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

The Labour Party is happy to support this eminently sensible amendment. I would be surprised if the Minister has been waiting for an amendment like this to look at the issue of the causes of delays in the construction of housing. I hope the Department has already begun to do that, especially as the Minister has told us many times that there is planning permission for 27,000 housing units in the greater Dublin area. It is an absolute disgrace that developers are sitting on those planning permissions and not building.

We need a lot more in the way of stick rather than carrot. That is why the vacant sites levy was introduced by the previous Government. We proposed it should come forward earlier than intended. That is also why we proposed in our Bill last week that we should implement the recommendations of the Kenny report, which would be a deterrent to developers sitting on land which could be used for building social houses in the future.

See this speech in context