Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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21. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the way the proposed vacant site levy will ensure that developers are not sitting on zoned land and to bring those sites into use for housing, commercial or social purposes. [3606/15]

Paudie Coffey (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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The proposed vacant site levy will enable local authorities, should they wish to do so, to apply a levy on vacant sites in urban centres within their functional areas with a view to incentivising and stimulating the development of such sites. The proposals for the levy are as set out in the General Scheme for the Planning and Development No. 1 Bill which I published in November 2014.

Under this scheme it is envisaged that the levy will be applied at a rate not exceeding 3% of the market valuation of a site in the first year, increasing incrementally by 1% in subsequent years up to a maximum levy not exceeding 6% of the market valuation of the site in ques tion in any individual year. It is further proposed that the individual local authorities who decide to introduce this measure will be responsible for collecting the levy within their functional areas.

To be entitled to apply the levy, local authorities will in the first instance be required to provide for the development of vacant sites in specific locations within urban areas as an objective in their local development plans – thereby being an integral part of the local development planning process.

The measure should be supplemented by the application of reduced development contributions on such sites when granted planning permission having regard to the likelihood that the development of such sites will be able to avail of existing infrastructure rather than be reliant on further investment in new infrastructure.

In essence, the levy will entail a carrot and stick approach i.e. incentivising developers to develop vacant underutilised sites while also applying lower development contribution levies on the development of such sites, and only penalising those who opt not to bring forward proposals to develop such sites.