Pat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. On the planning process, is the initial pre-planning with the local authority a requirement before one goes to the nine week pre-planning with the board? My concern is that there is no timeline for that. On the local property tax, LPT, I fully agree with, and understand, the national equalisation process. I also fully accept that there has to be something there but my argument is about the LPT baseline that is applied to local authorities. Those of us coming from local authorities would argue that is probably incorrect. Is the methodology in calculating that LPT baseline similar or consistent in all local authorities? How does that mechanism work? I accept that the excess over and above that is rightly being spent on capital infrastructure for housing but it is having an effect on the services being provided at local level.

I am not getting into the water debate and what might happen there but I welcome the slight increase in funding for group water schemes. I refer primarily to rural Ireland and smaller towns and villages in the context of the national planning framework that is on the horizon. Regardless of what happens at the committee and what water charging regime comes out of it, it will never fund the capital investment required to deliver a revitalised rural Ireland with respect to water and sewerage schemes in towns and villages. We know that most of them are at capacity and have no room to expand.

I come back to vacant units. I have my constituency office in Arklow. It is a prime example of how important vacant units are. Arklow has no wastewater capacity at all. It is the pipeline. It might start in 2019 and might be finished in 2022. There is no capacity for new builds in Arklow. We have nearly 1,000 on the list. Probably 60% of the properties over shops on the main street in Arklow are vacant, and probably 35% to 40% of the properties on the street are vacant. That is why we need to put more emphasis and resources, if we can, into converting vacant units into potential homes for people. That is the case I am making. That is the reality on the ground out there.