John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

Planning authorities have a range of powers under the Planning and Development Acts 2000 to 2008 which may be used to ensure the timely completion of housing estates in accordance with relevant planning permissions. These include attaching a condition to a planning permission requiring the giving of adequate security for the satisfactory completion of the proposed development and, if necessary, applying any security given for the satisfactory completion of the development in question; the taking of enforcement action for non-completion of a housing estate in accordance with the conditions of the relevant planning permission; and the power to refuse to grant planning permission where the authority forms the opinion that the applicant for such permission has substantially failed to comply with a previous planning permission. My Department issued updated policy guidance to planning authorities in February 2008 on Taking in Charge of Residential Developments — Management Arrangements. This required each planning authority to develop or update, as appropriate, its policy on taking estates in charge by the end of June 2008.

A new local government service indicator in regard to the taking in charge of estates has been introduced, which will provide benchmark data from 2009 onwards for monitoring the taking in charge process. The information to be reported will include the number of estates that were taken in charge in the year in question, the total number of dwellings in these estates and the number of estates in respect of which enforcement action was taken. Informed by this data, which will be available in mid-2009, l intend to keep the issue of taking in charge under review.

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