Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The purpose of a second extension of duration is to provide certainty to those people who are currently building to make sure they can finish those builds, be they developments of 20, 30, 40, 100 or 200 houses, the completion of some of which, even though they are substantially developed already, will still take a number of years. I cannot accept this amendment because the extension of duration in that regard must be an administrative function to give them that certainty in terms of the planning permission process. However, this amendment has the effect of making it discretionary, which would negate that certainty. That would then have implications for funding and financing for all those developments that would still require two, three or more years to finish. In other words, with this amendment we would be turning the process from an administrative one for the planning authority to a substantive one. We would remove that uncertainty but we would also bring in other difficulties in terms of undermining the planning process if we were to say that wider policy considerations that did not exist at the time for whatever reason - the development plan might have changed - could be brought in all of a sudden on a simple extension of duration, which could completely undermine the development that is already almost substantially complete. That is the difficulty I have with this amendment. We should recognise the significant power a local authority will have in the granting of the timeline for that extension, if, for example, it can decide because of its closer knowledge, of the developer, or the state of completion of the development or the infrastructure going into that site, how much time is required to finish the development quickly. That is the reason I cannot accept this amendment.

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