Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We had engagement with the Department in the early days of this as well. We had about four meetings on development consent, forward planning, enforcement and planning authorities. I think those were the four headings we did it under. The process has been going on for quite a long time. This is the first edition of what will eventually end up as the 2023 planning and development Act, or whatever it is going to be called. There are sections missing from it. There are Xs in place of time limits. It is far from complete. This part of the process is to feed into that. I sense an openness to taking those views on board and making changes for the better. As was said, this has to endure for the next 20 years. It is not something we expect only to last a while, although I do not know; maybe we will be back at the end of it. The process has been quite lengthy and we have a lot of road to run on it still.

There is a question on section 48 contributions. We have a document - I do not know if the witnesses have it but I would be happy to share it with them - which compares old sections with new sections and shows what they will be called. We only got that in the last few days in our correspondence from the Department because we asked for it. I believe the Department is working on a document to try to show the changes. The witnesses are doing a section-by-section comparison as well. If we could get all that stuff together it would be very helpful. The document indicates that section 48 contributions will be replaced by Part 5A, which I do not think exists yet. We have the land value sharing and urban development zones Bill as well. In reading the general scheme of that a couple of months back, the question occurred to me whether that is the replacement for section 48 development contributions.