Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

): Following discussions in this House on Second Stage and in response to various submissions I received, I am making a provision to extend the Bill's scope to cover both residential units in mixed use multi-unit development, that is, developments containing commercial units and traditional housing estates where property management companies have been put in place.

For this purpose, it is necessary to insert appropriate definitions or amend existing definitions of the following terms "childcare facility", "commercial unit", "mixed use multi-unit development", "multi-unit development", "residential unit" and "unit". This is the principal purpose of this set of amendments. The definition of "childcare facility" is required as it is the intention in the Bill to include as residential only developments those in which a child care unit has been constructed. In other words, a development which contains only residential units and a child care facility will not for the purposes of this Bill be considered mixed use development.

In a similar fashion, a new definition of "commercial unit" is inserted to distinguish such units from residential units. A demand for inclusion of residential units in mixed use developments became clear during our consultation process following publication of the Bill. The scope of the draft Law Reform Commission Bill was confined to apartment developments which did not include any commercial units. The new definition of "mixed use multi-unit development" makes it clear that such a development is one which includes commercial units. However, a development which has residential units and a child care facility will be considered as residential rather than mixed use.

An amendment has been tabled to the definition of "multi-unit development" to broaden the scope of the definition and, therefore, the Bill to cater for situations where a management company committee has been established for developments which consist only of residential houses. On Second Stage, the inclusion of such developments was requested by several speakers and this amendment is a response to their requests.

It is also necessary to define what is meant by a "residential unit in a multi-unit development". In amendment No. 9, a child care facility will be considered as a residential unit as long as it does not share amenities, services and facilities with commercial units in the development. Amendment No. 11 is designed to ensure that where the word "unit" is used in the Bill that it refers to a residential unit while amendment No. 12 is a further refinement of what is considered to be a residential unit in the context of the Bill. It defines what is meant by a unit having self-contained facilities. Amendment No. 20 is a drafting amendment which arises as a consequence of various changes I have mentioned.