Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)

I had some queries on the technical aspects of the transitional sections of the Bill, but time does not allow me to go into them; four minutes is a very short time to debate a Bill such as this. However, on the general thrust of the Bill, there cannot be any serious objection to the notion, if we are trying to expedite the housing programme, that we try to save extant planning permissions.

The point was made that three and two years, or five years in total, is too long. I would prefer to see somewhat shorter times than that, but we must bear in mind it is at the discretion of local authorities. It is the local authority that will ultimately decide. A number of safeguards are built in. For example, the job must be done within a reasonable period. The local authority will have to satisfy itself of that. From listening to some of the contributions, you would think a developer's word will be sufficient and that the local authority will simply say that if it will be done in a certain period, that will be it, finito, and the developer will get the extension. That is obviously not the case.

There are many subjective aspects to the legislation, in the sense that each local authority will have discretion to decide when building commences, what a reasonable expectation of completion is, etc. It is undesirable that two different local authorities, or a number of different local authorities, could interpret those provisions in different ways. That was done in my part of the country, where two local authorities interpreted one provision in the recent planning Bill in two very different ways. That has caused a lot of difficulties. If the Minister of State is minded, or obligated, to bring in regulations on that, perhaps we can get some uniformity of approach through those regulations.

The Minister, Deputy Browne, is not here, but he will know from his previous experience, as I do, that judicial review is a perfectly legitimate process. It is recognised and constitutionally fireproof. However, it has been abused on certain occasions. The Minister will know that an applicant for judicial review can use various tactics to delay the process until time runs out. It is only right and logical that loophole be closed, as it were.

I will use the time left to bring two other matters to the Minister of State's attention. I would like him to come back to me on both. The vast majority of people in this country aspire to home ownership. All statistics show that but we know it anecdotally anyway. Unfortunately, some parts of the system seem to operate against increasing home ownership rather than the other way round. For example, regarding the local authority loan scheme as it is presently operated, I am sorry to say I have come across several cases where the repayments on the projected mortgage are less than the person is presently paying in rent. Yet, those people are being refused a local authority loan on the basis that they do not have a savings record. In other words, they cannot be trusted to pay less when for years they have been paying more. That does not make any sense to me.

I will also briefly mention the incremental tenant purchase scheme. We had a perfectly good tenant purchase scheme for about 75 years in this country. It was working very well. Then, the former Minister, Eoghan Murphy, decided, because it was working very well, that he had to fix it. When he fixed it, he emasculated it. Another former Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, brought in some reforms, which have improved the situation, but it is still more of an illusory scheme than a reality. I would prefer the tenant purchase scheme to be abolished completely rather than maintain the illusion of a tenant purchase scheme because it is clearly not working. I do not have the figures for how many people were approved for it, but I imagine it is only a trickle. Saying that pensioners, or those in receipt of a widow's pension or invalidity pension, etc., are entitled to avail of it is a shimmer and an illusion. It does not happen. They may technically qualify on the grounds they have an income of more than €11,500 a year from their pension, but when it comes to getting the loan to pay the non-discounted part of the price, nobody will lend them the money and their income does not justify getting a loan of a sufficient amount. I ask the Minister of State to look at those two points.

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