Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Decisions on infrastructure are generally based on community gain. I am sure there was a planning reason permission could not be granted.

The Deputy also referred to co-location. All mobile phone operators have infrastructure and mast sharing arrangements in place. They may have tried to avoid this in the past, but generally they have come to arrangements which are cost-effective and managed to deal with most of the issues involved. The sharing arrangements promote co-ordination of the use of mast infrastructure and reduce the number of masts used. For planning purposes, as well as other reasons, we like to see infrastructure being used wisely and shared, where possible. I am well aware that this did not happen in the past, but we have moved on in the past couple of years and it is something we can address in the future.

All planning applications are not judged on the community benefits, but when it comes to telecommunications and other infrastructure, generaly community gain overrides other considerations.

I do not know what they were, but I presume there were some reasons for what happened.

I welcome the support for the exemption for commercial properties. Deputy O'Dowd hit the nail on the head. Breathing life back into parts of our towns and villages that have been neglected over the years is exactly what we are trying to do here. There are shops that have been lying empty for years. This affects properties that have been vacant for two years, so it will not encourage vacancy in order to achieve exemption from planning permission. It is designed to deal with vacancies of over two years' duration. It is common sense, and I absolutely agree that it will breathe life back into many parts of towns and villages. The people who own these properties need to be jolted into doing something with them. What we are trying to do is make it easier to work with local authorities in the context of the building control mechanism.

Apart from simplifying the planning process, the other benefit of doing that relates to development fees and development contribution levies. They can sometimes take effect when there is a change to the use of a building. That can make it less attractive to bring forward plans for development or it can mean that owners need a certain level of resources in order to do so. Generally, the owners of these properties are exempt and that makes it easier to bring the properties back into use. That is exactly what we want to happen.

The UK was mentioned as an example. Many of these initiatives in urban rejuvenation are in operation there. We have a similar example in Waterford with the strategic development zone, SDZ, which is developing the urban area similarly to the manner that has been suggested. We have set up a fund which can be used to aid major urban renewal schemes, and we will be bringing forward the details of that scheme in the weeks ahead. Resources were allocated in the recent budget to help us tackle dereliction and vacancy and to co-ordinate different Departments to do so. There are various initiatives across the different action plans to do that. The challenge is in finding the resources to do it.

I am of the view that local authorities need to be front and centre in this. We are trying put them in a strong position so that they can drive this agenda. We had a lengthy discussion at our housing summit yesterday about dealing with properties that have been lying idle for many years. Along with the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and all of my Department colleagues, I stressed the importance of local authorities to this. We discussed the local authorities that are doing this well, Louth being one example, and we encourage all of them to come at this with the same urgency. I made it clear that we will not tackle a vacancy problem or under-utilisation of property without local authorities fully taking it on. We have committed resources to this.