Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 9 September 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

General Scheme of the Planning and Development (Amendment) (LSRD) Bill 2021: Discussion (Resumed)

Photo of Eoin Ó BroinEoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Absolutely and I may take less time. I want to come back to Mr. Benson of the CIF. Nowhere in his detailed submission did he mention the specific issue I raised on the particularly low level of commencements of SHDs. He spoke about an overall increase of commencement of all residential stock. This is surprising because the submission rightly spends considerable time on the impact of judicial reviews. This is entirely legitimate but, in fact, far more units are delayed in the process because of delays in commencements. I spend a fair amount of time on construction sites with many CIF members. There is a series of reasons for this. They are assembling finance and doing site servicing work. It is not credible to suggest 90% or 86% of units and 64% of schemes cannot commence because of viability issues. This suggests the sector is even more likely to take risks than we thought it was.

Some of these permissions, by the way, date back to the early stages. I am looking at a recent report from Dublin City Council to its elected members. There are SHD grants from 2018 and early 2019 that have not commenced. I accept viability, finance and site servicing are issues. Is Mr. Benson seriously telling the committee there is nobody out there who has an SHD permission who is not also slowing down the delivery as part of a market strategy to constrain supply and keep prices high? I am strongly of the view this is an element in the mix, which is one of the reasons such developments have been so slow to commence. In the same way Mr. Benson said, correctly, that there should be clear statutory guidelines for pre-planning, post-planning and the board, perhaps we need to introduce strict planning timelines as to when commencement should take place. Applicants who get grants should have to justify if they cannot comply with these. This might also help.

My next question is for the CCMA. Will Mr. Kelly or one of its other representatives tease out a little more its concerns about head 8 and the new paragraph in section 33(2)? It seems to be an attempt to restrict requests for additional information in the general scheme. I share the concern of the CCMA. I ask the witnesses to tease through in a little bit more detail what their concerns are.

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