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

We will also support this Bill on the basis that it is a necessary step. I commend Deputy Casey and colleagues on noticing it and it is a good thing they did so before the summer recess or there might have been real problems. I assume it will pass through both Houses of the Oireachtas before the summer break. I am concerned that we have to do this, and Deputy Ó Broin has reminded us all of the frenetic period before the Christmas recess, working intensively late into the night on complicated amendments to housing and planning legislation. This is a lot simpler and easier to understand but it is important we get it right. The interaction between planning and housing is important. I will not be party political but bad planning resulted in houses being built where they were not needed and others not being built where they were needed. It is important we have good planning and houses built in appropriate locations and not, for example, in places subject to flooding.

I hope the fact this piece of the original Bill is going through quickly today means there will be no delay on the substantial legislation. The implementation of the recommendations of the Mahon tribunal has been very slow, as has getting the necessary legislation into this House. In particular, we need to implement the establishment of the planning regulator.

I understand the need to provide for an extra five years' extension where there has been substantial commencement of construction. How does the local authority identify what is substantial? The local authority will be responsible for granting the extension and I share the concerns of others about the possibility of this being a hoarding mechanism to allow a developer to extend the lifespan of the construction of a development until house prices go up again. We all know the statistics on house prices and we have seen people queue up to buy houses only for them to go up again the following day and the day after that, or during different phases of a development.

I can see that as some rogue developers would sit on properties to spread out for as long as possible the construction period in order that they would get the maximum profit from the houses they are constructing, we need safeguards in this regard. If the local authority is to make the decision as to how substantial the work already done is, I think it will need guidance from the Department. There should be some way in which this can be judged in an objective way. In this time of shortage of houses, we do not want to see these developments being held up in any inappropriate way. I understand why there are developments that need this extra time and I am not trying to stop that in any way but I do not want to see this provision being abused either.

In this context, the other measure coming down the tracks is the vacant sites levy. Local authorities are now already developing their vacant sites registers to have ready for next year for the levy to come in retrospectively at the end of 2018 and in 2019. While I acknowledge that we are not talking about vacant sites here, I also want to ensure there is no opportunity for developers to develop one part of a site and leave another part of it vacant yet then have the site described as not vacant. I do not know whether I am making this clear but I am highly suspicious of how some developers might want to try to get around the vacant sites levy coming down the tracks and to sit on land for as long as possible to make the biggest possible profit. We therefore need to look around the corners of this to make sure there are no opportunities for profiteering on these sites.

I wish to develop some of the other points made already. The issue of the building of social housing and the need to speed up its delivery have been raised by a few of the previous speakers and I absolutely support what has been said in this regard. While one measure available is the possibility of having just one application process with the Department for developments with a value of between €2 million and €15 million, according to the most recent reply to a question I got, only two applications have been dealt with under this measure. The four-stage process is taking far too long, as has just been said by Deputy Ó Broin, and I do not understand why it takes so long. There is so much back and forth between the local authorities and the Department still. I do not think anyone wants to see these delays but they are happening. As we have been told the money is there, we really need to see a speedier process for local authorities.

The other issue, which we have all raised at Question Time and so on, is the 700 or so sites around the country that are owned either by local authorities or other public bodies. There are issues surrounding these sites. The local authorities need to be able to be in charge and speed up the processes. I support what Deputy Cowen said about the need for an affordable scheme - an affordable purchase scheme but also an affordable rental scheme. I know the previous Minister was not inclined to introduce a national scheme on these matters and suggested that local authorities would work out their own arrangements around the sites. However, I ask Deputy Eoghan Murphy, as a fresh, new Minister, to reconsider having a national affordable leasing scheme because it will greatly speed up, in my opinion, the development of these sites which are meant to have mixed tenure. There will not be mixed tenure if there are, on the one hand, social houses and, on the other, houses that are too expensive for the average family to buy. That is not mixed tenure; that is fairly well-off people and not well-off people but no one in the middle. We need these kinds of schemes in the public sphere and, again, I ask the Minister to consider this.

Apart from that, there are some sensible amendments from others that would ensure that the time is not unduly spread out and that reasons are given for the seeking of these extensions, and I am supportive of them. In the meantime, while no one wishes to delay unduly this legislation, at the same time we need time to properly scrutinise it.

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