Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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263. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the number of planning applications that have been processed to date via the strategic housing development planning applications; and the number of refusals. [44377/17]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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The Planning and Development (Housing) and Residential Tenancies Act 2016 provides for new streamlined arrangements to enable planning applications for strategic housing developments, of 100 housing units or more or student accommodation developments of 200 bed spaces or more, to be made directly to An Bord Pleanála (the Board) for determination.

As part of the new arrangements and prior to making a planning application, a prospective applicant must make a request to the Board to enter into mandatory pre-application consultation regarding a proposed strategic housing development.  At the end of the consultation, the Board issues its opinion as to whether the documents submitted with the consultation request constitute a reasonable basis for a planning application to be submitted or alternatively require further consideration and amendment in order to constitute a reasonable basis for an application. 

Further to the submission of a planning application to the Board for a proposed strategic housing development, the Board is required to make a determination on such application within a period of 16 weeks of the lodgement of the application.

Since the new arrangements have come into operation on 3 July 2017, the Board has received 19 valid pre-application consultation requests and has issued an opinion in respect of 8 of these.  To date, 2 planning applications for strategic housing developments have already been lodged - one in respect of a student accommodation development comprising 3,006 bed spaces, with the other development comprising 363 houses and 571 apartments - and these are currently under consideration by the Board. Further to the pre-application consultation requests received to date, it is envisaged that further applications in respect of strategic housing developments will be submitted to the Board in the near future.