Paudie Coffey (Waterford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am happy to outline and clarify the matter for the Senator. It concerns the property rights of citizens and related issues. We must follow due process in how we apply a levy. Citizens must be given appropriate time and processes to respond to proposed designations.

There has been extensive engagement between officials from my Department and the Office of the Attorney General in developing the proposals for the vacant site levy. While the Constitution allows the State in certain circumstances to delimit the property rights of individuals in the interests of the common good, such restrictions on landowners' property rights must be reasonable and proportionate to the ends that the legislation seeks to achieve. In particular, measures such as the vacant site levy must be introduced in line with the principles of fair procedures and administration. Therefore, the Bill provides the timeframe for key actions by the planning authority in the implementation of the levy as follows: a register of vacant sites shall be established by planning authorities beginning on 1 January 2017; annual notices to owners of vacant sites shall be issued by 1 June 2018; and the actual application of the vacant site levy shall commence in 2019. It is important to remember that this initial levy charge will be in respect of the year 2018.

The individual dates within the overall timeframe are set with a view to allowing appropriate time and notice for each key action. The deferment until 2019 of the commencement of the charging of the levy is intended to allow site owners sufficient time and opportunity to initiate development or sell their sites in order to become liable for the levy. While bringing forward the various dates by which specific actions shall be undertaken or commenced may, on initial consideration, seem to be justifiable, it is important that an appropriate degree of proportionality and reason be applied in the implementation of the levy provisions. Therefore, I am satisfied that the timeframes in the Bill as proposed are reasonable and balanced while allowing site owners the necessary opportunity to regularise their affairs before becoming liable for the payment of the levy.

In the process that will derive from this legislation, local authorities will be bringing a new focus to urban areas within their jurisdictions. That they are surveying and will engage with elected members and site owners before a designation of a site takes place will bring new focus and impetus to some of those sites.

We must allow for due process and time for site owners to respond with proposals for their sites. As we all know, construction, redevelopment and regeneration projects take time, and must go through the planning process, be funded, etc. The timelines as presented are fair while sending out a strong signal to landowners with sites of high potential that they need to do something with those sites as soon as possible to bring them back into beneficial use. If owners do not have the capacity to do so, they must allow someone else to do it for them, because we cannot afford to have such sites lying idle in our towns, villages and cities when our housing issues are so pressing. For this reason, we will be opposing amendments Nos. 3, 5, 7, 8, 10 and 11.