Chris Andrews (Dublin Bay South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I agree with everything Deputy Ó Broin said. It is very disappointing and the residents in Pearse Street and Ringsend will be equally disappointed. The Minister of State listed off a range of measures, but he did not say what the negative unintended consequences of the Bill would be. It will protect communities. The application in Ringsend was for 15 storeys and there were going to be 48 units on a site of 0.1 ha. Five of those units should have gone to public housing. That means five homes lost and five families on the housing list who will miss out because of that exemption. The developer clearly sees it as a loophole. No one is saying the development needs to be stopped. Someone developing 40 or 50 units should make their contribution to public housing as set out in the law for everybody else.

As the Minister of State knows, the housing list is getting longer every day. It is not about stopping development. At comment was made to me recently about this Bill. The individual said it is getting harder to build. This is not about stopping anybody from building. It is not about going after a small developer building three or four units. This is this is about the developer who sees an opportunity to drive a wedge through a loophole in the law. I ask the Minister of State to explain to me how closing this loophole would have negative consequences for other communities. I cannot see that.

I ask him to give some indication as to what those negative consequences would be if this were deleted. There is already an exemption for people producing three, four or five homes. Why do we need to have an exemption for somebody developing on 0.1 ha? The studies were done before the guidelines. In 2018, the then Minister, Eoghan Murphy, scrapped the height guidelines and developers can now go as high as they like. It will be like having Liberty Hall in the middle of Ringsend, towering over the artisan dwellings and the one-storey cottages. It is completely inappropriate. The developer was going to sell this particular development on the back of all the hard work the community has done. That will be replicated throughout the country.

I find it hard to see any unintended consequences. I again ask the Minister of State to point them out. The developers are taking advantage of the hard work of volunteers in the community. This Bill would close a loophole in the legislation that needs to be closed. Like Deputy Ó Broin, I ask the Minister of State to come back with something else to close the loophole.

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