Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and the Ministers of State. I also welcome the team from the Department. Its members do a great deal of work.

I will focus on a few key issues. I visited the An Bord Pleanála website earlier. The Minister will be very familiar with the staggering number of housing applications that are stuck in the planning process. We have discussed this on numerous occasions. Every time the Minister has come before this committee, I have raised this issue with him. The Minister should be especially familiar with the numbers. There are major numbers from in respect of the Minister's neck of the woods in Swords. I have in front of me a spreadsheet from An Bord Pleanála which confirms that there are 21,746 houses in the system, some of which date back to 2022. Historically, we are aware of the issues around both those applications and strategic housing. I do not want to enter a blame game but Housing For All stated that all these houses would be built and that no one would be obliged to live in a hotel. However, we are moving on. I am sorry; that was Rebuilding Ireland, which was before the Minister's time. Anyway, let us stay positive.

The greatest scandal has to be that we have developers who have made submissions, which, on appeal - legitimately - to An Bord Pleanála amount to 21,476 houses. Some of these would have been built now had they got through the process. I accept that we must have a planning process. We will have an opportunity in next few weeks to talk about the Planning and Development Bill in the Seanad, but this number of applications in the system is simply not good enough. We have had changes in personnel and we have had investigations into An Bord Pleanála, but we are still none the wiser in respect of much of this. I am aware that due process is taking place, but try to explain that to the public. If I was writing a piece for one of tomorrow's tabloids, I would certainly be putting that on the front page. How does the Minister explain that there are 21,476 in the system? How will these be fast-tracked?

I looked at the figures for north County Dublin. There are more than 3,500 houses in the Minister's neck of the woods alone in the system. This has nothing to do with the Minister, and there is no blame on him. I looked at An Bord Pleanála's website. It has put up a simple message which states:

An Bord Pleanála currently has a significant backlog of cases. It is currently working to substantively clear this backlog in 2024. An Bord Pleanála apologises for the consequent delays in determining cases within the normal statutory objective time periods.

It is an absolute scandal that An Bord Pleanála cannot meet its time objectives. There is an issue relating to resources. Many of its people are on secondment. I know people working for An Bord Pleanála who have come from local authorities. I am familiar with the problems internally there. I just wanted to park this here. I ask the Minister to give us a quick comment on it.