Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I thank all of the witnesses for being here today and for sharing their expertise and knowledge from what is happening on the ground. It is a very important part of this engagement when it comes to such a big move as this. This measure is designed to accelerate the delivery of housing and not in any way to disincentivise housing supply. This is why it is so important that we hear the representatives' concerns around unintended consequences.

I will focus on three points, that is, on the retrospective aspect in tandem with the non-viable projects that already have planning permission and are currently with An Bord Pleanála or at judicial review, on the concern highlighted by the IHBA and the CIF around state aid - I wish to learn a little bit more about that - and on SDZs.

Before I get to these points, I will comment on the reports. I hear what all the witnesses have said on the need for the Indecon report to be published and to be publicly available. I will take this up with the Minister. I also hear what the representatives from IIP have said about the report on Project Emerald and how this needs to be looked at in a little more detail and in conjunction with this. There is a body of work for us as a committee to do with that.

On the non-viable projects, at this stage I am hearing that 90% of the 44,000 or so planning permissions in Dublin are apartment blocks. Some of them are tied up in judicial reviews and some of them are not viable at present. We have Croí Cónaithe and many other housing acceleration initiatives coming down the tracks that, as Mr. O'Connell has said, hopefully will start to spark a little bit of movement over the summer. From my perspective, we have legislation coming down the tracks to deal with the judicial review side of things. If apartments are currently not viable however, even as we bring on stream all these new mechanisms to try to enable developers to build them, then we need to go back to the drawing board. Is this a fair statement? In that case, we cannot just leave that planning permission lying there with nothing happening on it. This is what this tax is designed to do. It is to ensure we do not have planning permissions lying idle and that we are actually activating sites. I would argue that if there is planning permission, if it has gone through all of the different planning formats - and perhaps has already gone through judicial review as well - if it has not been activated and if the new funding streams that will be coming on stream shortly cannot be drawn down, then this tax should apply to those sites, because the developers need to figure out another way to build on that site.