Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

SHDs were a scandal. They did nothing to address the housing crisis. They delivered overpriced rents to make money for developers. Since the announcement that this process would go, though, we had seven applications in December. There is murder in Sallynoggin over a nine-story construction. It is a working-class area where there are only two-storey houses but this will be a nine-storey building on a tiny site. It is developer led. In another case, there was planning permission for an SHD of 150 apartments but the developer lashed in 300 apartments onto the application just before Christmas. It is a scandal. The local authority is going to have to pick up the pieces, but it does not have the people to do so because they will be dealing with SHDs and LRDs. The money will go into general funds. We need people in the planning departments who can deal with these applications, but we are dealing with SHDs, which bypass the system. Even though the council still has to do all the work, the board makes the decision and the public have no right of appeal. It is a disgrace.

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