Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage

Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (Deputy John Cummins)

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I am pleased to bring the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2026 before the House. The main purpose of this Bill is to support the smooth commencement of the remaining provisions of the Planning and Development Act 2024 later this year and to provide clarity and further policy direction on a number of matters that have already commenced in Part 3 of the 2024 Act, including: the timely introduction of ten year county and city development plans; speeding up the implementation of the new procedural rules for planning judicial reviews that were introduced in the 2024 Act by applying them to any remaining Acts or decisions to be made under the 2000 Act; and completing a number of actions that were assigned to my Department following the Government's approval of the 2025 accelerating infrastructure plan to enhance the timely delivery of critical infrastructure projects.

Members will recall the scale of the Planning and Development Act 2024, which was enacted in October of that year. This body of legislation is the third largest to be enacted in the history of the State and was underpinned by a 15-month review led by the Attorney General, informed by dozens of key stakeholder voices in the planning arena, while also subject to considerable scrutiny when it passed through the Houses of the Oireachtas.

Given the scale of the 2024 Act, it has been necessary to commence and implement it on a phased basis in order to facilitate the transition from the arrangements under the current legislative framework to those under the Act. The ongoing implementation of the Act is a key priority for me, as Minister of State, and for the Government. A considerable volume of the legislation has already commenced, with the remainder on track to be commenced by the end of this year following the enactment of the Bill before the House. I assure Deputies that my Department is finalising revised regulations to accompany the 2024 Act and is working closely with local authorities and a range of other key stakeholders to ensure that the system will be ready for full implementation.

As already stated, the main purpose of the Bill is to support the smooth commencement of the remaining provisions of the Planning and Development Act 2024, which is due to take place later this year.

The amendments in the Bill can be broken down into five key areas. First, the Bill amends Part 3 of the Planning and Development Act 2024 to speed up the move to plan-making under the 2024 Act and to ensure that the transitional measures already provided for will operate as originally intended in line with the hierarchy of plan-making. Part 3 of the 2024 Act was commenced at the end of last year and is already being operated by planning authorities. We recognise that the ongoing practical implementation of the transition to the 2024 Act presents a challenge for the current system from a capacity and prioritisation perspective.

The amendments in this Bill take into account the ongoing engagement with the sector on how the legislation is operating in practice and will provide clarity and further policy direction on a number of important matters, including the Government's expectations around the timely introduction of ten-year county and city development plans under the 2024 Act. The approach has been discussed in detail and worked through with all key stakeholders including the Office of the Planning Regulator and our planning authorities. This engagement has happened at all levels across all organisations, including the oversight group chaired by my Department that was established to oversee and help manage the sector through the ongoing commencement of the 2024 Act. This Bill will ensure that the review of the three regional spatial and economic strategies will be completed in a timely manner through the introduction of a deadline of 31 December 2027. It will also allow for planning authorities to amend the expiration dates of their current development plans for a defined maximum period between February and December 2030. This new expiration date will act as a trigger for the adoption of new ten-year development plans under the 2024 Act and will mean that planning authorities must begin the process of making their new development plans under the 2024 Act in the period beginning in July next year and running until July of 2028 at the latest. It will also make it clear that since the commencement of Part 3 of the Act at end of 2025, all development plan reviews must be carried out under the 2024 Act only.

Second, the Bill extends the judicial review provisions in Chapter 1 of Part 9 of the 2024 Act to acts done or decisions made under the Planning and Development Act 2000. We are all aware that a number of planning proposals are delayed due to judicial review proceedings, which is why changes to judicial review processes were introduced under the 2024 Act and brought into operation in August 2025. Given the lead-in time before there could be a formal decision made or action taken under the 2024 Act that could be subject to a challenge, it would likely be several months after the commencement of Part 4 of the 2024 Act before the new planning judicial review rules could have an impact on proceedings. To further expedite judicial review processes going forward, it is now proposed to extend the judicial review provisions in the 2024 Act to decisions made or acts done under the 2000 Act. This change will speed up the transition to the new rules and will mean that they will have an earlier impact in the second half of this year. The processes being updated include the removal of the requirement to apply for leave to apply for judicial review proceedings which reduces the time required for such proceedings, removes unnecessary additional legal costs to all parties and amends various procedural rules relating to proceedings. These changes will mean that the expected benefits of the new judicial review processes will have an earlier positive impact on the planning system later this year.

A range of measures are proposed in the Bill to enhance the delivery of critical infrastructure projects and complete several actions that were assigned to my Department in the Accelerating Infrastructure Report and Action Plan, which was published last year. A number of actions were already in train, but the relevant timelines have been brought forward and included in this Bill to ensure completion within the ambitious timelines set out in the report, which was approved by Government and published in December of last year. This includes the introduction of a definition of “material contravention” of the development plan which should assist in the timely development of critical infrastructure and housing projects by providing clarity and certainty for the decision-making process and thereby avoiding the potential for additional legal challenges. It also includes a number of other amendments to streamline certain application processes for critical infrastructure projects, including those by or on behalf of statutory undertakers. This includes the change set out in section 35 of the Bill which make it clear that landowner consent is not required when making a planning application for development undertaken by statutory undertakers in the performance of their statutory functions, such as ESB Networks when they are seeking to develop critical electricity infrastructure, including across multiple properties. This amendment makes it clear that the application may be made by or on behalf of the statutory undertaker in the first instance, but does not alter the requirements or predetermine the outcome of the planning process itself. All relevant parties, including landowners, will still retain their existing rights to participate in the planning process.

Another example is section 53, which makes an amendment to help speed up the delivery of critical electricity infrastructure. It provides additional flexibility so that an application for the distribution of electricity infrastructure may be made under Chapter 3 of the 2024 Act, thereby having the development treated as standard development and considered first by the planning authority, rather than under Chapter 4 of the 2024 Act, where it is considered only by An Coimisiún Pleanála, as may otherwise be applicable.

The Bill will also make amendments to allow for the modification of an existing permission in accordance with appropriate apartment design standards. The agile application of these criteria to permissions already granted including, where relevant, the development of a greater numbers of dwellings in apartment complexes, will help support the viability of the development of such apartments in the immediate term. The amendment being introduced sets out specific circumstances where such a modification of an existing permission is non-material for the purpose of the 2024 Act, noting that any such modification is still subject to the requirements of the environmental impact assessment directive and the habitats directive, where applicable. The Bill sets out the specific criteria for the applicability of such a process. Those criteria will only apply where work has not yet commenced and if the modification is made within two years of the enactment of this Bill.

Following a comprehensive internal review of the legislation that took place in early 2026, and engagement with the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel to the Government, OPC, on the drafting of corresponding provisions, a number of amendments are proposed to clarify the competent authorities and related screening obligations for both appropriate assessment and environmental impact assessment. The amendments have been drafted on a no-policy-change basis and will support the smooth commencement of the remaining provisions of the 2024 Act later by ensuring that the provisions operate as was originally intended when they were enacted.

The Bill includes a large number of amendments that make up over 50% of its sections. These amendments are technical in nature and are proposed to correct cross-references and typographical errors and to clarify the existing text without changing the intent behind it. The Bill also includes amendments that provide for the formal repeal of the vacant sites levy provisions in the Urban Regeneration and Housing Act 2015, which have been superseded by the residential zoned land tax.

Amendments to the Housing Finance Agency Act 1981 are also proposed in order to increase the statutory borrowing limit of the Housing Finance Agency from €13.5 billion to €15 billion. The Housing Finance Agency provides low-cost finance to approved housing bodies, local authorities and higher education institutions for social, affordable and student housing. This amendment will enable the Housing Finance Agency to continue to fund social and affordable homes up to June 2027 and ensure there is no interruption in their housing pipeline.

I will now outline the main provisions of the Bill, which consists of 149 sections set out in 4 Parts. Part 1 comprises sections 1 to 3, inclusive, and contains provisions of a general nature, including definitions, citation, commencement and repeals. Part 2 comprises sections 4 to 139, inclusive, and amends the Planning and Development Act 2024, referred to as the Principal Act. Part 2 is split into 18 Chapters, with each Chapter providing amendments to specific Parts of the 2024 Act.

Chapters 1 and 2, which comprise sections 4 to 8, inclusive, amend Parts 1 and 2 of the Act of 2024 primarily to correct typographical errors and cross references. Section 4 includes a transitional clarification in the definition of “exempted development” to ensure that planning exemptions under the Act of 2000 can continue in force under the Act of 2024, as provided for in section 627 of the 2024 Act, until such time as they are repealed and replaced by regulations made under the 2024 Act.

Chapter 3, which comprises sections 9 to 31, inclusive, amends Part 3 of the Act of 2024. Alongside typographical corrections and minor amendments, Chapter 3 provides for: the designation, in sections 9, 13 and 20, of towns with populations of 10,000 or more as key towns; a 90-week deadline for the completion of a regional spatial and economic strategies review in section 14, which means it should be completed by 31 December; the amendment of the expiry date of the current county and city development plans in section 27; and a trigger for the review of development plans in section 19. The revised expiry dates are grouped in batches, separated by two-month intervals, and depend on the expiry of the current development plans. These amendments will operate in such a way that the planning authorities will be obliged to begin the process of making their new development plans under the 2024 Act in the period from July 2027 to July 2028 at the latest, and conclude the processes in the period between February and December 2030 at the latest. In line with the hierarchy of plan-making, these amendments should provide for the timely introduction of ten-year development plans.

Chapters 4 and 5 comprise sections 32 to 78, inclusive, and amend Parts 4 and 5 of the Act of 2024. Alongside typographical corrections and minor amendments, they provide for: a definition of “material contravention” in relation to development plans in section 32; eligibility requirements for the making of planning applications on behalf of statutory undertakers in section 35; flexibility for applications for the distribution of electricity to be made under Chapter 3 of Part 4 and to be treated as standard development in section 53; the removal of the requirement to have a maritime area consent prior to entering into the pre-application consultation process in section 54; and the alteration of an existing permission for apartment developments that is in accordance with appropriate apartment design standards in section 62.

Chapters 6 and 7 comprise sections 79 to 114, inclusive, and amend Parts 6 and 7 of the Act of 2024. Alongside typographical corrections and minor amendments, these sections clarify the competent authorities and screening obligations for both appropriate assessment and environmental impact assessment in respect of: retention permission; retrospective consent; local authority development; State authority development; planning schemes; and development schemes.

Chapter 8 comprises section 115 and amends Part 9 of the Act of 2024. It inserts a new section 303A in Chapter 3 of Part 9 to apply the new procedural rules for judicial review set out in Chapter 1 of Part 9 to decisions made or acts done under the Act of 2000. This applies to a range of specified procedures, where those procedures are initiated after section 303A comes into operation.

Chapters 9 to 18 comprise sections 116 to 139, inclusive, and amend various Parts of the Act of 2024. These mainly consist of typographical corrections and minor amendments. Section 129 amends section 588 of the Act of 2024, which requires a declaration to be signed with planning submissions and appeals. The amendments in this Bill will provide for exclusions from the application of section 588 for specified bodies that are entitled to be given notice of certain planning applications and are invited to make observations due to their specific functions.

Part 3 comprises sections 104 to 148, inclusive, and amends the Planning and Development Act 2000 and other enactments. The amendments to the Act of 2000 are consequential to the Part 9 judicial review amendments. The amendments to the other enactments correct typographical errors in references to the Act of 2024 in those other enactments.

Part 4 of the Bill comprises section 149 and amends the Housing Finance Agency Act 1981, providing for an increase to the statutory borrowing limit of the Housing Finance Agency, from €13.5 billion to €15 billion.

