Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Let me finish. Housing division will be established in the board specifically to examine these in detail. It will be well resourced from a planning perspective. It will also have a sufficient number of members. We can tease through these issues again. I take the Senator's concern and I have not done this lightly.

The vast majority of houses which obtain planning permission next year will go through the normal process. This is just for the big applications to try to encourage people back to looking at large-scale housing developments and building communities. It is also about encouraging higher density in cities such as Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford to a certain extent. We are trying to encourage higher density high quality apartment complexes and student complexes so we get people living in urban communities and urban environments.

My understanding is, and I will clarify this, developers may well use the process in a strategic development zone if they want. As long as the outcome is consistent with the local area plan or the city development plan it is covered in the legislation. If I am wrong on this I will clarify it next week.

I acknowledge the concerns of the Association of Irish Local Government, AILG. I have not seen the document but I am aware of it. We will certainly look at it in the context of seeing what we might be able to do to alleviate some of these concerns. There is no effort to bypass local government I can assure the House. In the vast majority of councils, as I stated, there will be very few such applications. This year, 15 applications were made to An Bord Pleanála. Next year it expects perhaps 50. This is what it is gearing up to deal with. Thousands of planning applications will be made throughout the country. The House will be glad to hear the number of planning applications has increased on this time last year by approximately 40%. What we are doing is working and we are seeing increased activity. People see the State is now looking to support and gear up a construction industry to be able to build homes for people.

The comments on Part VIII were reasonably complimentary. Again, we ensure councillors are the key decision makers and there is an onus on senior management to get reports done in a timely manner.

A number comments were made on the so-called Tyrrelstown amendment. On rent generally, and please work with me on this, this is not the complete story. A number of Senators in their contributions stated they would do more and would introduce an amendment to make it happen. We will launch a pretty significant rental strategy in approximately one month which will deal with some of the issues raised today. We are not ready to put an amendment into this legislation consistent with the policy because it is not yet finalised. Every political party, member of the public and stakeholder has had an opportunity to contribute in writing to a consultation process on the rental strategy. It is only three or four weeks away. As part of this, I may well introduce a significant Committee Stage amendment in the Dáil on some of the issues raised today. We need to ensure any amendment on rent predictability, rent certainty, balancing the concerns and rights of tenants and landlords has a proper balance. When we introduce something it needs to be comprehensive as opposed to having an unintended consequence, such as, perhaps shutting off supply or frightening investment out of the market, which is the last thing we need.I am the first to accept that what we are doing on rental supports is only a small part of what will be announced in about a month's time; therefore, Members should not judge it as being the complete picture because it is not.

I will take on board the issues that have been raised. Concerning the figure of 20 units, we wanted to take early action before the rental strategy was complete. We wanted to be able to say to institutional investors who were buying up large-scale developments in cities such as Dublin that when these properties were being sold, the active tenancies within them would be protected. We picked a figure of 20 units because anything above it represented a medium-sized development. We want to make sure that when medium-sized and large-scale developments which, by and large, are managed by professionally managed funds, professional landlords and so-called vulture funds are bought by and sold to each other, tenants will be protected throughout the process in order that we will not have a repeat of what in Tyrelstown. We have a very unusual rental market in Ireland in which nearly 90% of rental properties are owned by landlords who only own one property. Yes, of course, there is another discussion and debate we need to have about issues such as security of tenure and so on, but we should not put a landlord who owns one property and who may be an accidental landlord in the same category as professional investors. There are complexities in that regard.

We will tease out all of these issues and all of the questions raised by Members as we proceed through the various Stages and amendments next week. We hope to launch our rental strategy early next month. I signal that I hope we will be able to use the opportunity presented by this legislation to bring forward a comprehensive amendment on the strategy at a later stage. If we make a substantial amendment on Committee Stage in the Dáil, we will have to come back to the Seanad. That is my understanding. As I will not be ready or able to do so next week, I appeal to parties to wait and see what our response will be, taking account of the submissions made by many parties in that process. If we make amendments on Committee Stage in the Dáil, there will be an opportunity to debate them in this House. I look forward to the discussion next week.