Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Amendments Nos. 75 and 81, and later on, amendment No. 97, which we will address again, should be viewed together as an anti-land hoarding package, although part of the text of amendment No. 97 is no longer needed after the enactment last July of the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2017. As signalled on Committee Stage of this Bill, I gave a commitment to bring forward provisions along these lines on Report Stage. These provisions are intended to send out a strong signal to both developers and planning authorities alike that land hoarding, namely, the holding on to and extending the life of planning permissions without commencing substantial development, should not be encouraged or facilitated, particularly in the context of the housing supply shortage situation we face.

I propose, therefore, to address these proposed Government amendments together. Amendment No. 75 will amend section 34 of the principal Act which relates to certain information or submissions that the planning authority shall have regard to in considering an application for planning permission. The amendment adds to this requirement so that where an application for permission relates to a residential development comprising ten or more houses, a planning authority shall be required in addition to consider, first, any information available to the planning authority or furnished to it by the applicant concerning the implementation by the applicant of any housing development in the previous five years and, second, an assessment by the planning authority of the likelihood of the proposed development being implemented within the life of the planning permission. In other words, as part of its assessment of a planning application for ten or more houses, the planning authority shall now be obliged to consider the past performance of an applicant relating to the implementation of previous housing permissions for the purpose of determining the likelihood of the proposed development being implemented.

With regard to amendment No. 81, section 40 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 provides that the default period for the duration of a planning permission is five years, unless specified otherwise. Section 41 of the 2000 Act allows that five-year period to be extended by the planning authority for a further five-year period. However, the Act does not specify that the default period of five years can be reduced to a period of less than five years by way of condition attached to the permission where that might be more appropriate. In the case of a planning application in respect of a residential development comprising ten or more houses, amendment No. 81 will further allow the planning authority, when considering whether to specify a period other than the default period of five years, to consider information available to it or furnished to it by the applicant concerning implementation by the applicant of any housing development in the previous five years. Additionally, amendment No. 81 will allow the planning authority to assess the likelihood of the proposed development being implemented within the planning permission period being sought by the developer. This amendment will encourage and facilitate planning authorities to interrogate the planning application proposal fully to establish the likely build-out time of the development and to consider imposing permission durations of less than five years if it is considered that the development can reasonably be completed in less than that timeframe. This proposal will consequently allow realistic build-out periods to be incorporated into planning permissions while also taking account of the past performance of the applicant, where relevant.

It should be noted however that, in the event that developers cannot complete the development in the time allocated to it by way of condition attached to the planning permission, be it five years or less, they can avail of the extension of duration provisions in section 42. That is something we discussed on previous Stages. It was not the intention to allow for potential land hoarding so we are ensuring that is dealt with. Relevant history is important when making these decisions.

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