Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Minister acknowledges there is an issue to be addressed, or at least I hope he does. However, we are in a housing emergency. The situation is absolutely dire and a part of that is rooted in the abuse of planning permissions for speculative purposes. I might cite in that regard, the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service, IGEES, report from a few years ago, which identified this as a serious problem. I do not know whether the Minister is aware of it. The report stated that the evidence suggests that planning permissions far exceed commencements. The Minister stated that the position has improved on commencements. I would be interested to know the proportions on that, but certainly the IGEES report identified that the planning permissions granted for residential development were significantly in excess of the number of commencements in any given year. My guess is that has not changed dramatically since that report was done. It may have changed somewhat and it would be useful to see if the Government has up-to-date figures on the balance between planning permissions granted for residential development and the number of commencements. The IGEES report is a strong piece of evidence produced by, I think, the Department of public expenditure and it pointed explicitly to speculation and land hoarding as a serious problem that the authors believe explains the disparity between the number of planning permissions granted and the number of commencements. We are all aware that speculation goes on and we can probably all point to examples.

The Minister stated that two years is too short, but I say that five years is too long and ten years - as five years allows for an extension to ten years-----