Mr. James Benson:

This is a huge area and we welcome the discussion on it. We would not lead anyone to believe that we believe judicial reviews are the only reason a number of units and developments have not been commenced. We would all favour an holistic reform of the planning process. We are looking at large-scale residential developments but other areas also need significant reform to bring certainty and clarity to the process. With regard to the level of commencement, it is well documented and we have spoken about infrastructure and economic viability assessment and what can be done to bring forward developments.

We represent the homebuilders. Like members, I meet many members of our organisation on the ground who are builders and their interest lies in building homes. When they do get the permissions they want to get on site as soon as possible and to build out on that. They try to do that. I have no doubt that there are some individuals who would look to avail of opportunities on that issue but the current vacant site tax is in place for that very reason, that is, in order that we would not have any aspect of land hoarding, which is equally contained within the Housing for All plan. Other initiatives and schemes being proposed would help to increase the supply of land in a timely fashion.

With regard to the referrals, we all need to be cognisant that it is not just about judicial reviews. A high level of applications currently going through the process - some 67,000 - have the potential to not commence because of referrals to the European Court of Justice. They are fully legitimate and there are reasons why the applications have been referred but the reality is that the impact will be the uncertainty that will follow because we will be waiting up to 18 months for a decision to be made on the back of those. Unfortunately, it does not just lie with the 67,000 applications currently going through the various streams of the process; it also lies with those projects that will now not be submitted and potentially cannot go forward until greater certainty is known around those potential projects.