Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Thomas Pringle.

I rather like the way people continuously talk about the "construction industry" in this House and elsewhere as though it is some large identifiable group. It is like the way people talk about business, saying it has a voice which wants this, that and the other. The construction industry contains a large number of groups, large builders and developers, small builders and small developers, just like the business sector has big and small businesses, which is also shorthand and could be dissected in a more sophisticated way. I have come to the conclusion over many years - the Bill addresses this issue - that there are more cowboys involved in big business than in small business because they are big and can bully people and abuse the system. Similarly, there are more cowboys among big developers than among small developers. I can see the fine motives behind the Bill to attempt to address the issue of developers who are cowboys and speculators and who are not builders but who are trying to flip land quickly at a large profit. This begs the following questions. What is it that makes a developer? What does he or she have to do to be a developer and what qualifications does he or she need? What restrictions are there on anyone becoming a developer? These are like the question of what the restrictions are on anybody becoming a banker. What worries me is that in recent months and years, since the collapse of the economy, not only have the big bankers been rehabilitated, the big developers have also been rehabilitated and it has happened very quickly. The familiar names that bore a heavy responsibility for what happened in and prior to 2007 in the development world are reappearing and being encouraged by at least one agency of the State, NAMA, to use what it calls their "expertise" - God only knows what that was - and being paid to resurrect somehow the companies and the areas they ruined.

The Bill does not address that issue. Even in the banking world there is a little test. To be directors of banks, people have to be approved by the Central Bank. I do not believe for one moment that the test is adequate, given some of the people who got through the net, but in the world of developers there is nothing to stop those who have so conspicuously damaged the economy from re-emerging very quickly in the same position. That is what is happening and some of them are being paid by the State. Where the Bill may have missed a trick is that it does not distinguish between developers who should no longer be allowed to develop because of their failures in the past and the damage they did and developers who are undoubtedly good and constructive and want to make a mild profit but who also can be depended on not to breach the rules and etiquette and damage the communities which we hope, at least, they would house and encourage.

I should address briefly the vacant site levy. The levy is a good idea in principle because it is being introduced to force what I call bad developers and pure speculators to sell, build on or develop land one way or the other. That is a noble motive which has, in certain circumstances, great merit. It will also punish those who are sitting on land banks purely and simply for speculative purposes. However, I have heard of many instances of sites which have not been developed because they are not viable. I would be grateful if the Minister of State addressed this issue also. It does happen; they are not developed because they are simply not viable. In these situations will the person who owns the site and the person who intended to develop it be punished? In the years of the Celtic Tiger, one could develop almost any site. One could bend all rules and this would be encouraged because everything was selling. Now there are sites which cannot be developed and are not commercially viable. Good developers are looking at them and may now find themselves in a situation where a levy - I cannot remember what it is; I think it is 3% of the value - is imposed on these sites. Will this encourage a developer? It will not. All it will do is make it a less valuable site, one which is less likely to be developed because it carries that charge.

The charge, under section 90, will, of course, be carried on. If it is owed on the site and remains a charge on the land, the plot will be made less attractive. It may be that, in the case of certain vacant sites which have been levied, the levy will tip a particular site over the edge and make it marginally less attractive to develop and, therefore, not commercially viable. We have to look at that issue because some developers are not the cowboys we are used to. They would be willing to develop these sites, but will be prohibited from doing so by the large charge on them. Surely one of the answers to this problem would be to dezone a site rather than shoving a levy on it, which might have a freezing or paralysing effect in a marginal case. Why could it not be dezoned after, say, three years? If the charge had been levied for three years and it had not been developed, why could it not be dezoned and freed up in order that other sites could then be developed? The effect of the levy can and may be detrimental. I can see certain circumstances where it will work, but it is a crude instrument.

Under section 23, the site levy money is to be used by the local authority to develop sites. Will this work? If it is not going to work in the case of someone who is a genuine developer, what will happen? We have a genuine developer who is not sitting on a site but who also cannot make it work. How is the local authority going to be able to make it work by using the money on the site? We are not distinguishing between the vacant site which has potential but which is marginal and being held by someone who has genuine motives and the one held by someone who has motives simply to flip it for a quick profit. I cannot see how the local authority will be able to make it work if a genuine developer cannot do so.

Section 28 relates to reduced planning contributions. This clause will, undoubtedly, be welcomed by developers because it will reduce their overheads and obligations when developing areas. However, various areas have been cited to me where the infrastructure for an estate has been utterly and totally inadequate. I have a particular case in County Cork in mind. This could happen and already has happened. The houses were built, but the money supposedly levied for infrastructure has been so inadequate that nothing has been done in that respect. It will be a serious problem. The Government should look again at the reduction of planning contributions if this is going to be the effect of such a reduction.

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