Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and thank him for his presence. I know that he has a great interest in this issue.

I thank Senator Reilly and the Fine Gael Party for bringing forward this proposal which is appropriate. I also acknowledge, as Senator Reilly did, the work of the Chairman of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Bailey, and Deputy O'Dowd who is a very active member of the committee and has shown a keen interest in this issue in his work on it. Senators Conway and Murnane O'Connor and I are also member the committee.

To simplify the issue, it is about finance and planning. I want to deal with the issue of planning, to which there are a number of strands. The Part V provision has potential, be it at a figure of 3% or 4%, but it is important to consider where units are built. It is a great idea, but it has been done already by some of the religious congregations, co-operatives and approved housing bodies. There are some really nice examples of such developments. There are two or three in Sandymount that are particularly nice. I would not mind living in any of them. We should look at models of best practice. It is important that we do not have a load of private developers jumping on opportunities to throw up units to avail of tax breaks or exemptions from planning levies, on which local authorities rely. That is the reality when it comes to local government finance. Therefore, we must be very careful.

I am not in favour of building what are called special retirement complexes half way up a mountain or miles away in the countryside because elderly people want to engage in their communities. I live in an area where there is a very high rate of "empty nesters". I do not like that term, but there are a lot of single elderly people living in very valuable homes worth in excess of €1 million, €2 million and €3 million. However, they like where they live. They go to mass locally; their GP is up the road; and they go to the library. They have a sense of place and community and feeling secure is very important to them. It will become more important to us as we get older. People like familiarity and to be among their community and friends. they like to be near their GP, optician and local butcher. We like the sense of being recognised, valued and part of a community, which is innately human. As I said, what has been proposed is a great idea, but I would have some concerns about planning levies. Therefore, I suggest a reduced levy for co-operatives that are registered charities.I want to guard against what happened in respect of student accommodation. It has become attractive to build student accommodation. Members know that developers are availing of tax breaks and are throwing up student accommodation units. We know that three of these little students units can become apartments eventually. I am telling this House that within five years, we will be told that some of the student units did not work and they will be converted to apartments and then sold. The developers will have benefitted from tax breaks, so we need to put in strict regulations and controls in respect of selling on these developments. Senator Reilly raised this point, which is really important.

This is an issue of planning. There are 31 local authorities all of which have a county development plan. I can never understand this reluctance on the part of some councillors to exercise options that are open to them. It is open to councillors to vary them. Sadly we did not get support from the other side of the House in respect of varying the county development plan, but we did get some sort of a compromise that local councils can now seek to have their chief executive bring a report within 30 days on the development plan. Our regime and this Government support the idea that members cannot vary their county development plan, if their chief executive does not agree to do so.

Yesterday, we spoke to the Minister's other colleague about directly elected mayors. This Administration and previous Administrations have empowered these powerful chief executives in the 31 local authorities to effectively block directly elected members being able to vary the country development plan. I do not want to rehash that point because we came up with something with which I hope councillors are relatively happy.