I emphasise that the measures included in the Bill as proposed deal with a number of important and time-sensitive matters that are relevant to the planning system. They will provide clarity and further policy direction on a number of matters that have already commenced in Part 3 of the 2024 Act, including the timely introduction of ten-year development plans under the Act, before the end of 2030. The Bill will also speed up the implementation of the new procedural rules for planning judicial reviews that were introduced in the 2024 Act by also applying them to any remaining acts or decisions made under the 2000 Act. The Bill contains a number of measures that will enhance the timely delivery of critical infrastructure projects, which I am sure all Members support. The substantial majority of the provisions in the Bill are technical and their timely enactment will enable the remaining provisions of the Planning and Development Act 2024 to be brought into operation later this year.

As the House is aware, the ongoing implementation of the 2024 Act is a key priority for Government and we want the remainder of the 2024 Act to be commenced as soon as possible. With the support of both Houses and with your co-operation, I hope to have this Bill enacted before the summer recess. These changes will provide legislative clarification for the planning sector, including planning authorities and An Coimisiún Pleanála, in order that they can finalise their preparation for implementation. The timely enactment of this Bill will make sure that the smooth commencement of the 2024 Act can take place in the autumn.

I will seek to respond to various matters that Deputies may raise. I look forward to further engagement next week during the Committee Stage debate on this important Bill. In the meantime, I commend the Bill to the House.

Deputy Eoin Ó Broin

I would like to start by thanking the officials from the planning section of the Department who facilitated a detailed briefing for members of the Oireachtas committee on Monday. I am deeply disappointed with what I consider to be the disrespectful way in which the Government has introduced and intends to proceed with this Bill.

The Minister of State said "With the support of both Houses and with your co-operation, I hope to have this Bill enacted before the summer recess." We will have no say in that enactment. The Government has already decided that the Bill is going to be railroaded through the Houses in a matter of days. Given the complexity of the legislation in front of us, its impact on our planning system and, on foot of that, the impact that will be felt by hundreds of thousands of people, I have to say that what is proposed is wholly inadequate. The Government has allocated four and a half hours for the Second Stage debate. That is fine, but two hours for Committee and Remaining Stages next week to scrutinise a Bill that runs to 83 pages is wholly inadequate.

The Bill was published on Friday last. As the Minister of State outlined, it is very technical in nature. The amendment deadline for Committee Stage it was 11 o'clock this morning, before we even had the benefit of the Second Stage debate. Earlier, the Business Committee agreed to the tiny amount of time allocated for the debate next week. This means that those sections of the Bill that were subject to pre-legislative scrutiny will not be subject to any meaningful committee scrutiny next week. That, in itself, is problematic, but there are considerable sections of this Bill that are new, that were not included in the general scheme and that were not subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. They will be the subject of no scrutiny whatsoever.

We want to get the opportunity to bring in impacted parties, professionals and other experts to give us their views. The problem with what is happening is that we have a long history in this House of Government rushing through technical and complex planning legislation at the tail end of Dáil terms. Because we do not take the time to scrutinise such legislation, mistakes and errors are made.

Substitute consent is the best example of that. The legislation had to be revisited and reintroduced a year afterwards because of the mess that was made.

When I say "mess", I want to very clear. I am not in any way criticising officials in the planning section of the Department because they work hard and do their job very professionally, but when they are put under unrealistic timelines by the Government, when they and the Members of this House are not afforded the opportunity to scrutinise and hear other opinion, bad legislation is made, bad outcomes arise and legislation has to be revisited. I say this about a Bill many aspects of which I am not opposed to. Not only is it disrespectful to this House, but it is deeply disrespectful to the members of the Oireachtas housing committee, of which the Minister of State was previously a member, because we are not being afforded the opportunity to undertake the job to scrutinise legislation from the Government, a job that we take seriously.

There is also the irony that when the then Minister, Deputy O'Brien, announced in 2022 that he was going to do a once-in-a-generation reform of planning legislation, one of the primary reasons was because, in the 20 years following the passage of the planning Act in 2000, there had been so many amending pieces of legislation that the Act was unwieldy. It was too complex, cumbersome and difficult to navigate.

He then undertook process whereby he took a Bill of 700 pages that ended up at 1,000 pages long, with all of the amendments during 2024. If I am not wrong, this is now the second piece of amending legislation of that "once-in-a-generation" rewrite of our planning law, the purpose of which was to do away with the need for constant revisions and amendments. Are we going to get one of these amending Bills every year? We had one last year. It passed through the House and was much shorter than this one, which is more substantive. Sure, some of the sections of this Bill are corrections, but not all. There are lots of substantive elements in this Bill, which I am going to deal with now, and it is not lost on people, particularly the professional planners out there who have to make and adjudicate on applications, that the system is probably more complicated and cumbersome today as a result of the then Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and his successor, Deputy James Browne's poor efforts.

I will run through some of the key general concerns I have with the Bill. The proposed amendments to Part 3 relate to plan-making, which was one of the areas of the 2024 Act that we were generally in agreement with. We wanted to move to more plan-making, including ten-year plans, to create a consistency between regional, county and local plans. The real issue here, however, is that unless there is a proper multi-annual workforce plan to give our planning authorities the staff that they told the Government back in 2023 they needed, all of these new provisions will fall foul of the inability of our local authorities, through no fault of their own, to have the dedicated staff to do the plan-making.

In my local authority area, we are dealing with the city edge project, which the Minister of State's officials know very well because they were before our local authority previously. We have just made some very ambitious decisions in terms of substantial extensions to Adamstown through material variations. There are new master plans on the cards for the coming years for Adamstown south and west, and Grange Castle.

How are we going to get our planning authorities to move into the space where they have sufficient time and capacity to develop these kinds of plan when the number of additional staff sanctioned so far has been substantially less than what the County and City Management Association, CCMA, told us in 2023 they needed? There is no multi-annual plan not just to employ, but to recruit the planners whom planning authorities need.

While I have no objection to the sections of the Bill that propose to amend Part 3 of the Act, in the absence of a parallel and clear multi-annual workforce plan to train, recruit, attract and employ the planners that we need, it is going to be very difficult to achieve these objectives.

With respect to the amendments to Part 9 on judicial reviews, and as I said when the Act was making its way through the House in 2023 and 2024 and during the pre-legislative scrutiny of the general scheme of this Bill, I am concerned that there is a real risk that this could lead to increased litigation and project delay. I hope I am wrong, but the only way we are going to know is if there is regular reporting by the Department to the Oireachtas housing committee to demonstrate the outworking of this legislation. I invite the Minister of State to discuss with the Minister, James Browne, and the officials introducing some reporting mechanism, perhaps every six months, to the Oireachtas housing committee so that we can track the progress. This means that if the Bill does what the Government intends it to do, we could congratulate the Government and say "Job well done". I would have no difficulty doing that, rare and all as such a thing occurs. However, if it leads to increased litigation and delays, as some of us fear but none of us wants, we would be able to highlight that.

The amendments also ignore the fact that the biggest obstacle to the timely expediting of judicial reviews is that we only have three judges in the Planning and Environment Court. We need at least six. Given the resources available to the Government, it is not within the realms of impossibility that the number of judges could be doubled, they could be provided with some additional back room staff and support, and, crucially, the good practice guidelines of the court would be put on a statutory footing so that we would have statutory timelines for judicial reviews depending on size and complexity. We have statutory timelines for some elements of our planning process, although not as many as there should be. There should be for judicial reviews, too.

With respect to the amendments to Part 4 on the infrastructural task force, this is one of those areas where our committee could have played a useful role in inviting in external experts, such as the utilities, our planning authorities, the Irish Planning Institute and others, to give their views on these proposed changes to the Act. All of us want to see increased and accelerated delivery of critical underlying infrastructure, which these amendments broadly deal with, but also of public amenities and public services like transport, schools and health facilities, all of which are sorely lacking in those parts of the State where there is increased residential development.

One of the big disappointments of this Part is that it does not deal with the thorny issue of parallel consent. We raised this with the Department's officials during the course of our briefing. The utilities have been crying out for parallel consents to speed up the process for years. Whether they require foreshore licences or Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, licences as well as planning consents, there should be a single standardised format where those consents and grants can be applied for in parallel rather than consecutively, which is the case currently and adds considerable periods of time to the process.

In principle, I am not against the definitions of material contraventions here and elsewhere in the Bill, but our committee did not scrutinise them and there was no public airing to examine whether those definitions were correct or would cause difficulties. That is a missed opportunity. I am not against the idea in principle, but the Government is doing itself and the State a disservice as a consequence.

I am fundamentally opposed to the amendments to Part 4 dealing with alterations to existing apartment planning permissions. As the Minister of State knows, I was a strong critic of the revised design standards when they were issued as section 28 guidelines last year and as draft planning policy statements this year, in part because they had all the same pitfalls and challenges of the former Minister, Eoghan Murphy's previous section 28 guidelines. They are not good standards for the development of good urban environments or good and well-planned communities. That is not just my view. That is the view of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland and the Irish Planning Institute, as well as many professional architects and planners.

As we heard in the housing committee only a couple of weeks ago, the irony is that the alleged savings that were to be introduced as a consequence of those inferior design standards have already been taken over by inflation. Despite the fact that renters are going to get smaller and darker apartments with less storage and communal space, the savings that were meant to be provided are gone and because the Government has decided to remove any protections on rent controls between tenancies, those tenants will be paying ever greater rents. This is a retrograde step that will come back to bite the Government badly in the time ahead, but as is always the cases with these matters, it will be renters who bear the burden of that.

Notwithstanding all of those criticisms, and the Minister of State was not surprised by any of them, there is an obligation on the Government to periodically report back to our committee on the operation of these particular sections in terms of the number of alterations that are sought, the nature and detail of those alterations, whether they actually result in commencements of new homes, and the types, quality and price of those.

I suspect the Government will not do that because it is going to be nervous about proper public scrutiny of the negative outcome of that particular policy proposition that it introduced last year and is advancing further here. The argument is going to be that this measure will help to activate apartment developments that otherwise would not be built. Let us wait and see. I genuinely do not believe it will have that impact, and even where it does have that impact, marginal and all as it is, it will have very negative impacts on renters in terms of size, quality and, crucially, cost.

I would like the Minister of State, whether today or on Committee Stage next week, to talk in more detail about the provisions of the Bill that deal with the derelict sites levy and its interaction with the residential zoned land tax. That would benefit from some public airing.

With respect to the Housing Finance Agency, HFA, that was on the cards and is very welcome. Here is the problem. The additional funding from the Housing Finance Agency is only of benefit if approved housing bodies, AHBs, through the capital assistance scheme, CAS, the capital advance leasing facility, CALF, and the cost rental equity loan, CREL, can scale up the delivery of social and, crucially, affordable homes in the time ahead. I am strongly of the view that there is an increasing crisis of viability in the operation of the cost rental equity loan. It was badly designed at the outset and, increasingly, delivering projects is proving difficult under it. What we also know is that the projects it is delivering are far too expensive for the overwhelming majority of people for whom cost rental was originally designed, those just above the thresholds for social housing and unable to access market housing. On average, for example, 29% of the applicants for Land Development Agency, LDA, schemes are refused solely on the affordability grounds, and for the three-bed units, in many cases, it is as high as 50%. The figure is similar for the AHB sector. I urge the Minister of State, in the context of the increase in the lending ceiling for the Housing Finance Agency, to fix the problems with CREL.

CAS and CALF have a separate problem, which is the inadequacy of the payment and availability agreement, or the management agreement in the case of CAS. That is going to become an increasing constraint on the ability of the AHBs to develop additional schemes and draw down the HFA funding that the Government is making available today.

Of course, the crazy thing is that for cost rental, local authorities can borrow from the Housing Finance Agency at a lower rate of interest than AHBs, so much so that when the former chief executive of the HFA came in front of our committee, he indicated that the difference in borrowing could result in a lower rent of at least €100 a month. Yet, despite the fact that local authorities could deliver larger volumes of lower priced cost rental, the borrowing cap that has been placed by the Department of housing and, ultimately, the Government on the local government sector is hampering it beyond belief. For example, Dublin City Council is working on the cost rental project at St. Michael’s, but that is going to blow its ability to borrow for any other schemes at any other stage. There has to be a sensible conversation. I am not talking about reckless borrowing or no limits, but there has to be a conversation in government and with the Oireachtas committee about changing that ceiling and giving greater flexibility to local authorities to borrow.

