and in respect of other resources to ensure it has the capacity to meet these requirements. Timelines and so forth can be discussed when the Bill is introduced in the Dáil, Seanad and select committee.

Comparisons will be made with the strategic infrastructure Act and people will point out that it sometimes takes nine, ten or 12 months for decisions to be made under that legislation. This is because the legislation permits requests for further information to be made and public hearings to be held, as a result of which the timeframe will be extended. Many examples of such cases come to mind. The legislation I will introduce will be different, however, and will not be type of a strategic infrastructure Bill for housing. For example, it does not provide for a timeline for further information and if applications are not spot on from the outset, they will be thrown out. This will probably result in an increase in the number of refusals until such time as developers get the message that the purpose of the legislation is not only to have quicker decisions, but also to impose on them an obligation to get the application right from the outset. We want developers to produce highly professional planning applications that are consistent with what councillors have determined in local area plans, development plans and so forth. This consistency will then be confirmed in the pre-planning consultation, after which An Bord Pleanála will go through a rigorous process of ensuring everything is as it should be before making a decision.

The most important issue is protecting the integrity of the planning system, while the second priority is to ensure the right decisions are made in a timely manner. What we are trying to do is ensure the process moves forward and people who are willing to provide quality housing developments in the right places at the right density, taking account of all the other issues surrounding public amenity and so forth, have decisions made on their planning applications quickly to allow construction to proceed. I hope that gives members a sense of what we are trying to achieve.

By the end of this month, we should be in a position to name key sites which we want to become pathfinder projects. I have referred to one or two such sites in commentary and speeches. I believe we will be on schedule in this regard. We want to create projects that deliberately draw the spotlight as this will show others what can be achieved on publicly owned land in terms of integrating communities and demonstrating new thinking in the area of design, ambition and so forth. People in other areas who follow developments on pathfinder sites in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and elsewhere may then decide to replicate the model on the basis that it clearly works. I want O'Devaney Gardens to be a pathfinder site because it has been a highly controversial project on which there has been considerable disagreement. I am not certain it will come through the system but we would like to turn all the negatives associated with the site on their head and create a positive project for Dublin.

Pathfinder projects will also be developed on large private strategic sites that can deliver scale quickly, for example, strategic development zones. This will allow people to see the pace of delivery. We hope to deliberately attract attention to these sites with a view to having projects that work replicated in other areas.

Deputy Boyhan spoke about quarter three implementation in a way that almost made excuses for not delivering. We intend to deliver quarter three objectives on schedule. We will have a full report on mid-October providing an update on what is being delivered, what is ahead of schedule and what plans are in place to get projects that are behind schedule back on track. I expect the joint committee will be interested in receiving progress reports that are factual and numbers based rather than slick public relations management jobs, which we are sometimes accused of providing.

Like many other members of the Government, I want to make progress on the issue of refugees. Ireland has made a commitment to welcome 2,000 refugees in the next 12 months. This will mean accommodating approximately 40 refugees per week and my Department's responsibility is to ensure accommodation is available when required. Refugees arriving here will first go to an orientation centre for a period to learn about and understand the kind of communities they will live in and with in future. We will then have to put in place sustainable housing solutions which I expect will be predominately done through the housing assistance payment. Let us be honest rather than politically correct about this issue. We must approach it in a way that, where possible, does not cause friction between people who are on housing waiting lists and those who are arriving here, many of home will have had horrific experiences and will need wraparound help and support, not only in the area of housing. The last thing we want is competitive friction for local authority or social housing to develop between the new Irish and people with legitimate needs who are waiting for housing supports. We are very conscious of this issue. For this reason, the housing assistance payment is probably a good vehicle for addressing the issue. Many of the homes available under the HAP scheme are spread around and not located in large numbers in specific areas. The way people approach a council house that becomes available for reallocation is very public and there is competition for such houses. While we are open to suggestions, we believe the HAP scheme is probably the best solution, at least initially.

The Department is represented on the task force for refugee protection, which is chaired by the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald. The Department is working closely with the County and City Management Association, CCMA, the Department of Justice and Equality and other key stakeholders on the housing of refugees when they come here. As I stated, they will be housed primarily through the use of the housing assistance payment, HAP. In vulnerable cases in which there is a specialist need such as disability, mental health concerns, addiction or whatever, local authorities obviously will be asked to and will seek solutions for them. This hopefully was a comprehensive answer on the refugee side.

As for streamlining the Part VIII process, my Department is trying to put in place a structure for this process from a timeline perspective to force a decision as opposed to something that gets put off repeatedly. Some councils are really good at Part VIII proposals and no issues arise. When speaking to a council, I sometimes am asked why I focus on Part VII because the council in question has no problem with it. While this is true in some parts of the country, it is not true elsewhere and we intend to consider planning reform more broadly through a root-and-branch review of the broader planning system. Consequently, the Department intends to consider the efficiency of the existing process, including Part VIII and associated regulations, which will be a separate process. However, the provisions proposed in the legislation regarding Part VIII include a six-week public consultation instead of the current eight-week period. In addition, as there is no prescribed timeline at present, the chief executive will have eight weeks in which to prepare a report for councillors. The intention is that elected members will have six weeks to reform, modify or reject and otherwise, the chief executive officer's proposals will be adopted. Essentially, there will be a timeline and in the absence of decisions by councillors on that timeline, the chief executive's report will take effect by default. In other words, this will force people to make a decision on Part VIII proposals and this is the right thing to do. It keeps the power in the hands of councillors, which is where it should be, but also places an onus on a chief executive to put together proposals that have a good chance of gaining acceptance. It also forces a discussion and possibly amendments and changes between councillors and management to try to get it right. However, the most important point is this will force decisions and this is what I am trying to do in the planning system, regardless of whether it is a Part VIII proposal or is with An Bord Pleanála.

As for the religious congregations, I invited them to meet me in Galway. I have been in Galway a number of times since then but essentially, the idea was to appeal to religious congregations to work with the Department and to consider properties they may have for which they no longer have use. The idea was rather than essentially trying to force the case, we would work in partnership with religious congregations and from my experience of being in this job thus far, it is a much more progressive way to get things done. After that meeting, I was approached by a number of religious congregations, which have made offers. I already have received an offer from my native city of a modern and suitably located house in County Kerry, which now has been linked up with an approved housing body. The transition is simply taking place and there is no charge for it. Some of the nuns living there are moving out, Clúid is taking over and that is a great outcome. There is another case of a former convent - also in Cork as it happens - and I hope its facilities will be used by an approved housing body linked with homeless provision for women for that purpose. I hope to be able to replicate this kind of partnership elsewhere as well. Last week in Waterford, what I can only describe as a phenomenal social housing project was opened. Senator Coffey will be highly familiar with the project, which involves a former home for priests. While I cannot remember its name, it was really impressive.