Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. He is no stranger to the Seanad. Out of all of the Ministers he has been the most active in attending here over the past few months.

This Bill is important and forms part of the Rebuilding Ireland document that the Minister proudly announced earlier in the year. It is a framework that will help us work towards sorting out an important issue for the State. Housing is a primary and basic commodity that should be open to anybody. This Bill goes a long way to ensure that everybody in this State can be housed.We are in unusual circumstances in that our housing market and building sector collapsed over the past decade. This legislation is a start to rebuild that market and get it going again. There are many issues in the market from financial issues, planning and the affordability factor. This Bill deals with the planning process and getting the development of housing units through it. Between 12,000 and 13,000 housing units were built last year. This will be doubled over the next several years. Due to the dramatic change in the housing sector, it will need dramatic measures to deal with it. This fast-track process for planning permission for three years, with the possibility of extending it after the next two years, for larger developments of over 100 units is positive. It is what we need. Can we afford to spend 24 months in a planning process? We cannot if we have people who need to be housed. This process will bring it down to, hopefully, 25 weeks. That is an appropriate step.

In some ways, the Bill's measures are nothing new when one looks at the Planning and Development (Strategic Infrastructure) Act 2006. That was a precursor which gave the approval process for major strategic projects to An Bord Pleanála and bypassed local government to a degree. There were mistakes made in that legislation, however. One was that there was no timeline put on the process. We saw that in Cork with a decision by An Bord Pleanála regarding an incinerator which was extended. This Bill contains a timeline which is an important element.

One key element of the 2006 Act was that a local authority chief executive officer could bring a report before local authority members who could then make an addition to it. That was positive in the way the chief executive officer and the members could all get their views out there. What worked with that Act and its good elements should be incorporated in this Bill.

We have worked on the extension of duration, as outlined in Chapter 3, before. Will the Minister clarify where we are going with this measure? We have seen developments where it has been extended for five years but cannot be extended again. If a development's permission has been extended, do we have the opportunity to extend it again? Previously, these extension durations applied to one-off housing all the way up to large developments. Will this Bill's provisions apply to the 20-house model or one-off housing?

As a member of a local authority for 13 years, I know the changes to the Part 8 process are badly needed. This measure has failed us in so many ways. Local authority chief executives have made Part 8 proposals with no timelines or no reports brought before members. This area needs to be tidied up. I have an issue in my part of the world where a Part 8 development issue has been running for 18 months and it still has not been brought forward. The timeline in this regard is exceptionally important because it has been one of the key mistakes in the process so far.

There are four elements of approval in the planning process involving the Department. It has to preapprove the idea, the design, the planning and the tender. We have to streamline the Department's process too and reduce its elements to two. Essentially, the idea should be approved and then the tenders approved. Predesigned and actual planning really drags out the process. It is about keeping it tight.

One cynical issue which has popped up in my part of Cork involves the thresholds for building Part 8 housing. A developer building for Cork County Council will get €40,000 less than the developer for Cork City Council, even though there might be less than a mile between the developments. The same developer might even be doing both developments. We need to examine the thresholds in the Department and how we are going to deal with those.

This Bill is important and the Minister has done a significant amount of work to ensure it was brought before us today. It is up to us to approve this Bill over the next two weeks. The last thing the Seanad wants to do is to slow this up and delay ensuring people have housing.