With the indulgence of the Chair, I will make two further comments. Yesterday, the Government published the draft planning policy statement for rural and Gaeltacht houses. Many of us had been waiting for that statement to be published for a long time. It is noted that, unlike the publication of the draft policy statement for design standards, the Government has not announced any formal public consultation or invitation for sectoral organisations to make submissions while it is doing the strategic and environmental assessments - the appropriate assessment - and before they are incorporated into the city and county development plans. Nor is there any indication of whether the Government is going to request the Oireachtas housing committee to give its scrutiny to these matters.

I urge the Minister of State to talk to the line Minister. Between the assessments and the reworking into the development plans, these rules are not going to come into effect until the end of this year, at the earliest. A shortened, time-bound, formal consultation with the sectors and our committee could help to strengthen them. There are some very real concerns about aspects of these. The Minister of State will know of these through his own backbenchers and because sectoral organisations are raising them. We want to get these planning guidelines right, and consultation is required.

Today, the Department issued the circular to local authorities on the new transfer protocol for victims and survivors of domestic and gender-based violence to be able to move from one local authority to another and take their years on the waiting lists with them. This is something we have been calling for over many years, and I warmly welcome it. However, there is a problem. It only applies to households on local authority housing waiting lists and does not apply to households in receipt of housing assistance payment, HAP, and the rental accommodation scheme, RAS. Almost half the potential households that will desperately need this vital protection are excluded from the protocol. I understand that there are some challenges because those people are on the transfer lists of their local authorities, but there are no grounds on which a woman and children who are today experiencing domestic or gender-based violence, and who are in HAP accommodation, should be precluded from availing of the protocol.

I see the Minister of State has a quizzical look on his face. I have checked this. It has been confirmed to me today that it does not apply to women trying to escape domestic and gender-based violence who are on HAP or RAS. The only reason I am raising it is to urge the Minister of State to act. This is a valuable move. It is one of those rare occasions where I want to be able to commend the Government, but if half of the potential households that need this are being excluded, the Government needs to go back and fix it very quickly.

There are times when we come in here and it does not matter how much scrutiny or how much debating time there is because we are not going to agree with the Government. There are also times when legislation is brought forward on which there is very little politics to be played and very few votes to be got. Planning legislation is typically that kind of legislation. I cannot emphasise enough, and I think I speak for all colleagues in the Opposition who take our scrutiny role in committee very seriously, that to allow two hours for Committee and Report Stages for a Bill of 83 pages is wholly unacceptable. In that time, we have to try to discuss the Bill and invite the Minister of State to explain, clarify and, in some cases, justify elements as well as consider reasonable amendments. It is frustrating that every year, at the end of a term, this is what we are left with. I urge the Government to reconsider, although I do not think it will. Then we will decide as we go through the Bill next week how we proceed on Final Stage.

Deputy Rory Hearne

I echo what Deputy Ó Broin has outlined, which is the Opposition’s extreme disappointment at the pace at which this Bill is being rushed through. It does not take seriously the role of Parliament. It is also extremely frustrating that the Government gives out and complains that the Opposition does not come forward with solutions when the key point - the only point, really - at which we have a real opportunity to engage with Government policy in a meaningful way is on legislation, amendments and discussion at committees. With this Bill, we have two hours for 86 pages. This shows me that the Government is afraid of something here. It is unwilling to engage in serious debate and discussion on what is in this Bill. If it were not concerned, it would give the Bill the time.

Is the Government rushing just to try to be seen to be doing something, given that it is not taking substantial time to look at this Bill? There are very significant changes in the Bill. In particular, the one that I am most concerned about is the change to apartment sizes. This has the most impact on my constituency. New apartments are being built in places like Santry and Whitehall, and will be built in places like Ballymun. It is all apartments that are being built in my constituency.

These are going to have profound changes for the livability of those apartments. It feels like the Government is simply ignoring the Opposition and is not taking our concerns seriously or giving us the time to scrutinise the Bill and discuss it with professional bodies.

I want to highlight what the Irish Planning Institute said about the changes being made to apartment guidelines. It stated very clearly that professional planners not only recognise the gravity of the housing crisis, they welcome meaningful evidence-based reforms but the institute is not convinced that the announced changes to apartment sizes and standards would achieve what is intended. It said the erosion of unit mix requirements presents a market-led approach to housing that is fundamentally at odds with the significant work undertaken by the Department of housing to create a plan-led system with high-quality long-term sustainable outcomes. That is the major concern.

What we are building will not provide sustainable communities and homes. A significant concern is that this is about cramming as many units as possible into a site for two reasons. The first is for viability, which is profitability, and the second is so the Government can say it is delivering whatever number of units but are they actually homes?

I also want to read into the record an article by Dr. Lorcan Sirr on the implications of the changes to apartment sizes for climate change. He referred to the real issue, namely that apartments with windows on more than one side, known as dual aspect, have a considerable advantage over those that do not as windows can be opened to cross-ventilate the dwelling. Single aspect apartments can get stiflingly hot and have limited capacity for ventilation. The point he made was that new apartment standards introduced by the Minister will now make apartments smaller and reduce the amount of dual aspect apartments required in any one development, the requirement for balconies and floor-to-ceiling heights, all in the interest of increasing financial viability for developers. The viability of being able to live in these apartments, in particular with more frequent hotter summers, has not been given as much ministerial attention.

I ask the Minister and his officials to give the committee some clear detail next week on how these apartments will be livable, in particular in the context of climate change, and what impact climate change is likely to have on these changes and the livability of the apartments. I am concerned that the apartment standard size changes the Minister is about to make are about reducing standards and the livability of apartments to achieve what the Government calls viability but which we should call profitability. The term "viability" is a politically safe word.

The Government will not state the truth, namely that this is about reducing housing standards so they are sufficiently profitable for developers and institutional investors who are already making hundreds of millions in profit. They are doing so because the State is dependent on the private sector to build. It is funnelling, and will funnel in the coming years, millions of euro in public money into private developers and investor funds and reduce the livability of homes at the same time in order to increase their profitability so that they will build more units which are not actually homes. This is about increasing units, not providing homes.

IRES REIT and the developers and investors have been very clear that they are delighted with the changes and being given open access to a public sector ATM slush fund, which is effectively what we are doing rather than expanding our public sector and councils and developing a State construction company that would build affordable homes. The reality is that more expensive built rent units will not solve our housing disaster or provide any more new homes for people to buy that are affordable. Just a tiny fraction of what is being built in Dublin, including in my constituency, will be available for sale. No apartments are available for sale. Nothing is being sold at a reasonable price. Of course, this adds to house price inflation because everyone is trying to buy existing built homes and there is no supply of homes to buy that could reduce house prices. The lack of affordable homes to buy being delivered in our cities, in particular Dublin, is the fundamental problem.

The Minister spoke about the justifications for these changes, which are outlined in the Bill. He said it is about addressing homelessness and providing residential supply. He spoke about what is changing. The reality is that the housing disaster is happening right now. What is the Government is doing about it? It will not put in place a ban on evictions, which it could do and would solve people being pushed into homelessness. Instead, it is making changes that institutional investors and developers want. It is deeply unfortunate that the Government is taking this approach.

I want to highlight a case that came to me. There is a human reality to all of this which I have raised in the House again and again and which the Government is completely ignoring. There is a human cost to the housing crisis. A constituent who was in touch with me highlighted that they have been in homelessness for year. Prior to that, they were in homelessness for three years and got a HAP property for a year but were made homeless when they were evicted. This family, with three children aged 16, 12 and four, have been homeless for four out of the past five years. The mother described how stressful it is for her older kids. She said they have been in this situation and have seen no normal life. She said no child should have to deal with this and they are stuck in extreme conditions, living in rooms together. She said they have no family to visit because her mum and dad passed away. They cannot get a break. She said it is distressing and embarrassing for the children.

This is something that frustrates me. The impact of homelessness on children is not being taken into account. It is extremely damaging for children, even if a child is homeless for a short period of time, such as a week or two weeks - we know it is often much longer. One could argue that this is not related to the Bill but it is directly related to it because it claims to address homelessness. The Bill will not address or solve homelessness. It will not provide homes that people can live in because the changes to apartment sizes and standards are about increasing profitability so developers and investor funds build more units that nobody can afford to buy or rent. As we have seen in reports from the Central Bank and others, institutional funds increase rents overall.

The Government's claim that this is about increasing supply and will eventually reduce rents is untrue. The Department repeats the same mantra, namely that increasing supply will reduce rents. There is no point in the near future when that will happen. Rents will simply increase, which is pushing more and more people into homelessness.

I support some aspects of the Bill, such as giving the Housing Agency increased borrowing capacity. It is important to increase that. Unfortunately, other aspects of the Bill make it very difficult to support it as a whole. I will continue to engage with it and I hope the Minister can address some of these issues in committee.

Deputy Darren O'Rourke

The Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2026 provides another opportunity to address long-standing failures in how we plan and deliver our communities. While legislation can amend processes and procedures, it must also confront the reality experienced by families across the country, in particular in rapidly growing counties like Meath.

For too long, our planning system has treated community infrastructure as an afterthought. I am not convinced this legislation will improve things. Houses have been built in huge numbers but the parks, playgrounds, pitches and other community facilities that make places liveable have too often been delayed, downsized or simply never delivered. The people of Meath kept their side of the bargain. They bought homes, raised families and built communities, yet local and central government failed to ensure that the essential public amenities those communities depended upon were provided. That failure has left children without places to play, sports clubs struggling for facilities and growing communities without the green spaces they deserve.

The fundamental problem is that our planning system remains fragmented and reactive. The Bill before us does little to address that. Too much depends on informal arrangements between developers and local authorities, with little accountability when commitments are not honoured. Developers receive permission to build, houses are occupied and all too often the promised community infrastructure never materialises. That is not good planning. It is a system that places private interests ahead of the public good.

If the Bill is to make a meaningful difference, it must strengthen the planning framework to ensure community facilities are delivered alongside housing, not years later or, worse still, not at all. Mandatory sequencing should become the norm, with legally enforceable requirements linking residential development to the delivery of parks, playgrounds and sporting facilities. Earlier today, I welcomed a wonderful group of women from Teach Mná in Ashbourne to Leinster House. They highlighted other infrastructure deficits, including in transport. They are absolutely right.

Development levies must be protected and ring-fenced for the infrastructure they were intended to fund. Local authorities need both the certainty of funding and the statutory powers to deliver projects without unnecessary delay. Sinn Féin has consistently argued that community infrastructure, including green spaces, should be recognised as a core element of every development plan, not an optional extra. Through our Delivering Liveable Urban Spaces policy and our proposed ciste beithe, we have outlined practical measures to accelerate investment in pitches, playgrounds, public parks and open spaces while ensuring communities have a genuine voice throughout the planning process.

The same applies to transport, education and other community, public and critical infrastructure. I welcome the recent GAA report No One Shouted Stop - Until Now, which highlights the enormous pressure demographic growth is placing on sporting facilities. Its call for a strengthened planning framework and an all-island strategy for sports infrastructure deserves serious consideration. We should also maximise the use of existing facilities by supporting greater community access to school sports grounds.

Planning legislation should not simply facilitate development. It should create sustainable, liveable communities where families have access to the facilities they need from day one. That is the standard the Bill should meet. It is the standard that communities in Meath and across Ireland have every right to expect.

