Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming in. I apologise as I am suffering from a cold. I have a couple of relatively short and easy questions, given other aspects have been covered. I want to reiterate Senator Cummins’s point of view, which is that these changes are welcome but they will not work unless local authorities are adequately resourced to stick with the timelines. That is the most important part of it.

One of the big failures of the SHD process was that activations were down. It seemed that some people were using it as an opportunity to be able to flip sites. Was consideration given to charging additional fees where the site was subjected to a second or third application, particularly if there was a second or third application for retention purposes or for changes within the application? Was it considered that there should be a disincentive to that happening on the site and to incorporate it into the fee structure?

I was interested to note that two student accommodation shared bed spaces qualify as one housing unit for the purposes of calculating the fees. Will the Minister of State explain why that was considered? I know 200 bed spaces were considered when going through the SHD process but with regard to the fees, why was this aspect considered? Those are my two questions.