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

I have two small points on the amendments to be clear. Let us look at amendment No. 206. It is not that it would be in any way prescribing individual developments must have X or Y. In some senses, by listing these areas under what I am calling the priority areas for national planning policy statements, people would actually be saying that they need better guidance on this to try to avoid some of the things Deputy McAuliffe rightly said about poor quality planning. It is actually to say that if we want to improve, for example, the proper provision of cultural spaces, a national planning policy statement would be useful.

On affordable housing, I will focus on the planning stuff. The value of this is to have to think about planning. The Minister will be aware that a rush of build-to-rent planning applications were submitted before this Government came into office and just slightly after. Many of those did not use what I would have called inferior build-to-rent design standards; rather they used the better ones. However, very large volumes of those applications were unviable. At the time, they were literally unviable and most of us commenting on them had the suspicion that they were. There was no requirement in the planning process to make an assessment of the following scenario, for example. If Eoin Ó Broin submits an application for development X, is it viable and is it affordable by whatever definitions are in legislation or policy?

I am not saying this to convince the Minister because I know he will oppose the amendment. However, there is a need for him and the Department to think about it. At some point, we need to start making our planning system more sophisticated in a way that gives at least the option of looking at whether there is any point in granting a consent if it is just completely unviable. The only reason I say this is when we used to do strategic development zones, we were told they were tenure-neutral. It was just the number of houses, the type of houses and the layout. However, a number of us made the case that they should not be blind to tenure and that, in fact, they should have the option. We now have two SDZs - one in Poolbeg and one in my own constituency - where the SDZ includes elements of tenure. The planning system has become more sophisticated.

I urge the Minister to think this through after he rejects the amendment because it could be valuable to the toolkit planners have to try to make decisions not just about the right size, shape, density, layout and public space but whether it will ever get built and whether it is viable.

Even if it is viable, is it in any way affordable by whatever definition is available at the time?