Deputy Conor Sheehan

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit as a bheith anseo inniu. I thank him and his officials for the detailed briefing we received on the Bill. It is a long and technical Bill. One aspect of it is that it seeks to raise the borrowing limit of the Housing Finance Agency, which is fine. However, the other aspects are quite technical and detailed. Deputy Ó Broin alluded to a recurring theme across Departments, not just the Department of housing, whereby the deadline for Committee Stage amendments to Bills is given before the Second Stage debate. I do not appreciate that and it does not set a good precedent. In many cases, Second Stage allows us to tease out queries, issues or concerns and have the Government respond to them. It allows us time to consider what amendments we might table.

This Bill, which has 149 sections, is being rushed through the Dáil two weeks before the recess. I have been a TD for only a year and a half and this is the second time I have debated one of these amending planning and development Bills. I was not a Member of the previous Dáil but I was told that the huge 2024 planning Bill, which had 900-odd pages, was a panacea and that we would not need to revisit these issues. The Planning and Development Act 2000 was fundamentally good legislation. The issue was all the amendments that followed, which turned it into a unwieldy dog's dinner of an Act.

I have a number of concerns about the Bill before us today, mainly relating to section 115, which inserts a new section 303A into the principal Act. These provisions deal with the judicial review changes. The Government would have us believe the planning system and judicial reviews are the biggest obstacles to housing delivery. That is not true. In fact, the biggest obstacles remain a lack of serviced land, inadequate infrastructure, soaring construction costs, labour shortages and the chopping and changing of Government policy. I support efficient planning. Nobody benefits from unnecessary delay. However, achieving greater speed cannot become an excuse for weakening transparency, accountability or access to justice.

The proposed judicial review changes are troublesome. Judicial review exists for a reason. It is not there to frustrate development. It is there primarily to ensure public bodies follow the law. If the Government really wants to reduce delays, it must properly resource the courts and ensure planning authorities have adequate staffing - I will say more about that presently - to improve the quality of decision-making in the first place. Codifying the restrictions placed on public participation and potentially breaching our international legal obligations under the Aarhus Convention is not a road I want us to go down. The convention provides that environmental judicial reviews must not be prohibitively expensive or overtly restrictive. I have concerns that the stricter limits being placed on judicial review could breach that requirement. There is also a risk that removing the automatic right of appeal to the Court of Appeal, leaving only redress to the Supreme Court, could be unconstitutional. My concern is that instead of speeding up infrastructure delivery, which is the intention, we could end up with a wave of satellite litigation and spend years in court arguing over procedural technicalities.

There are other aspects of this that are concerning. The whole idea of forcing courts, in effect, to police the corporate governance rules for volunteer-led community groups is a bit strange. The notion of shifting the responsibility of micromanaging community group governance to the courts system, thereby consuming valuable judicial time, does not make sense. The Government would have us believe planning is the principal obstacle to housing delivery, but it is not. Blaming judicial review for housing backlogs is a distraction. Data from the Law Society shows that the number of judicial reviews brought by individual citizens was already falling while the number of cases taken by commercial developers was increasing.

I have concerns about the new section 138A, to be inserted in the principal Act by section 62, which deals with the relaxation of apartment standards. I fundamentally believe it is a race to the bottom to allow developers to shrink floor sizes, lower ceilings and reduce natural light. In effect, this is calling for smaller and darker apartments. I am concerned as well that these new lower standard apartments will disproportionately affect social housing tenants and renters, who are transient dwellers, by locking them into long-term inferior living conditions while developers maximise their profits.

I also have a concern about the erosion of democratic oversight.

By classifying these structural reductions as non-material modifications that only require a local authority certificate, the law effectively locks out the public. Neighbours and community groups have no right to review, object to or appeal these down-sized designs. These were, of course, rammed through. By eliminating minimum or maximum requirements for specific bedroom mixes, this policy actively incentivises a monoculture of small studio and one-bed units, again pushing families out of urban cores. The State committed a severe error by failing to conduct a strategic environmental assessment before introducing these lowered guidelines. The Government's constant changing of legal mechanisms to bypass court challenges has created massive regulatory uncertainty and delays in apartment delivery.

I also want to talk about sections 21 and 42, which refer to adjusting the time for local authority development plan reviews and outline what will occur when elected officials fail to make a plan. The shift from six-year to ten-year development plans is a good idea but it is complex. This Bill allows current local development plans, made under the 2000 Act, to remain legally active on a transitional basis. I have concerns here regarding local government and the role of councillors. Handing ultimate power to central government, if councillors fail to make a plan, is again reducing the power and democratic influence of locally-elected representatives over zoning decisions.

I want to move on and talk about planning in terms of planning posts and resourcing our local authorities. I would argue there are potential resourcing issues here because moving the goalposts for plan review simultaneously across multiple local authorities is logistically very complex. Through the CCMA, local authorities have voiced concern over the severe shortage of qualified planners to meet these compressed transitional deadlines. Replies to parliamentary questions I have received in recent months tell me that a fairly significant number of planners who have been reassigned to, or have been recruited from local authorities by, An Coimisiúin Pleanála. We need clarity from the Department as to how these critical vacancies will be back-filled at local authority level. I raise this because I have asked a number of parliamentary questions about planning posts. I cannot find out from the Department how these posts will be back-filled. The Department cannot tell me the workforce data for the local government planning sector because of section 159. It cannot tell me the percentage of current or senior executive planners who are eligible for retirement. When we look at the action plan on planning resources, the LGMA said a number of years ago that it needed 541 planning posts. Two hundred and forty four were sanctioned, which is not even half. When we look at phase 1 in 2023, that is fine but phase 2 did not actually come until 2025. The fact remains that a significant majority of council planning positions approved over the past two years remain unfilled due to a lack of available graduates and retention issues due to the fact that, in many cases, the local government sector cannot compete with the private sector on salaries.

I have concerns about potential bottlenecks around the fact that a local development plan cannot be finalised until the regional spatial and economic strategy, RSES is complete. There is a 90-week deadline on regional reviews. I hope there is not any delay at regional assembly level because that will set off a domino effect for local authorities.

I want to talk about section 149, which has to do with the increase in the Housing Finance Agency, HFA, borrowing limit. I have no issue with this; I support it. It is also the second time we have done it in the past year. I would argue that it does not go far enough and that the State needs to invest more in the direct delivery of social and affordable housing. Given that we only extended the borrowing cap in quarter 4 of last year, I would like the Government to take a longer-term review of the remit of the HFA and its borrowing ceiling and to look at the borrowing cap of all 31 local authorities, which is far too low.

As I said, I support efficient planning. I do not think anybody benefits from unnecessary delay but we must have proper planning and that is a fact. I cannot support apartment changes that make developments cheaper by making homes smaller and reducing amenities and design standards. We have already paid the price for poor planning decisions in relation to apartments, when we consider that virtually everything built during the Celtic-tiger period is in some way defective. Every apartment built today should be a home that somebody can comfortably live in permanently.

We, in Labour, have consistently argued that once again, the State must become a major builder of housing. We cannot continue to rely on a volatile private market to solve a crisis that the market itself has failed repeatedly to solve. We need to empower local authorities more. We need to better support the AHB sector, and I will go into that. We also need to look at establishing a State construction company. We need to invest more in modern methods of construction. We need a stable, predictable and properly resourced planning system.

In some of the time available to me, I want to talk about the issues with the cost rental equity loan, CREL, scheme. I have had a decent bit of engagement with the AHB sector, as I am sure the Department has, around the 40-year repayment period. Due to soaring construction costs, many in the AHB sector are saying that this is making cost rental unviable for them. We have AHBs that are pulling the plug on cost-rental developments because the are saying they are not viable. However, at the same time, the way the cost-rental system was designed here means that it is not proper cost rental; it is market discount. We now have a situation where rents in the cost-rental sector are far too high. Yes, they are 29% lower, on average, than on the open market but they are still too high and they need to come down. In the first instance, the Government needs to look at the equity element of the CREL to make sure more cost-rental developments do not end up being pulled.

As I said, I will engage constructively with this Bill. Where there are measures in it that I believe will accelerate housing delivery, while protecting the integrity of proper planning, I will support them. However, where the Government seeks to weaken safeguards, reduce standards and continues to not address the real barriers to housing delivery, then I will continue to challenge that.

Deputy John Clendennen

I welcome this Bill. It will ensure the planning code works effectively when the remaining provisions commence later this year. If we look at the tone and sentiment of this Dáil term, it has been all about delivery across all types of infrastructure while maintaining public confidence in the planning system. If we consider some of the representative bodies, there is a changing view regarding how the pace of progress is increasing.

Over 35,000 homes were delivered last year, an almost doubling since the start of the decade. Some of these measures will ensure that we will have a viability rather than a profitability argument around home development. Sometimes people lose sight of the difference between those two. In reality, we need to ensure we have viability for these projects so that income can cover costs. You can be profitable but have a very unsustainable business model. It is important that with this Bill and its planning guidelines we will see a level of certainty and ensure that the sector can invest. Far too many contractors and developers have moved overseas in recent times because of delays in the system. In fairness to the Minister of State and the Department, they have worked to iron out those challenges and ensure certainty can be given.

Judicial review reform has been critical. We have had several debates at the Oireachtas Committee on Infrastructure and National Development Plan Delivery. In this country, judicial review is seen as the norm rather than the exception. It is part of the planning process. We have five times more judicial reviews than the UK. That is simply not acceptable. If we want to see large-scale projects delivered and certainty for further investment, we have to ensure that the planning system works rather than the judicial system having to work in relation to planning development.

The Minister of State has talked about An Coimisiún Pleanála and some of the measures there to introduce statutory timelines for applications. They are very necessary. However, I am concerned that where a timeline is given, the applicant hears back at the eleventh hour from An Coimisiún Pleanála. There should be some means by which it identifies a problem early and remains engaged with the applicant in the best interests of time and, where possible, it could discuss concurrent issues over time to ensure the challenges are mitigated.

In respect of the development plan, the ten-year period is a welcome step. Again, it gives certainty and we have to be cognisant that any piece of land in this country that is serviced should be in a development plan, regardless of the size, the population or the current demand. We need to be very ambitious about that. With land that is zoned because it has been serviced, an onus has to be put on the landowner to ensure that land is made available for development. Utility providers, such as Irish Water, need to show a greater element of transparency as to what capacity they have in every town and village right across the country and keep that updated with potential developments.

The interpretation of standards around the country can vary. I have seen this in my constituency with the over-the-shop grant that has been introduced. There seems to be a level of complication there and the whole purpose of what the Minister of State and the Department are doing is to iron out those challenges and ensure we make these more seamless.

Housing delivery is key and I fundamentally believe that ensuring planning permissions that are already in the system can continue without unnecessary delay will be an important part of this Bill. The Government is making a commitment for increased funding. I have seen in my county what the land activation scheme has done to unlock 2,000 new homes and rely not just on public sector development of housing but on the private sector as well. There is a commitment here that will go down well with the construction industry to ensure we can see a greater level of development.

We are committing almost one in five euro to the likes of energy in the current infrastructure plan for the country. That is a monumental change to our commitment to infrastructure. It will give the confidence to ensure we see the housing, transport development and water development.

In relation to modern methods of construction, a company in County Offaly, Banagher Precast Concrete, specialises in precast concrete and exports it all over the world. Recently, from a transport perspective, the Design Manual for Urban Roads and Streets, DMURS, was introduced to ensure more footpaths and narrower roads. However, there is then an issue with these oversized vehicles being transferred along the roads of Ireland. We have to get that right. We cannot have the construction industry moving to more prefabrication and more consistency in quality by moving to in-workshop manufacturing and transporting it on the road while roads are being narrowed.

I want to touch on the area of resources. Planners and the Office of the Planning Regulator are going to play a key role in this. I get a sense of concern from planners on the front line about this and about how it is going to be interpreted and implemented. The one thing I call for today is that if the Office of the Planning Regulator is currently committed to engaging with senior planners in relation to that training and roll-out, they might ensure it goes further down through the organisation so planners at all levels are aware and can share on-the-ground issues that senior planners, no disrespect to them, may not be aware of.

