Ivana Bacik (Independent)

I move amendment No. 29:

In page 12, to delete lines 1 and 3 and substitute the following:

"(4) Where development works commenced prior to the enactment of this Act, this section applies subject to the modification that any existing rules contrary to this section shall be modified within the 24 months following the commencement of this section.".

This amendment seeks to ensure that "Where development works commenced prior to the enactment of this Act, this section applies subject to the modification that any existing rules contrary to this section shall be modified within the 24 months following the commencement of this section".

It is trying to deal with this issue that the Minister raised already, where development works on a multi-unit development have commenced prior to the enactment of the Bill. There has been a great deal of concern — I think the Minister has heard from various concerned parties already — where apartment complexes are in the process of being constructed already prior to the commencement of the Act about how the Bill will affect those. Our concern was that subsection (4) apparently appears to mean the one-unit-one-vote rule would not apply to existing management companies, which seems undesirable.

The Minister on Committee Stage stated he could not retrospectively amend memoranda and articles of association. My party felt that as an alternative approach such memoranda could be changed within two years from the commencement of the Act. This would be an alternative way of dealing with the application of the Bill to the complexes where development work had already commenced.