Mr. David Walsh:

Before I hand over to Mr. Ó Cléirigh and Ms Clifford to deal with some of the issues raised on the rental sector and the provision of student accommodation, I will reflect briefly on the previous round of questions about the planning process.

A number of committee members have flagged the issue of zoning decisions and a diminution of councillors' role in that regard. I confirm that applications to the board will only be made where in the local development plan process in the local authority a clear decision and a requirement for housing has been signalled and the local authority has not zoned the areas in question. I suspect the board will not even accept an application in the first instance where this has not happened.

Senator Paudie Coffey raised an important point that beyond the single prong of assessing individual applications as part of a multi-prong approach by the Government to deal with the housing crisis, there is the more fundamental question of how as a country we plan for the next 20 years as part of the national planning framework and how we can accommodate an additional 750,000 people who are expected to be living in the country and how this will impact on zoning decisions at local and regional level. This is where elected members and local authorities will have a central role to play in assessing requirements and addressing planning issues not only in urban areas where a lot of urgent actions need to be taken, in housing supply, dealing with homelessness and easing pressures on the rental sector, but also in smaller towns and rural areas. That is the key to how we ensure the country will be in a better place in 2040.

On applications being reviewed, in many cases we are seeing them being resubmitted because of economic changes. They might have been for multi-unit apartment blocks, but there is no longer a market for such accommodation and people are looking to do different things within the land involved. In some cases, planning permissions are being extended. There is provision for an extension where circumstances are beyond the control of the developer. We have seen examples of applications for large sites being resubmitted to take account of demand in the market in which circumstances are different from what they were eight or ten years ago.

Senator Victor Boyhan asked how the appeals process would work. It would be a judicial review. The board deals primarily with normal applications and has to be clear in making its decision and its reasons for it. If somebody is unhappy with that decision, it may be appealed by way of a judicial review, as happens in many other cases.