Overall, this Bill is very positive and constructive. It sends out a very important message that we want to deliver, deliver, deliver. I thank the Minister of State for bringing it forward. I will share the remainder of my time with Deputy Devlin.

Deputy Cormac Devlin

I thank Deputy Clendennen. I welcome and support the Bill, which implements the reforms agreed by the Dáil in 2024 and will accelerate the supply of housing. The housing crisis is the defining challenge facing this country and we all see the impact in our weekly clinics. The Planning and Development Act 2024 was the largest reform of our planning legislation in a generation. I want to focus on three elements of the Bill. The first is the judicial review. The Bill applies the new procedural rules for planning judicial review, introduced in the 2024 Act, to remaining decisions made under the 2000 Act. That means the removal of the separate leave stage. It also means a case can be remitted to the point where a procedural breach occurred, rather than an entire permission being quashed. It means an end to further appeals to the Court of Appeal in those cases.

Each of these measures cuts time and unnecessary legal costs for all parties concerned. It is worth being clear about the impact. This is not about shutting anyone out of the courts. Judicial review remains available to any person with a genuine case. What these changes remove is duplication, cost and delay. Of course, delay serves nobody.

On the second point, strategic planning, the Bill sets a 90-week deadline for the review of the three regional, spatial and economic strategies so that they will be completed by the end of 2027. It allows current development plans to remain in force on a transitional basis until a fixed date no later than the end of 2030. That gives local authorities the space to complete their reviews properly and to introduce a ten-year development plan on time. Ten-year plans give certainty for communities, for councils and for those delivering homes and the infrastructure that serves them.

Third, on infrastructure, the Bill delivers on actions assigned to the Department under the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce Report and Action Plan 2025. Homes need water, they need power and transport, and the Bill streamlines the consenting process for the critical projects that make housing possible. It also allows existing apartment permissions to be modified in line with updated apartment design standards. These measures can unlock sites that are permitted but stalled. Permitted but stalled is the worst of all worlds, and we have too much of that.

I want to address public participation directly, because it matters. Streamlining and participation are not opposites. Under the Bill, public consultation on development plans remains. Submissions on planning applications remain, as do appeals. What changes is the speed and the certainty of the process, not the right of people to have their say.

In my constituency of Dún Laoghaire, residents engage seriously and constructively with the planning system. I will always defend their right to do so. A faster system must also be a fair system. Every month that we take out of the planning process is a key turned in a front door a month sooner. That is what this Bill is essentially about.

I ask the Minister to publish a clear commencement timetable for the remaining provisions and to ensure that local authorities, such as Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, are properly resourced for the transition to planning under the new Act. Housing is the priority and this Bill helps us deliver it. I support the Bill and look forward to its implementation.

Deputy Carol Nolan

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. There are certainly constructive and long-overdue elements within this legislation, particularly the reforms proposed around judicial reviews. For far too long, communities, local authorities and applicants have been trapped in cycles of chronic delay - delays that frequently extend into years. We all know of cases where judicial review has been used not as genuine oversight but as a tool for procedural abuse of the courts.

Anything that brings greater clarity, tighter timelines and more predictable outcomes is certainly welcome.

I also want to address the multiple sections of the Bill that amend the Planning and Development Act 2000 to introduce a new planning designation of key towns. As I read them, these sections appear to outline how certain towns will receive prioritised treatment in development plans, investment strategies and planning decision-making. While the concept may have merit in regard to balanced regional development, I must raise a very direct concern on behalf of many small towns and villages across my county of Offaly and the wider midlands area. We cannot allow a situation where preferential treatment for designated key towns ends up diverting resources, planning capacity or infrastructural investment away from the smaller communities, communities with populations under 10,000 that already struggle to secure basic services and development certainty. Will the Minister of State provide clarity? Will these sections create a two-tier planning system? We certainly do not want to make our planning system any more frustrating, bureaucratic or unfair than it already it is.

Will smaller towns and villages be disadvantaged in favour of the key designated towns and what safeguards will be put in place to ensure rural communities are not left behind? Counties like Offaly depend on balanced development, not concentrated development. These sections must not become a mechanism that unintentionally sidelines rural Ireland or disadvantages rural Ireland in any way.

While the Bill seeks to reduce delays in planning processes, I must contrast that ambition with the massive and escalating backlog within Tailte Éireann, an issue I have repeatedly exposed through parliamentary questions. We are all given an Oireachtas email to correspond with Tailte Éireann, but, as far as I can see, it is an absolute waste of time. In the past few weeks, I have sent at least four issues to Tailte Éireann. These were genuine issues relating to businesses, in the context of their registration, and to elderly people who want to sell their properties and move into a town. Both process are affected by delays. The stock response seems to be to get the lodging party to expedite their case. If a TD is already informing those involved of the circumstances and outlining genuine reasons relating to an elderly person's well-being and health and stating that they want to get their registration finalised, what is the point of telling us to go to the solicitor again? Is that not creating more of a maze and a bureaucratic mess?

I am fed up contacting Tailte Éireann. I ask the Minister of State to intervene urgently with it. I am not happy at all with the responses I am getting. I feel I am being fobbed off. What is happening is a cop-out. Registrations should not take three years to complete. There is something seriously wrong if they are taking that long. What is happening is totally unacceptable. I have several cases, as I said. I was approached by a business that needs to expand as a matter of urgency. It is tied up in this. I have several elderly constituents who are also tied up in this. I am asking for urgent intervention with Tailte Éireann because, in my view, it does not seem to be fit for purpose.

This Bill seeks to reduce delays I welcome that, but if we are serious about doing so, we need to improve efficiency as well. That is why I feel that the reins need to be taken and that action taken in respect of Tailte Éireann. The data provided to me also confirm a rapid and exponential build-up in property registration delays, as I have already outlined. I have confirmed already that for 2025 alone, over 50,000 applications remain pending. That is disgraceful. What message is that sending out to businesses or even companies looking to come in here to invest. What sort of a message is that sending out? That is a logjam that should not be there.

Across the years, arrears now exceed 90,000 applications. This backlog has seriously delayed property transactions, agricultural transfers, conveyancing and housing delivery and has had a direct impact on market efficiency across Ireland. It is also damaging our reputation in respect of companies or businesses trying to expand or invest, when they see this. This has to be sorted out. I accept that some steps have been taken in regard to fully staffing Tailte Éireann registration team and accelerated recruitment, but I, as a TD, I am not seeing the benefits. There is no point in giving us an email address for Tailte Éireann if it is not going to give us proper responses. There certainly needs to be change in that regard. The figures speak for themselves. They are the facts. The backlog that has escalated dramatically and that continues to impose uncertainty and delay on families, farmers, solicitors and businesses is totally unacceptable. There should not be a backlog. If we are serious about tackling delays in our planning system, then we must also be serious about tackling delays in the property registration system. One cannot function without the other.

While we are discussing planning reform, I have to take the opportunity to highlight the deeply distressing situation facing families in Stonestown, Cloghan, County Offaly, in terms of a wind farm development. Those families have been living through what can only be described as mental and physical torture arising from excessive wind turbine noise, vibration and operational practices. I raised this issue here in the Dáil a number of times. Those families need to be listened to. Their health is suffering. I met the families involved. They are young couples, and they and their families are suffering terribly as a result of what is happening in the context of a wind farm that was imposed on them and that they did not want.

I have reviewed the noise diaries kept by the affected families. To say that they are harrowing is an understatement. They provide a harrowing record of the families' suffering, The constant humming, a heavy vibration throughout their houses and nights of relative quiet while testing equipment is present, followed by a sudden return to a roaring noise once the equipment is removed. That seems to be what is happening. These families are enduring sleep deprivation, physical pain, emotional distress and severe disruption to their lives. They have been left waiting almost six months for a basic communication from Statkraft's contractors. It is not good enough. There should be respect given where, if there are health issues and concerns, then immediately a wind farm should be told to stop its operation. There are serious health concerns. I call on the Ministers to intervene in that case. It really is a public health failure that has been enabled by weak enforcement and inconsistent monitoring. I will continue to raise this matter on behalf of the families of Stonestown in Cloghan with the Minister, the EPA and Offaly County Council. No family in Ireland should be subjected to what these families are being subjected to in Stonestown.

While I welcome aspects of the planning Bill, particularly the judicial review reforms, I must emphasise that planning reform cannot be selective. It has to be cohesive and ensure that proper practices, procedures and agencies are operating efficiently. I refer, in particular, to Tailte Éireann, which is not fit for purpose. There needs to be something done there.

The Bill cannot focus on one part of the system while ignoring others. It cannot prioritise key towns while leaving small towns and villages in rural Ireland behind and it cannot claim to reduce delays while thousands remain stuck - in what should be a simple registration process - in a backlog that has totally spiralled out of control. We need a planning system that is fair, efficient, transparent and responsive, and that also collaborates properly with TDs. We are sick of stock answers. I will not be accepting any more stock answers. We need a registration system that is a properly resourced and functional system and we need an enforcement system that protects people.

I look forward to the Minister of State's clarification regarding section 11 and its implications for rural Ireland in the context of the priority towns. My county of Offaly has been disadvantaged. We have not seen enough investment or balanced regional development, and, no more than any other county in the State, we need to be treated fairly.

Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú

Deputy Ó Broin spoke about how the Planning and Development Act 2024 was meant to be the be all and end all and that there would be no need for all these updates.

That is not the position we find ourselves, however. I echo the complaints made by Deputy Ó Broin and others about this legislation being rushed. While we can accept that there are technicalities that need to be dealt with, this is just not the way to do it, particularly in circumstances where Committee Stage amendments needed to be submitted prior to Second Stage commencing.

I recall talking to some planners about the Planning and Development Act. They spoke about the issues they had with and fears about the initial iterations of that legislation. Those issues and fears came from a perspective to the effect that what we were doing was simply creating, on some level, a large piece of legislation that would be taken apart in court cases. Unfortunately, we still do not have a fit-for-purpose system to deliver sensible and sustainable planning, while also allowing for all the necessary inputs.

At some level, we welcome the fact that we have seen something in respect of rural and Gaeltacht housing. We have all been waiting for guidelines on one-off houses in rural areas for a long time. We need to deal with the issue of the Gaeltacht. We must facilitate people from the Gaeltacht to live there. We must also take into account the rights of Irish speakers. I am not entirely sure that is going to happen, however. We have worries that we could be looking at a circumstance where this could mean fewer homes being built for Irish speakers within Gaeltacht areas. That needs to be addressed.

We have seen a bit more flexibility when it comes to one-off rural houses. I do not think there are too many in this House who come from rural backgrounds or who have huge rural areas in their constituencies who have not had to deal and have conversations with planners about what constitutes backland and ribbon development. We always look for that level of flexibility, while accepting that health and safety issues, particularly sight lines, are sacrosanct. At times, we have seen planners in different areas and those operating in the same areas come down differently on particular issues. We must ensure we see that flexibility on backland development and rural rightsizing.

We must also consider the wider idea of economic need and include the likes of teaching as a service, rather than simply those who work directly in agriculture. We all need to see that because we have seen the difficulty those who want to live in the area where they were born have in this regard.

In the context of infrastructure, there are huge issues with Uisce Éireann. I am looking a follow-up meeting with Uisce Éireann in respect of my constituency. I would welcome if the Minister of State would add his voice to that. I am seeking to ensure that we have sustainable planning. There is currently a big planning application in Louth around Cú Chulainn’s Castle. I would like to think all necessary stakeholders have put in their observations. We must ensure we look at this from a point of view of housing, heritage, history, etc.

