Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We certainly all want to be constructive on the issue of the provision of housing. I know from the media that the Government discussed legislation this morning along with plans and proposals. I see on the legislative programme that there is a housing (miscellaneous provisions) Bill, part of which will be about fast-tracking planning applications. However, from my knowledge of the statutory process, that is only likely to save approximately 12 weeks at the most. Are there any other measures with regard to speeding up the construction of housing? For example, we have many sites that already have planning permission and the delay is at the other end in the availability of sites and moving the process between the Department and local authorities. Are there other measures besides the simple one of fast-tracking and bypassing the local democratic process, which in itself has problems?

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