Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I shall be making some of the same points that other Deputies have made. Here we go again. It is the last week of term and we are presented with a piece of emergency legislation. If it is not planning, or should I say development, legislation it is Irish Water legislation. That has been the constant at the end of each Dáil term. At this point I believe it is being deliberately held off until the last minute. If the Bill had been brought to the House last week there would have been a bit more time but it is being rushed through now. This has happened too often.

The Bill is called the Planning and Development (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2017. It is, however, not a planning and development Bill - it is a development Bill. We should just call it what it is. It is a development Bill. I would certainly not want to see a site that is largely completed having to go back for planning permission if the completion of the development is imminent. I do not, however, see why an extension to planning in such cases would require five years. In fact, by giving it a five year extension the pressure is possibly being taken off to complete the work, given that we are trying to get houses finished and housing estates completed. It is not just about completion from the developers' perspective or those who wish to buy, it is also about having the development completed for those people who are already living in these estates. I know people who live in housing estates that were started in 2007 and the developers received the benefit of an extension of duration to the planning permission. The estates are still not completed now. It is a small number, but the idea of it going on for another five years would be the last thing people want. There are not just one or two parties associated with this, there are multiple parties associated with it.

When we get legislation in this manner we do not get the time really to consider the things that could go wrong. This is exactly what Members need to do with legislation - look at what could go wrong. An extension of duration means, essentially, that the original planning permission is unchanged but the duration of it is allowed to be extended. I spoke with a builder recently who has a site. He made a planning application around 2005 or 2006. He did not act on that planning permission. I asked him what he was going to do with the site, which happens to be in my constituency. He told me it was from a different time, the plan was too ambitious and it would not be the type of permission he would apply for now. We could find these very permissions falling into this category.

With extensions of duration the type of house or the type of apartment cannot be changed. Conditions will go along with these permissions and questions on whether or not they can be in compliance. Irish Water, for example, has been introduced since the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2010 that allowed for extension of duration. Obviously things must be referred to. The taking in charge process with Irish Water specifies the number of years after the planning permission has expired. Are there unintended consequences with this legislation? In theory this legislation probably provides for a 15 year permission and this could impact on the taking in charge process.

Who defines "substantially complete"? Very often this can be an issue in relation to the Multi-Unit Developments Act. This relates to owners' management companies as opposed to developers' management companies.

Has that been thought out? If it has, I would appreciate a response because there have been changes in legislation since the original planning permissions were granted for what is to be completed.

There are cases of planning permissions that were granted in, say, 2007, where the Part V obligation was included in them. In some local authorities a price was negotiated for the houses that would be completed in the context of the Part V obligation. It may not apply at all but some of the prices that were negotiated and had to be paid were on the high end. I do not know if it applies in this case. I am just questioning in the way one would normally question when going through something like this if one had the time to really think out the kind of things that could crop up.

Who decides what is "substantially complete"? There could be great variation throughout the country in its interpretation. I had an issue with the definition "substantially complete" in the past. It was in the context of a management company. In fact, the people in the housing estate largely managed the housing estate out of their own pockets for years until the developer came back, when it was viable to do so, in the past couple of years. They certainly paid a price over the inflated price that they paid for their houses. Therefore, I really do have a problem with the term.

The point relating to the Aarhus Convention that Deputy Clare Daly makes is a valid one. Planning requires consultation and, in the main, people do not object in the main for frivolous reasons. Most people have a lot more to be doing with their time. Often there is a reason to object, however, and this is part of the planning system but we are seeing an increasing movement away from that position. We saw it in the legislation before Christmas. The appeals mechanism is pretty much gone because there is now only one mechanism through An Bord Pleanála and the local input is substantially reduced by virtue of the non-involvement of the local authority in the decision at that stage.

Two years ago one of the first things the Social Democrats sought was a delivery agency. This would allow delivery on large sites that would be project managed and would include a mixture of tenure, size and house type, as well as socially-mixed communities. The former Minister, Deputy Coveney, spoke about that kind of social integration but what we are doing today will not and cannot achieve it. It is really disappointing that only a very small number of people in the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government are involved in the delivery side of housing, and I suspect they are involved in the local authority side, which is painfully slow. We suggested a delivery agency that would be connected with the Housing Agency and the Housing Finance Agency. It would be a project manager. If we want to take the risk out of the system and create certainty in terms of the development of very large sites, where planning permission is guaranteed, it having been sought and granted, the builder could come in and build components of it rather than be the developer of the whole site. This would have the benefit of driving down costs as there would be economies of scale.

We certainly would not want to see something that is largely complete remain incomplete. However, the five-year aspect to this is a big issue for me. I will see what attitude will be taken to that amendment and other similar ones.

There is no doubt that we need to have almost a war office-type approach to delivery of housing. If that did not fall into this kind of category, I would not be supporting it. There are too many imponderables here that could come back and bite us. I was elected first to a county council in 1991. I spent the next ten years picking up the bits and pieces after what was something of a housing crash in the 1980s. One gets some experience of the kind of things that might crop up by virtue of the issues that present following such an event. We are back around making the same mistakes again. There are aspects to this Bill that have not been thought out and which will come back and bite. This is not the way to treat what is a legal system. Our planning system is a legal system. Sometimes that is overlooked.

See this speech in context