Deputy Brian Stanley

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important Bill. I echo what the previous speaker, Deputy Nolan, said regarding Tailte Éireann and the email address we were given. Like me, the Minister of State is from a country area and will, therefore, have heard the saying, “Playing handball against a haystack”. That is what trying to deal with Tailte Éireann is like. The registration system is simply not working. I have cases, as other Deputies will have, where there are delays with registration. I would like the Minister of State and his officials to take note of this, because there is a real problem. I have a case of a young farmer who has to change the plot of land the farmhouse has been on for the past 200 years. The title is in the name of a previous landlord. That landlord is long gone, and the title has to be changed into the farmer's family name. He farms the land around it. He owns that 90-acre farm, but he has to live in a town eight miles away. He is living in private rental accommodation with his young family. He is a young, active and progressive farmer, but there are constant delays with this. Solicitors are even on to us inquiring whether we can do anything about it. Something has to be done.

I will provide an example. Ten years ago, whenever I had a case in Laois where there was a difficulty with registration and I needed to contact the Land Registry, I phoned the office on Cork Road in Waterford and asked to be put through to the Laois section. The phone was always answered, which was fantastic. I gave the folio number and if the staff were not able to solve the issue there and then, they came back to me within 24 hours. They never failed in that regard. They did their best. I understand that there are procedures to go through, such as the notification of interested parties or parties who may have an interest in property, but this email system is like trying to play handball against a haystack. I ask the Minister of State and his officials - it comes under the Department of local government and housing, as far as I know - to sort this out. Someone needs to do something.

There are some good things in the Bill. Of course, there have been concerns about judicial reviews. We cannot have a situation where project after project is delayed unnecessarily, particularly by people who are not affected and who may be objecting for other reasons. However, I defend the right of affected parties to have the option of taking a judicial review as a last resort. That may include people who own adjoining properties but who do not live in the relevant area. More particularly, it is about those who live in the area. I support tightening this up and ensuring that it does not unduly delay projects that are badly needed.

The concept of having key towns is good and makes common sense. Obviously, we do not want to see smaller towns and villages suffering as a consequence of what is being done in this regard. I will come back to that point before I finish. If we are going to designate key towns, they must have essential services, including jobs, health and educational services, school places and sports and leisure facilities. They cannot be just a series of housing estates dropped in fields around the edges of towns. That is important.

Some Deputies indicated that they welcome the certainty with the county development plan process. While I definitely do not want to be delaying these things for too long, I have concerns about the ten-year duration. I was on the council for the makings of a couple of county development plans. One problem I see with this - it could be an unintended consequence - is that we could end up with variations to county development plans. We will have material contraventions, which can be carried out within the period of county development plan while awaiting a new one. I have been there for those. Two weeks ago, Laois County Council implemented a variation. I have the new plan in my office. The variation is as big as the plan. Effectively, it is a new plan. This is something that the Minister of State needs to take on board.

The other thing is the role of the councillors. The briefing note from the Department outlines the engagements it had in this regard. It states, “The Department and the Minister engaged with the County and City Management Association [fair enough], the Planning, Environmental and Local Government Bar Association [that is all right too], the Irish Planning Institute and the Construction Industry Federation”. Engagement with councillors is not mentioned. There was no engagement with the representative body of local government. Why was the Association of Irish Local Government not contacted? The Local Authorities Members Association was not contacted either. Year after year, with every issue and piece of legislation that has anything to do with local government, councillors are never contacted. I remember raising this kind of nonsense with Phil Hogan when he was Minister 15 years ago. Councillors were forgotten about. No one, not senior officials or anyone at a senior political level in government, thought it fit to speak to councillors.

That is what it says in the briefing note and that is an omission. That is the other concern I have with ten years. I see the need for certainty. It is a six-year process at the moment. Fair enough, we could go to seven or eight years but ten years is a lot. It is a long time. We will finish up with an unintended consequence of material contravention to the plan having to be brought before the councils on a regular basis, as well as variations. The variation made in County Laois is a positive one. It was needed. The Department and the Government requested it and the councillors and management obliged. The councillors got it fairly right. They put a lot of work into it along with the planners. I want to highlight that.

Regarding apartment sizes, what are we going to do? Are we going to keep going until we have people living in shoe boxes? Before I came in here I measured 32 sq. m in my office, so I know what it means. Part of my office in Leinster House is 32 sq. m. That is lunacy and it is really unfair. I know the developers wanted it and the Construction Federation of Ireland has been hammering on the Minister's door for a few years to try to extract more profit. The Minister of State will say a lot more apartments are being built now but there are a lot of other reasons for that and we all know what they are. This means more profit, less space and the position of renters and people trying to buy their first home being diminished. Some 32 sq. m is awful. Some 76 sq. m for three-bedroom accommodation is awful. Has anyone here ever lived in a house of 76 sq. m? I lived in a house that was 57 sq. m and it was very small. It is 32 sq. m for a two-bedroom house. A three-bedroom house of 76 sq. m is awful. It is not fair to people. We have to start thinking about quality of life. Profit has won out in this country over everything else.

On the rural planning guidelines, in general I welcome what has been announced this week by the Minister. We do not have all the details yet. We need to be careful that we do not end up with scatters of housing all over the place. People who genuinely need to live in a rural area for work reasons or who have a family connection should be allowed to do so, subject to considerations such as environmental and planning regulations, etc. Laois County Council has operated close to that model over the years.

However, it is a missed opportunity, and the Minister of State may tell me he will come back to this. If we want rural development done properly, we need to build up, along with the changes in the guidelines. As I said, we need to be careful. We do not want a turbo-charged bungalow blitz, although we want to facilitate those who genuinely need to live in a rural area. If we want to do rural development properly, we must build up and consolidate the cores of our villages. If we want to create and strengthen rural communities, we must have living villages.

The Minister of State knows that in his constituency as in mine, there are many villages which are not living villages. The shop is closed and the post office, service station and Garda station are gone. If we want rural areas to play a significant role as well as address the housing crisis, we must have strong village structures. That has to be part of and central to any housing policy.

I support genuine efforts to speed up the delivery of and to facilitate housing. Too many of our villages have been hollowed out due to a lack of new housing and opportunities to live in them. There are huge benefits to living in a rural village. Young people can walk to school and people can walk to the local pub, church or sports field. In nearly all villages, there is now a bus link and that is important. If we can consolidate the cores of villages and get people living in them, children can walk to school and people can walk to the local shop, pub, church or sports field. As I said, most villages have at least a limited bus service and that reduces the need to always use a car. In villages people have neighbours and family support, often nearby. If a person needs home help services when they get elderly, it is easier to provide it in villages than it is way out in the countryside. Importantly, in villages people also have access to utilities, which also reduce a person’s carbon footprint about which we are all concerned. One-off housing does not have that. I am not against one-off housing. In general, I support what is being done in relation to the policy on those who genuinely need to live in a rural area. However, we need to be careful not to cover the whole place with unnecessary rural housing. I am arguing instead to consolidate the cores of villages.

This needs the councils to zone land close to the centre of villages. There cannot be leapfrogging. There are too many examples of leapfrogging over the years where ten fields have been missed and then half a mile up the road there is a new housing estate with no footpath, no public lighting and a long distance to connect sewers. It is expensive to do that and the car is still used to get to the local shop. That is not the way we should be doing it. These houses should be close to the centre of the village. This means zoning land for private and public housing close to villages and local authorities building, where needed, small clusters of social housing. There are some good examples of that but we need more of them.

I suggest that councils develop serviced sites, and there are a few good examples in County Laois. Castletown is one example and Ballyroan is another. Sites, roughly a quarter of an acre on the edges of the village, are sold at cost-price to people in the area who want to build their own modest house and have a reasonably-sized garden. The Minister of State knows that many people in rural areas are self-employed, and they might have a van, a trailer, JCB or something like that. A person cannot bring that into a housing estate but if they are living on the edge of a village and have a quarter of an acre of a site, that is the problem solved. This fits in with the lifestyle. I ask the Minister of State to take the example of Ballyroan in County Laois, which has ten serviced sites developed by the council. Since we zoned land there in 2006, the Cross of Newtown, the Glenbrook estate and Gleann na Glaise, which is a council estate, have been developed there, along with the ten council serviced sites. Everything is in three or four minutes walking distance to the school, church, the pubs, all of which are open, and to the GAA and the soccer clubs. The other day a fantastic new playground opened. That is the type of development we need to see. I can show the Minister of State villages where that has not happened and where the whole village has been hollowed out. Many of the villages need a small wastewater treatment system or what the one they have to be upgraded. Some of that will come by way of development levies but some of it will not and will need funding. My point is that is one way of doing it.

I argue that if we are serious about rural development, along with making it possible for people who have to live in a rural area to build a one-off property, we have to build up our villages and connect them with public transport. A start has been made and it is working well but there is more work to do. Every county has a network of villages, which could help us to solve the housing crisis.

I accept that the vacant property grant is working reasonably well. We are not getting any complaints. That is how I know it is going all right. If it was not working well, people would be complaining about it. It is bringing houses, including some in rural areas and villages, back into use.

I mentioned Tailte Éireann. I would say it is like playing handball in a haystack. It is absolutely frustrating. The Minister of State is a Waterford TD. Ten years ago, if there was a problem with a registration or property and a constituent or their solicitor were getting nowhere with it, they would contact me to see if I could do anything about it.

I would ring the Land Registry in the Minister of State's constituency, on Cork Road in Waterford, and ask to be put through to the lease section. Someone would answer the phone, if not the first time then I would get them an hour later and they would address the problem immediately. They were very helpful. Now we have an email address and we might as well be doing something I will not say in the Chamber. That is the point I am making. There are some good things in the Bill, such as the judicial review measure, but we need to be careful with people who are living in the locality.

The change to apartment size is the one I have a real problem with. I measured 32 sq. m in my office to see what is involved before I came to the Chamber. It is tiny. It is not fair to ask people to live in accommodation of that size. Three-bedroom accommodation of 76 sq. m is awful. We need to start thinking about people's quality of life. At the same time we are doing away with the common spaces. We cannot have it every way. There is not going to be any storage or common area, yet a family is going to be confined in a three-bedroom apartment of 76 sq. m. That is not good enough. That is the piece I have a problem with. Everybody has got their way - the Construction Industry Federation, CIF, the investors, the developers and everyone else but tenants and purchasers who are paying big mortgages and high rents are the ones that are suffering.

Deputy Barry Ward

Cuirim fáilte aireach roimh an mBille seo. Níl mé cinnte go bhfuil gach rud atá sa Bhille i gceart. Tá roinnt fadhbanna agam leis freisin. I give a cautious welcome to the Bill. I recognise what it is attempting to do but I want to raise a couple of issues with the Minister of State. The first one is something I raise in general about legislation, which is a drafting issue. It is not specific to planning legislation. When the Bill becomes an Act, if a citizen tries to read it, almost every single section describes an amendment to either the Planning and Development Act 2000 or the 2024 Act, which means that this Act will not be legible without also having copies of those two Acts. That makes it very difficult for any citizen to penetrate. It is not unique to this legislation. It is something that we do as a matter of course in this House but I think it is bad practice. We should be able to pick up the law and read it and have an idea of what it says. Even in the description of the sections it does not tell us what the amendment is supposed to do. It just says it is an amendment to section 38 of the 2000 Act, or whatever it might be. It would be much more constructive, in the first instance, to say what that amending section is supposed to do but, second, to take the section that is being amended, repeal it and restate it in the legislation so it is there for everyone to read. It is a simple thing that we could do as a general practice in this House but we do not. That is obviously a drafting point that will get exactly no traction with anyone outside this House but it is pertinent to this legislation because one of the aims here is apparently to improve clarity, if the explanatory memorandum and the bumpf around this is to be believed. It is a simple thing.

Generally speaking, the aims of the Bill are clear and well placed. It makes perfect sense to me to increase the Housing Finance Agency's statutory borrowing limit to €15 billion. I do not have a difficulty with that. I wonder if maybe we should index link these limits rather than coming back every few years to change them in an amending piece of legislation. We could save ourselves the hassle if we just linked the limit to an index that allowed it to increase accordingly every year.

