Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)

I brought forward these amendments because they relate to the whole issue of use it or lose it, namely, the issue of duration of planning permissions. While I accept what the Minister is doing in terms of existing planning permissions that have commenced, I believe we need a tighter regime around duration of planning. We are seeking to reduce the normal duration of a planning permission from five to three years. Five years is too long, and three years seems a reasonable period. The purpose is to incentivise the commencement of active planning permissions to reduce the likelihood of speculation or abuse on sites that have active planning. The point is that throughout the country there is a huge issue with uncommenced planning permissions. There are between 80,000 and 100,000 nationally. It is extraordinary to see this level of uncommenced planning. While there are multiple reasons, including viability as to the delay, we believe land speculation remains a key issue. We continue to perpetuate. We have a system in this country where we have a lengthy period within which developers can hoard land. We have seen sites with planning being on again and again, and we believe the planning permission should not be used as a means to increase the value of land for sale. We believe that it is essential for our planning and housing systems that speculative planning should be reduced and land should not be left sitting idle.

See this speech in context