Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this much needed Bill to fast track procedures for vacant housing refurbishment. A new planning procedure is needed in Ireland and this Bill can achieve this. I congratulate Deputies Cowen and Casey on their work on this Bill.

Vacant spaces which would be suitable for residential purposes are found all over the country. Census 2016 revealed that almost 260,000 homes are vacant across the country. Whether these figures are completely accurate remains to be seen in regard to the availability of these properties for refurbishment. There are thousands of square feet of liveable space in over-the-shop units available. We all have rural towns and villages in our constituencies that have seen the main streets decimated with emigration, recession and relocation to larger towns and cities. The Bill will help to refurbish thousands of vacant units in older and commercial buildings in cities and towns. Other initiatives provided, including financial incentives, have not been effective and there are also many administrative hurdles which stand in the way of the refurbishment of such dwellings into residential spaces.

The Bill creates a one-stop shop for the approval of refurbishment projects in local authorities. This will remove the existing administrative hurdles which stand in the way of development and will enable the development of upper floors of older or commercial buildings in towns and cities. Essentially, it means that an applicant seeking to refurbish a building could have one meeting with all of the required officials, such as the planner, fire officer, disability access and, if necessary, conservation, rather than having to undertake several separate applications to get the refurbishment project off the ground. This should fast-track and simplify the whole process to encourage people to utilise these empty spaces.

It is predicted that local authorities within cities and large urban areas are most likely to benefit from this new procedure. However, it is acknowledged that not all local authorities may require an expedited planning procedure for this category of development. The Bill will also set in place a new inspection system where 100% of vacant buildings undergoing refurbishment will be directly inspected by approved inspectors. These will be private sector inspectors but they will be hired directly through the local authorities as opposed to the current procedure whereby the assigned certifiers are employed directly by the developer.

All parties can agree that we are in the midst of a housing crisis in this country. The Bill strives to overcome the existing administrative faults and hurdles in the planning and building process which is holding back urban regeneration and development. We hope that Deputies can offer us their support in pushing this Bill forward. As the Minister will be well aware, the housing and homeless situation is at crisis point and any measure that will see vacant or derelict houses put to new use which can be used as homes has to be welcome.

I also welcome that the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and his colleagues are supporting this initiative.

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