I also agree with the comments that have been made about apartment sizes. We cannot win on this in some respects because on the one hand we have people telling us that in order to make projects viable, they have to reduce the unit size in order to make them easier to build. I get that but I honestly find it difficult to understand how developers cannot make a profit in the current environment with house prices and rental prices where they are. It is difficult to understand how when it was profitable to build the same thing a number of years ago, even taking into account the increasing cost of materials, etc., it cannot be built in a profitable way even at the standards we had before. I am not sure that the reduction in building standards and the size of apartments is the answer.

I live in an apartment of less than 80 m sq. It is not a bad place to live or anything like that but the more we reduce the size the less livable the space becomes. That is increasingly true if we have families in that space, especially larger families with more children. Irish people have not got their heads around the notion that we can live in apartments perfectly comfortably. One of the mistakes we have made in this jurisdiction in terms of apartment living is that in a three-bedroom apartment, for example, there is only one reception room or one living space. If you have in that space two or three kids - anybody who has two or three kids will be familiar with this notion - one space can be very difficult and it is not built for harmonious family living. Maybe changing the attitude to what a family dwelling looks likes in terms of the layout of it will be an important thing.

I also welcome the move to ten-year county development plans. The existing structure means that almost as soon as the last one is finished, we are looking at preparations for the next one so I think a ten-year period is more reasonable. I would favour much greater powers for elected councillors. Again, this is something I have complained about to the Minister of State. I complained about it to him when we were both councillors, never mind when he became Minister of State in the Department of housing. We do not give nearly enough power or credit to councillors. They are the hardest working elected people in this country, yet they have no resources but worse than that, they have no powers. The reality is that most councillors around the country, be they city or county councillors, are effectively local ambassadors to the chief executive of a given local authority or the director of services. In real terms, decisions are made at local government level by unelected officials who are not accountable to the local population, who will never knock on the door of a local resident and ask them what they think about the development plan or whatever issue it is, and who do not actually have their feet on the ground the way councillors do. Councillors are doing this all the time. They are knocking on doors. They are at residents' meetings and public meetings. They are available to people and they hear people's views all the time. In my view they are much better equipped to make decisions for the people they represent than officials who are answerable really only to the Custom House or to the Department of local government.

We have the least powerful and most centralised local government system in the whole of the European Union. We should change that. Changing it is a vote of confidence in the fact that at local level, we have genuinely competent, capable, responsible, hardworking elected representatives and we should be devolving power to them, particularly when it comes to planning. We all know that in the 1990s, there was a certain small cohort of councillors who misbehaved and acted in a criminal fashion in some instances. I understand why when we got to the year 2000 that the law had to be changed to take planning decisions out of the hands of councillors because they had been misused and we had to re-establish confidence in planning decisions but the world has changed a lot since 2000. The level of accountability, scrutiny and regulation of councillors has massively changed. It was our party that set up many of those changes in how we require people to be accountable, in terms of their behaviour, their conflicts of interest, moneys they receive, donations, fundraising, all of that stuff. That has been completely changed. We now have the Standards in Public Office Commission whose sole job is to regulate politicians in terms of that behaviour. It is important to have this debate in the context of this legislation. We should now be looking at returning to a situation where we are giving decision-making powers about local planning back to councillors rather than constantly leaving it in the hands of officials who are not accountable.

At the moment we have a massive democratic deficit in terms of planning decisions that is unique in the context of the European Union because councillors are not making planning decisions. In fact, when I was a councillor, I avoided ringing planners about issues because I did not want to be seen to be interfering in that process when, actually, I should have been the one making the decision. I am not a professional planner but we used to have planning committees that were advised by professional planners and we had the benefit of all that expertise. If the decision to be made is to be a democratic one, it should be made by democratically elected people and should reflect the democratic will of the people in a given area. That is a broader point than the legislation before us but it is important given this is planning and development legislation.

I will turn to what I think is probably the main impetus of this legislation, which is about the reform of the judicial review in the planning process. Again, in broad terms, I welcome this. I recognise that Gabriel Makhlouf, the Governor of the Central Bank, said last year that the number one problem in housing development delivery was planning - not financing or other things but planning for the provision of local amenities and utilities. That is a fair criticism. It is far too slow. I recognise also that in Dublin, for example, at the moment there are 9,562 houses being delayed by judicial review. That is an astonishing figure given where we are in the current crisis and what we have to do. That is also about 16.5% of all the development in Dublin, so it is a shocking figure. It does merit being dealt with and a situation where we actually address that problem.

However, there are ways we can address it other than trying to put a stricture on judicial review. Judicial review is a constitutional right that is afforded to Irish citizens. It is built into our Constitution and is a really positive thing. It is something that we have beyond most European countries, in fact. We have this right as a citizen to challenge an administrative decision made by a State agency, Minister or whatever it might be, go to an independent High Court judge and say we think this decision has not been made correctly, there is a flaw in the process and we want the judge to examine it. That is a right that we have given the people of this country since the 1930s. I understand that it is frustrating. Sometimes, the exercise of rights is inconvenient. I also understand that the Minister of State has to do something about it because he cannot allow the situation to continue where there is delay in the construction and delivery of housing for the people who need it. I accept all of that. Faster decisions and faster delivery are aims we must all strive for. However, we can look at the way we do it.

For starters, one of the reasons judicial review is slow is because of the resources allocated to the courts. We do not have enough judges, courtrooms or staff in the Courts Service to process these decisions. We had this problem many years ago in relation to corporate cases. We stepped in and changed the way they were dealt with. There was a specific, highly managed list created within the High Court for cases involving companies and cases that were worth more that €1 million. One judge was responsible for saying what the timeline was once a case came to court, including the deadlines - side A would present their submissions in two weeks' time and side B would respond in four weeks' time, there be an opportunity in six weeks' time to come back, and there would be a hearing to deal with the case in eight weeks' time. There were severe penalties built in for people who did not comply with that timetable. There was an order of the court to move it along. That could be done with judicial review but there is a resource issue with doing that.

Equally, the penalisation of fees is essentially an attack on those bringing judicial reviews. I do not think that is the answer either. I wonder about access to justice and whether this is the right road to go down. There is obviously the locus standi issue as well, which I know is being addressed. The notion that I could live in Letterkenny and object to something in Wexford town is an absolute nonsense. In very few other areas of law is somebody with no standing allowed to make an objection the way they are in planning cases. That is something I favour removing. You should be able to demonstrate some interest in a decision or some reason as to why you are affected by it before you are entitled to start to interfere, delay or review it. That is common sense. It is what normally applies in all other areas of law.

In terms of what this Bill is actually trying to achieve, if we could come at it in a slightly different way, it would be better, fairer and more transparent. We should not be afraid of judicial reviews or of the High Court stepping in to look at a decision openly and transparently. In a court, everything is done in public and a decision is usually written and delivered afterwards where it is set out in clear terms why the decision has been made one way or the other. We should not be afraid of that. We should be resourcing reviews so that decisions can be rendered quickly rather than delayed, as is currently the case. While I appreciate the end point we are trying to get to and the fact that nearly 10,000 houses in Dublin cannot continue to be delayed where a judicial review is partly responsible, let us look at this in the round and see if there is a better way.

I give a cautious welcome to the Bill. I hope I am wrong about this and that it is going to deliver things and there will not be any ancillary problems. I look forward to its passage.

Deputy Máire Devine

Before I start, the Housing Agency was tasked with researching and monitoring housing-based interventions that sought to strengthen social cohesion. I am wondering if that report informed this Bill, or if there is yet to be a report.

If you ask the people of Dublin South-Central, they will clearly tell you that affordable and social housing is key in addressing the fragmentation and displacement of their communities, as vulture funds, student accommodation and transient accommodation smother their area. Swathes of high-rise, transient accommodation have been imposed on their communities. The historical community of the Liberties is choked with eight-to-12-storey blocks of student accommodation that have forever changed the small streetscape and skyscape of Dublin's oldest settlement. Likewise, the aparthotels that cater for this, the premier tourist trail in the country, have resulted in what we call a tourist paradox, a phenomenon that is growing worldwide where tourism and transient visitors destroy the cultural environment that is necessary for tourism activity in the first place. The recent protests at Thomas Street's aparthotel development proved to the be tipping point for locals, who are furious at yet another planning permission for a bland, featureless and cheapening development while their community is scattered to the wind, along with the exodus of home-grown businesses and community facilities. Unaffordable housing is divisive. Tensions are rising and discontent is wholly understandable.

The affordability crisis represents a social challenge that must be addressed. It must be front and centre and the cornerstone of Government policy. Access to affordable housing enables broader social cohesion and strengthens communities, something we desperately need to encourage, support and nurture in these days of sometimes turmoil across our cities and Europe. This legislation should include and encourage site visits so as to give a helicopter view of the context of what is being proposed when assessing large developments, or at least a real-time video of the area and a virtual walk-through to gain a perspective on and understanding of the visual impact, scale and impositions of developments of this nature in the inner cities. They have swallowed up and bulldozed a lot of traditional streetscapes, and with them a lot of our communities in the inner city. Those streetscapes are our urban gems and they are being diluted and dismissed regularly. This has been concentrated in inner cities over the last decade.

Affordable housing is a linchpin that sets the groundwork for a stable living environment for families. It is crucial for personal and communal growth. Stability nurtures people and protects their well-being. Government policy must prioritise this and not be an indifferent bystander to the experience of inner city communities that have long encountered deliberate neglect, disinterest and abandonment. The Minister, Deputy James Browne, got some insight into this when, albeit pushed, he visited the Liberties. That visit was welcome and propelled the decision to answer to the locals and replan the generation that was parked. The State must invest in our people, our families and our working-class communities. That is the priority. We deserve better.

An Ceann Comhairle

Before calling Deputy Michael Collins, I would like to welcome to the Gallery Joe, Lorraine and Micheál Croke, who are visiting from Lowertown in Schull at the request of Deputy Collins.

Deputy Michael Collins

I concur with the welcome you made to the Croke family, a Cheann Comhairle. They have been so helpful to the people of Lowertown and Cross Barry for many years on a voluntary basis, helping people with local gardening and all the works that need to be done there. They are a great addition to be here in the Dáil today.

Independent Ireland supports the objective behind this Bill. We all know that our planning system has become too slow, complex and bureaucratic. Delays in planning are delaying homes and infrastructure and frustrating communities right across rural and urban Ireland. There are a number of positive measures in this legislation. The extension of existing development plans provides certainty, while local authorities prepare the new ten-year plan. The measures aimed at accelerating electricity, gas and other strategic infrastructure are welcome. Without adequate infrastructure, we simply cannot deliver the housing that people desperately need. We also recognise the potential benefits of allowing approved apartment developments to be modified more easily. If sensible changes can help deliver more homes and improve viability without unnecessary delays, that is something we should support.

However, faster planning must never mean less accountability. One concern for Independent Ireland is the growing centralisation of decision-making. The Bill allows regional directors and chief executives to take greater control where deadlines are missed. We must ensure that elected councillors and local representatives are not sidelined in the process. Local democracy matters and local communities deserve to have their voices heard. We also need assurances that rural Ireland will benefit equally from these reforms. Faster infrastructure delivery cannot be confined to major urban centres.

Rural roads, water services, electricity networks and community infrastructure must receive the same priority if balanced regional development is to become a reality.

The Government says that these changes will reduce delays, increase housing supply and improve legal certainty. Those are worthwhile goals. However, the real test will be whether more homes are built, infrastructure projects are delivered faster, and whether the public continues to have confidence in the planning process. Independent Ireland will engage constructively with this Bill. We support cutting red tape and removing needless obstacles, but we will also need to insist on protections for local democracy, ensuring that rural communities are not left behind, and the maintenance of safeguards.

