Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Here we are again. As we did in December 2016, we are rushing legislation that will have a significant impact on the planning system through the Dáil on the second last day of term. I had huge sympathy for the officials who were dealing with Planning and Development (Housing) and Residential Tenancies Bill 2016 late last year because they were expected to draft complex legislation under enormous political pressure in an unreasonable period. With the best will in the world, and with the very best efforts of the officials, mistakes were made. The Bill in question received some scrutiny on Committee Stage. Amendments with huge holes in them were submitted on the second last day of that term. Thankfully, Members from a range of Opposition parties identified those holes and we were eventually able to get them resolved. The general point that needs to be made is that this is a really bad way for us to introduce legislation, even if we support it in principle and want to see it introduced to address loopholes in the existing codes. Planning legislation is particularly prone to difficulties of this nature. We cannot afford to focus solely on the principle behind this Bill and the text in front of us. We need to bear in mind that what we are doing will interact with a complex web of planning legislation. All members of the housing committee take seriously our responsibility to legislate and to scrutinise legislative proposals. We spend lengthy periods examining these Bills in committee. It is deeply unreasonable to expect us to be able to get our heads around these complexities in such a short space of time.

We got this Bill last Thursday. I pay tribute to Deputy Casey and his colleagues because they noticed this gap in the previous legislation and put it on the agenda. They have to be commended on that. It shows again that if the legislative process is done properly, Members will have the time to notice the difficulties that exist and to respond to them. Since we got the Bill last week, most Members and officials have been exceptionally busy because of the extra items on the Dáil schedule. We have had even less time to scrutinise the content of this Bill in our offices that we would ordinarily have. All Stages of the Bill are being taken today so that the legislation can be passed next week. This is the second time this has happened. If we do not find a way to ensure it does not happen like this, we will create more problems for ourselves that will have to be addressed further down the line. I have no difficulty with the motivation behind this Bill. We need to fill the gap that has been identified. The critical comments I am making about the processing of the Bill should not reflect on what the Bill is trying to do. I am taking the Ministers' explanation of why the Bill has been brought forward in this manner at face value.

I have some concerns, however. When I received this legislation last week, I wrote to the Minister to ask whether he or his Department was aware of individual developments where house construction might potentially have to cease because of this legislative difficulty. On Monday of this week, after The Sunday Business Posthad reported that approximately 75 developments could potentially be affected, I wrote to the Minister again to repeat my simple request. It would have been valuable to share this information with members of the committee. I understand that at least two social housing developments, one of which is being progressed by Tuath Housing, could be affected. If the Minister is asking us to take him at his word while working through the legislation in this way, I think it would have been fair for him to share the information held by the officials in his office. It would have given us a sense of the kinds of developments we are talking about. We should have been given details of the location and size of each development. How much time is needed in each case? Perhaps the Minister will be able to share some of that information with us when he replies. For future reference, when we are dealing with legislation of this nature, we are open to working with the Minister to address the issues in a sensible and constructive way. The Minister's officials know this. I think he will come to learn this as he spends more time in his current role. We will not play politics with sensible legislative amendments or sensible improvements to the planning system. The Minister needs to assist us by providing the kind of information to which I have alluded.

Before I talk about the Bill, I want to say that there is currently a problem with the process for the first extension of planning permissions. When extensions are sought in many local authority areas, there is a sense among elected representatives and third parties that it is a kind of rubber-stamping exercise.

Where substantial changes have happened in a development or in the environmental circumstances, it is very difficult for people to influence and engage in the first extension period, whether the developer is responsible for the delay or not or has a bad track record of completing existing parts of a development. One of my concerns with the drafting of the Bill, if not its intention, is that those things are built into the second extension in a way that could be open to abuse or to unintended consequences.

The intention is to ensure that if a developer is on site and only has a couple of months left but needs a year or two years, the development is not stopped but, as the Bill is currently drafted, someone could significantly commence a development and, for example, put in the foundations but pause it to sit on it, as it were, for a while. With house price inflation of 10%, it may be better to leave it for a period. There is a real possibility that a rogue or greedy developer, as opposed to the genuine developers whom this Bill is trying to help, could avail of this extension and meet the criteria to benefit from one year, or two or three years, of additional house price inflation. I have a real concern about that and some of my amendments are designed to strengthen the ability of the local authority to force the developer in question to demonstrate very clearly that he or she is unable to complete the development within a reasonable period.

In the way the legislation is drafted, the total extension is five years, but when being granted the first extension under existing legislation, one gets the full extension. I would have preferred the legislation to have been designed with a shorter extension of a year or two years while, if the developer made the case for more time and in an exceptional case, he or she could get it. Instead of this, the five-year extension is the default rule even though the local authority, under certain circumstances, grants a lesser period. I would like the Minister to respond to that concern.

I am also not clear if the second extension can be secured more than once. It cannot be extended past the five years to 31 December 2021, but I wonder if someone can get a year or two-year extension and then get another year or two years up to that date. It would be helpful if the Minister could clarify that. If an extension is granted and a development got original permission ten or 11 years ago, which sets of planning regulations and county development plan rules apply? Is it the ones when the first planning permission was granted, those in force in the first period of extension or the rules which apply today? In many circumstances they can be very different. I am not necessarily arguing for one or the other at this point but clarity is required.

The Minister said that those whose projects had substantially commenced within the original planning permission period will be able to avail of a second extension. Does that mean someone who had substantially commenced could apply for an extension, do nothing in the first extension period and still avail of the second extension? None of us wants to delay important legislation and no one in this House, irrespective of our view of the Bill as it stands, wants to see any development, private or social, stop because of weaknesses in existing legislation, but I urge the Minister and his officials to listen carefully to what Members are saying, regardless of whether he accepts their amendments. I assume this goes to the Seanad next week, and if there are ways to strengthen the Bill on Committee Stage to ensure it can only be used for the intended purposes as identified by Deputy Casey and his colleagues, they should be found. Someone could abuse legislation which was weak because of the time it took to produce it, so I urge the Minister to make it as robust as possible.

I do not want to enter into other areas of housing policy but this is the second time we have dealt with fast-tracking legislation which is primarily for the benefit of private housing developments. We have a desperate need for the Department to come back with a similar set of proposals to fast-track social housing developments. The 18 to 24 months approval and procurement process is slowing down the pace of social housing delivery to a level that is unacceptable. We are being told of the urgency of fixing this problem but there is a huge problem in the State's delivery of social housing in that it is taking far too long and the measures introduced by the former Minister are not having the desired impact on the ground or speeding up the four-stage process. I urge the Minister to come back to us after the recess with some policy proposals, regulations or legislation to move from an 18 to 24 month approval process to a six to nine month one-stage process, which is eminently deliverable without compromising on standards or the quality of accommodation.

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