Paudie Coffey (Waterford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have no doubt the Deputies are genuine in the concerns they have raised. I wish to make crystal clear, however, that the mechanisms and provisions set out in this Bill are concerned with targeting the urban regeneration of city and town centres where vacant sites are a blight on streetscapes and are not being utilised to their full potential. We all know where they are in our own towns or cities. The first objective of the Bill is to stimulate activity in the housing sector. If that activity is not taking place, then the vacant-site levy will apply. That is what I mean by the primary objective of the Bill being to stimulate activity. It is a perfectly logical approach to take because, unlike the landbanks to which Deputy Wallace referred, these are sites that already are served by public infrastructure. They have enjoyed investment out of the public purse already and can, therefore, be turned around relatively quickly. They are sites in zoned areas in locations of high demand. That is where the focus of this Bill lies.

Taking account of what the Deputy is saying about landbanks, if we learn only one thing from the past it really should be an understanding of why the property crash happened. In that context, a number of measures have been taken by this Government to ensure we do not go back to the boom-bust property cycles of the past. For the first time ever, we have an independent body, the Housing Agency, engaged in analysing the country's demographics and growth patterns, where the demand is and where infrastructural deficits are. We are utilising its findings to inform public policy and decision-making. That was never done before. In the past, we had a lot of ad hocdevelopment happening around the country, with local development plans and local area plans sprouting up all over the place and huge tracts of lands being zoned. That will not be allowed to happen under the new regime. Instead, we are utilising informed decision-making methods.

There are several methods for dealing with the landbanks to which Deputy Wallace referred. We are already seeing huge tracts of land being dezoned around the country. It is our intention, moreover, to bring forward another planning Bill in the autumn. That might be the more appropriate legislation in which to seek to address the concerns expressed by the Deputy around landbanks and how they are impacting on housing and property infrastructure.

I do not propose to accept amendment No. 10. Deleting section 6(4) would remove critical criteria and provisions that underpin the legislation, which, as I said, is essentially concerned with stimulating activity in the housing sector. The section sets out the specific criteria to be used by a planning authority, or An Bord Pleanála on appeal, for determining whether or not there is a need for housing in an area, with reference to the housing strategy and core strategy of the planning authority. The criteria include house prices and the cost of renting houses in the area, the number of households which qualify for social housing support and have specified the area as an area of choice, and whether the number of houses available for purchase or rent in the area is less than 5% of the total number of houses in the area. These provisions will help to deliver more houses and ensure more sites are turned around and put back into beneficial use. I have explained the focus of the Bill and why we cannot accept the amendment. We will consider the wider issue to do with landbanks as part of the new planning Bill to be introduced in the autumn.

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