Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thought I might get away with that.

The purpose of the provision is aimed at incentivising developers who obtain planning permission for strategic housing developments through the new bespoke streamlined procedures to commence work on the developments concerned sooner rather than later and well before the permission expires rather than sit and hoard their sites. Therefore, we must also oppose the amendment.

Deputy Ó Broin's amendment No. 85 proposes to amend section 176A of the Act of 2000 as inserted by the 2016 Act. The purpose of the amendment is to include mandatory public participation in the EIA screening process to be carried out by planning authorities and the board under the new EIA screening provisions introduced in 2016 Act. We oppose the amendment because public participation for screening purposes is not a requirement of the EIA directive, either the 2011 version of the directive or the 2014 amending directive, and there is already provision for public participation in processing substantive applications for development consent. Instead, the EIA directive, in its 2011 and 2014 versions, require a screening determination shall be made available to the public, and this is already provided for in section 176B(5) and 176C(9). As I will outline shortly, Government amendment No. 84 firms up the provisions in section 176C(9). In this connection, I do not see the point of having separate public participation processes for intermediary stages of the planning process that proceed the substantial planning application and an environmental assessment process. Therefore, I oppose the amendment.

Government amendments Nos. 83 and 84 arise from Committee Stage amendments proposed by Deputy Ó Broin. During the discussion the Minister, Deputy Coveney, accepted the principle of the Deputy's amendments and indicated he would consider the legal and drafting aspects and would table amendments on Report Stage.

Amendment No. 83 amends section 176A of the 2000 Act, as inserted by the 2016 Act, and makes provisions for screening for environmental impact assessment on application to a planning authority. Section 176A sets out the detail and documentation to be included in such a screening application and further material for inclusion in an application may also be restricted. It also provides that a planning authority may reject an application if it is incomplete in any material way or in such case it provides the planning authority will return the application and the fee detailing the reason for its rejection.

As it will be absolutely clear to an applicant what is required in an EIA screening application, there is no reason the applicant should be refunded the application fee if relevant material is omitted from the application. The onus is on the applicant to ensure that he or she submits an application that complies with the requirements of the Act and the regulations. This amendment proposes to remove the requirement of the planning authority to return the fee in a case where it rejects an application that is incomplete in any material way and will incentivise the submission of properly completed screening applications by concerned individuals. I hope the House will accept that because I believe it is common sense.

In short, amendment No. 84 relates to new section 176C of the 2000 Act inserted by the 2016 Act, which makes provision for a review or a referral of screening for environmental impact assessment for determination by the board. Subsections (8), (9) and (10) outline the notification provisions which apply to the determination by the board in this regard.

Amendment No. 84 as now proposed clarifies that when the board makes a determination on an EIA screening referral, the board must publish it along with the main reasons and considerations for the determination on its website, supplemented by a notice advising that the determination may be subject to judicial review. The amendment further requires the board to maintain a record of its determinations and make them available on its website while also making them available for purchase and inspection during office hours, contrary to the current discretionary provisions.

Deputy Murphy asked who makes the decision. It is the relevant planning authority so if it is more than 100 houses it would be An Bord Pleanála when the legislation kicks in. That is in regard to the EIS requirement as opposed to that of the EIA.

Some other questions were raised. Deputy Wallace is of the opinion that the Minister is going about this the wrong way and that not enough is being done. I do not believe he is going about it the wrong way. As a Department we are making the right decisions. I agree with him that we would like to be able to do more and, accordingly, as we can access funding we will do more but it takes time to ramp up the system and all the trends around commencement notices, planning permissions, the number of sites that are opened and activity on them indicate that things are improving. As I said, we wish they could improve overnight but the Deputy was in the game of construction and he understands how it works. We cannot turn it on overnight, despite all the interventions we try to make, but we will activate sites, make lands available and try to access more funds. We are doing all that. We are trying to speed up the planning permission process.

The Deputy makes the point about using our land to build houses. There is a commitment of over €5.5 billion of taxpayers' money to build houses and as more money becomes available we will try to do that, and we will work with the Deputy on that. This House agrees that, at a minimum, €5.5 billion is the correct amount. More might be done by future Governments when they can get access to the money. At the first opportunity we were able to access more funding the Minister, Deputy Coveney, made the business case through the action plan for housing, which built on the work of the housing committee, and secured the extra billions required to make this happen. The money is available and we are ramping up the projects.

With regard to the land, last week we heard of the mapping idea and that the State owns 5,000 acres of land, and probably more because there are some sites we cannot fully trace but we will find them eventually. We are saying those sites are available for the reasons the Deputy outlined not just for the big builders he referred to, but for anybody who wants to engage with a local authority to see how to activate those lands. We recognise that we cannot provide the funds today for the local authorities to build all those 50,000 houses on that 5,000 acres, and it could be more than 50,000 houses. That is a reasonable medium density approach. We are saying that the land is available. We have asked local authorities to make that land available to people who want to build a small number of houses, who would consider using affordable houses, build to rent and all the mixed tenure approaches. That is what we are asking local authorities to do. They are the ones that generally own these lands, and about 750 of these sites. The other 50 belong to the State and the Housing Agency. About 30 sites belong to other State players but we are saying that this land can be used to build houses.

The Deputy spoke about creating competition. That creates competition, and it sends out a message to people who want to hoard other private sites that public sites can be used to build houses. That is what we intend to do, and we will drive that forward. I think the Deputy would agree with that concept and the idea is to make it happen as quickly as we possibly can. We need to be able to find all the sites so that the Deputy and anybody else can decide on the sites they want to build on. I understand not everyone agrees with that concept, and that is fair enough, but we believe it is a good approach to try to activate these lands and get them built on much quicker, and that is what we will try to do.

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