Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is important that the Minister of State clarifies that this is only for schemes that are substantially commenced and that it is not for schemes that have not started. Equally, to address the point I made in my earlier contribution, where people are looking for second extensions to duration of planning permissions it only applies to substantially commenced projects. We cannot have a situation where people who have sat on planning permissions since 2008 - and are still sitting on them with not a blade of grass disturbed and not a shovel having gone in to the ground - wanting to extend the permission for a second time. In those situations, even if a first extension to duration is allowed, we cannot have people going back and getting extensions of such duration where an area development plan has changed the ground rules. If the development plan has changed the rules it means they have been changed for a logical reason. The members of a local authority may have decided to change them and building standards are of a different quality than heretofore. It is important that we do not allow planning permissions that were granted in an earlier time to be extended when we have already changed the rules as to what and how projects should be built.