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

I offer a word of caution: not every site that has planning permission has the same viability in terms of the ability to finance it and access it from an infrastructure and cost perspective. Planning applications may have been granted on what are now seen as flood zones or flood plains or whatever. We need to be careful. I absolutely agree with the sentiment that we want to get people moving and that if people are speculating and sitting on sites for which they have planning permission - for example, the 28,000 that a number of Senators quoted earlier in and around the greater Dublin area - we want to get them moving and put as much pressure on them as we can. However, depending on the site, some are viable and some are not. Even still, and in some parts of the country, it is not viable to build a house at the moment, certainly in the minds of many developers, because house prices are still significantly below where they would have been when the planning permissions were given. That is not the case in Dublin or Cork. Senators should not shake their heads at this.

I accept that there is frustration in this regard, but we also need to deal with the facts of the situation. There is a reason housing development is now starting again, there is a reason there is a significant increase in planning permissions and commencements, particularly around the Dublin area and some of the other urban areas, but there is also a reason we are seeing virtually no house building apart from one-off houses in other parts of the country. The point is that some planning decisions were granted that are not on sites that are viable at the moment, for local authorities as well as private developers. We need to acknowledge that. The core issue is that if there is a zoned piece of land on which it is suitable to build houses and if building right now is a viable proposition, we need to get the site moving as quickly as we can. That is what I am trying to do anyway. If there are developers or builders who are able to borrow and put that business case together to build both social and private housing, we need to encourage that process.

We should agree on the point made in amendment No. 4, also in the name of Senator Higgins, that if we give people planning permission through this new mechanism and they do not build, we should not allow them provision for an extension after five years. The point is to try to get the system moving quickly. If developers do not respond to the mechanism, given the benefits to them of the new system being introduced, and if they do not deliver on a commencement notice and start to build, after five years the planning application, like virtually every other planning application in the country, should not be eligible for renewal. There is therefore a distinction between the two matters.

Once developers benefit from this new system, they need to get moving on construction and putting together developments. If they do not, they will have to go through the process all over again, and this system probably will not be in place in five years' time, so they will have to go through a much longer system. However, I would not like to see any case in which a developer has a site that has planning permission but, for whatever reason, is simply not viable at the moment because the developer is waiting for a road to be built or a gas pipeline to be connected or there are some waiver issues - there are many reasons they may not be developing - and that that developer, which is ready to go on another site, cannot get through the planning process. I do not disagree with the frustration I know is there, but I think there is an unintended consequence of the amendment of which we need to be wary. That is why I do not propose to accept this amendment, even though I propose to accept the principle of amendment No. 4. I just need to check the wording of it with the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel. In principle, I am happy to accept amendment No. 4, but not amendment No. 1.