Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

We have an amendment of a Bill to legislation that has not been enacted. Looking at it, at face value one has to welcome it. Regarding the retrospective suspension of planning permission duration during judicial review, insofar as there are delays caused by judicial reviews, I take this point. However, as others have said, judicial reviews are not the main issue, which I will go into in a minute.

The Bill also provides for the extension of the duration of uncommenced housing developments, which the legislation says is temporary until 2027. Again, this is to give developers a chance to get building. The real issue with the delay is infrastructure, as people have mentioned before. It is also An Bord Pleanála. We have a situation where if anyone does put in an objection to An Bord Pleanála time and time again it keeps getting put back. It has given additional staff resourcing to the board, but the board is still not sufficiently resourced. I have had planning applications in my constituency where I have got a letter three or four times to say it is not possible to make a decision during this time period. That delays stuff. I agree with others; we cannot have someone from Cahirsiveen making a decision on something happening in Dublin, or somebody from Donegal making a decision on Dingle. That does not make sense, but there are genuine community concerns that are expressed. Oftentimes, they are expressed with a lack of tie-in for amenities and community infrastructure alongside housing. That is why I reiterate what I recently said to the Taoiseach. Everywhere should be a strategic development zone. If we take south Dublin, with its development plan process coming up, as an entire area it should be designated as a strategic development zone so there is a pinpoint of the infrastructure that will have to go in. Then we can have An Bord Pleanála make a deliberation. Any application that is live, stays live. Any application after that does not need to go to An Bord Pleanála as with the Adamstown and Clonburris SDZs. They go straight to the local authority and the process is usually sped up unless they drop the ball and have to put in a big environmental assessment as is also happening in my area. We could speed things up massively if we tie in the facilities and infrastructure and say, for example, a school is going here. We should also tie in things like having X number of bus services by X number of houses. The developers in Adamstown have delivered the parks, the community centres, when they knew they had to deliver them in order to continue building housing.

As others have mentioned, there is also an issue with funding. If the private developers cannot get funding through the banking system, then the State, within EU parameters, should be able to provide some form of lending to allow them to do this. I have said before that the State should be the single biggest developer. That does not mean we should be employing every single builder, but we should be facilitating builders, specifically, the small, local, builders here in Ireland around the country, as well as the larger ones, as opposed to depending on the large vulture funds to come in and build housing at exorbitant rental fees.

Another issue is industrial policy. I recently mentioned this at a committee. We are attracting companies that invariably want to operate in Dublin. I know the policy is to try and shift them to the regions. One of the IT companies was quoted on the IDA website saying not to worry if they cannot find enough software developers here, there are people all over the EU wanting to come to Ireland. The problem is, when they all come to Ireland into Dublin, they are pushing up house prices. They are the only ones who can afford the housing. Therefore, our nurses, teachers, gardaí, keep getting screwed by the affordable housing scheme parameters and keep having to reapply. We need to have a more spread-out regional development process. We also have to make sure there is adequate car parking. In Adamstown, Kilcarbery and Clonburris, they are fighting each other over car parking spaces. That needs to be put into any plans.

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