Communities have concerns. There is one thing we have to be careful of. I met a group from Wexford last week. Its members want clarity. The Minister of State might be able to give it to me today or at a future date. Precisely what grant of planning permission exists for new railways overbridge at Park-Carcur just outside Wexford? I have been told that the CEO of Iarnród Éireann and the Minister for Transport claim that this bridge is covered by a planning application from a third-party developer, but it seems that that is not the case. The bridge appears to have been constructed with taxpayers’ money without planning permission. I would appreciate if the Minister of State could clarify that issue in the days ahead.

In this Bill, we have to look at the current situation. We are talking about county development plans lasting longer, but my concern is that mistakes are being made. The mistake in the county development plan is that the local representatives are being squeezed. I know it from my time from 2014 to 2016 on the local authority. We had a hell of a lot to say in relation to county development plans. Now, I find that my councillors have very little say. It is from the top down. We need to change that.

There was a village nucleus. We want to look after the survivors of rural Ireland. Urban areas are hugely to Independent Ireland, too. They put a village nucleus into areas where there was public transport, a local church and a local shop. You build around that area. They withdraw that in the next county development. That was a negative move to make because it was killing rural Ireland. There are communities out there losing their post offices, little creameries and churches because communities are dying. They are losing GAA clubs, which is a very serious concern, and their soccer clubs. We need to put the focus back on how we build small rural communities. That is how we do it. If there is a local school bus service or local rural transport service passing these doors, that is how you build around a community and that community grows. That is an area that the Department needs to look at and have a very serious focus on. County development plans are from the top down. That is not the way it should be. The local authorities need to have a stronger say.

We have to look at issues like housing, roads and transport. Money is being spent on infrastructure. It is hugely important. Uisce Éireann has become unaccountable. One cannot talk to it. When I send correspondence to it, it is like I am talking to old Jack the dog at home, but the dog would waggle the tail at least. Uisce Éireann is unaccountable. Imagine, it is getting billions of euro from the State and does not have to account for it to anybody. I know people who are willing to invest in infrastructure to build local communities. I spent months looking for a meeting with Uisce Éireann - the local person is willing to put the money into building infrastructure that Uisce Éireann should be doing but cannot do - but cannot get one. It is not just me. Everybody else comes in here saying the same thing. There is no accountability. The Government seems to be forking out money without accountability. That needs to change. I ask the Minister of State to stand up to Uisce Éireann. A lot of TDs came in here and showed a lot of concern about Uisce Éireann, and it came across the road and met us, but it has not met us since. It has not followed up on the queries that we had. That was just fake, a bit of box-ticking to get rid of us again for another couple of years. All Uisce Éireann needs to do is ask for another billion or million euro. It does not matter. It just ticks a box and it will get it. We need to make changes in here so that there is accountability and we can go back and say that there is somebody willing to pay this out. It happened in my own community down in Durrus. The construction company of a man who is dead now built the wastewater treatment plant there. That town has been thriving fairly well since and able to build houses since. It does not seem to be happening in the rest of the country. Look at the Shannonvales, the Dunmanways, the Rosscarberys, the Ballydehobs and the Goleens. What is happening? For Shannonvale, there is now a promise that something is going to happen. In Dunmanway, a TD told the Dáil six or 12 months ago that 50 houses were going to be built. Now, I have heard that there are only going to be 15 houses. Imagine, 15 houses for the next 20 or 30 years. That is a disaster for a growing town like Dunmanway.

We are not moving with the times. We are way behind. The more rural you are located in this country, the worse things get. The N71 from Rosscarbery to Owenahinch is so dangerous that it is impassable. Regarding the road in Ballydehob, I am continuously raising concerns that might save lives. If there were passing bays, it would bring people into our community in west Cork. We have every right to fight for our constituents. That is why we were put into Dáil Éireann.

I spoke to young Micheál Croke, who is above in the Gallery. He talked to me about the concerns at Cross Barry regarding a footpath there. I stay out in Bray when I am here in Dublin. I saw that a lovely, safe, concrete footpath was built in one its areas, but a beautiful wooden one was also put in just to add to the area. It is lovely. Down in Cross Barry, there is an incredible amount of danger in walking the bridge there, given the number of lorries and other traffic. They need an inside timber bridge, metal bridge or something to save lives, yet nothing happens year after year and promise after promise. Lorries keep striking the wall there and people are within inches of losing their lives, but nobody is accountable and nobody cares. Obviously, something has to happen, then everybody will start running and shouting.

We are talking about speeding up plans in relation to Gaeltacht areas. We have to look at the islands. I represent eight islands. I talk about Cape Clear, Sherkin Island, Long Island, Dursey Island, Bere Island, Whiddy Island and Heir Island. When was the last time a house was built on any of those islands? The Minister of State will not be able to answer because I will tell him: there has been none. They cannot even get planning there, never mind being able to afford to build. When was there a social house built? People have every right to live on their islands. It is the same as those who cannot afford a house being entitled to get social housing. Why cannot the people of those islands at least included in a social housing programme the same as every other community? The living life has been squeezed out of islands. As public representatives, we meet the islanders. They want their young people. They want their schools to survive. Their schools are closing down because people cannot get a home. They have to go back down to the mainland. There is a rush or race to send people away from rural areas.

Planning permission can be very frustrating. Deputy Ward talked about, for example, a person from Donegal objecting to something in west Cork. That is outrageous and has to stop. There is only one way to do so, and that is to put legislation in to make sure that things like that do not happen. People will say to me that they have a right to object, but there is a proper way to do it and an improper way to do it.

It is often pointed out to me how a local person could not get planning but somebody with a lot of money ended up with a house down the road. That is hard for me to explain because I am not on the inside when it comes to planning, but we have to ask questions about how that happened. I am not saying that it happens very often, but it does happen. It is frustrating for the people who have lived all their lives there and are refused when someone they do not know does get planning permission. That happens quite a lot. It is an area of frustration that the Government needs to look into further.

There is a vacant home grant, and it is very welcome. A lot of people have availed of it and I could not fault it, but there is a bit of a concern that money sometimes does not get out to the people fast enough. That is beside the point, though. It is building up in rural areas. One planning matter that the Minister of State needs to look into is where people find a ruin. They think that this great - a ruin in a rural community falling asunder - and this is going to be built. The first thing they will be asked for is to have a conservation repairs document prepared. Then there will be a bat report, an invasive alien plant species report and a nature impact statement report. It is €20,000 before they put a block in the ground. I recall how, when I was growing up, I built a house at home. It cost me £22,000. It was a six-bed dormer bungalow. Now, people cannot even get a project off the ground for that money. The paperwork has to be finished. There are all these reports. Somebody is making a hell of a lot of money out of this. At the same, when people come into my constituency office - I presume it is the same for the Minister of State - and I look at it, it is a ruin. It is falling down. Would the Government not be delighted to encourage these guys to build and start a new life for themselves?

Deputy Paul Lawless

I know of a family in Mayo. The mother attended the local primary school in the parish. Her father attended the same local primary school. Her children are now attending the same local school. She sought planning permission to build in the catchment area of that primary school. She was denied on the basis of local planning need. Three generations living in the same area and she was refused planning permission.

That is how discriminatory and unfair the planning system is in Ireland. I very much welcome the fact there have been changes and progress is finally being made on this. It is welcome and I support it. I will absolutely fight to make sure the changes will accommodate as many people to live in rural areas as possible, because it was wrong. For too long, we had a planning system that prevented people living. We have a situation in the planning system where families have to go through report after report for bats and environmental report after environmental report. There is no report done, however, on the council's or Government's side to see whether this family need a house and what the impact is on this family and all of the families across Ireland who want nothing from the State except to be left alone and be allowed to build in their local areas. I welcome the progress and I urge the Minister of State to get on with the implementation of that.

In respect of the auxiliary units, the modular units, this was first spoken about over a year ago in the Dáil and I welcomed that at the time. I am still waiting for the legislation and the guidelines to be published. We talk about delays, and I welcome some aspects of this Bill because the Minister of State is trying to address the delays, but we have been waiting for this to be published for over a year now. We know, broadly speaking, that the units may be 40 sq. m but there is no insight. People are ringing me, families are phoning me and builders are phoning me asking me what is happening and we do not know. There has been delay after delay. This is a crisis and I believe it is time that Deputy Cummins, as the Minister of State who is working in the Department of housing, actually realised it is a crisis.

I want to talk about the Bill in relation to the county development plans and the ten-year timeframe. I understand there is some value to this in terms of processing time and speeding up the timeframes. However, I have concerns and I want to register them here on the floor of the Dáil. I will give an example. A council term lasts for five years and if we are now moving to a situation where county development plans will last for ten years, then obviously that plan should be in line with the new council and the new mandate. If the people of a local area vote out the councillors because they are not happy with the work they are doing or with the development plan, then the new council should have the mandate to change that plan. That is a big concern I have. What is the point in having an election if there will be no impact? The truth is that local government has been downgraded to such an extent that councillors have virtually no power. Now we will see the power they have in terms of development plans being pushed further out and that is a big concern. I ask that changes, flexibility and amendments be allowable. In Mayo, we have a county development plan that was produced in 2022, before I was elected to the council or the Dáil. My understanding is that this plan was supported by all of the councillors in Mayo at the time. It was ratified on 29 June 2022. Now we are stuck with this development plan until 2028. The big problem with this plan is that it classifies huge parts of the east, south and north of the county as being preferred for wind turbine developments. Now the councillors have realised that they no longer support the plan and want to see changes to it. My fear is that if we elongate the duration of county development plans, it will prevent councillors making changes. I urge the Minister of State to ensure councillors have the flexibility and ability to make amendments and so on because that is important. A new council should have the ability and flexibility to change the plan significantly.

In relation to key towns with a population of under 10,000 for the purposes of development, funding and so on, the problem is if there is a ten-year plan and the population grows beyond that. There should be a level of indexing within that plan whereby if the population goes above 10,000, it should still be considered a key town.

I was going to talk about wind turbines as well but my time is up.

Deputy Paul Nicholas Gogarty

The Bill is another piece of omnibus legislation. It tidies up the 2024 Act and is designed to fast-track the judicial review changes, clarify and firm up the ten-year development plan timelines, look at the critical infrastructure and increase the Housing Finance Agency's borrowing capacity. There is a lot contained in the Bill, on one side, but nothing on the other, to be quite honest, because it is primarily enabling legislation, at least in the areas I would like to focus on, namely the critical infrastructure measures and the development plan process.

On paper it is important to facilitate the planning system where development plans, regional strategies and infrastructure delivery can be aligned. I say "can be" because while the Bill mentions and strengthens the transition to a ten-year development plan cycle, which I am agnostic about, it sets the deadlines for regional spatial and economic strategies and allows the Minister of State and his colleagues to designate key towns, which I hope will include suburban areas like Lucan, Clondalkin and a joined-up Rathcoole, Saggart and Citywest so that the corridors between them can be planned in a coherent way, unlike the fragmented housing conurbations we see around these historic villages.

However, there is no guarantee that all of these tie-ins will be provided. There is reference to accelerating infrastructure delivery and the Bill streamlines the process and implements recommendations of the accelerating infrastructure task force. We have had references to the size of apartments and how the Bill allows existing apartment permissions to be updated without restarting the entire planning process. If we are putting people into boxes, and I call some of these apartments "boxes", we have to have something on the outside. What has happened is we have taken away parking spaces. We have provided insufficient playing pitches, gathering spaces, community halls and leisure facilities. There is no tie-in with public transport.

I have said before that we are potentially creating what will be ghettoes in ten years' time. I say that having spoken to developers who are creating very high-quality housing in terms of the BER rating and the framework they were given. However, the framework is not sufficient, whether it relates to people being able to charge their EVs on their domestic tariff or having parking spaces because sometimes people need to be able to get from A to B in a car even if we are trying to encourage a modal shift by making it more difficult for those short journeys when people should be walking or cycling. In areas like Seven Mills, parts of Adamstown, Citywest and Kilcarbery, we do not have that infrastructure. When this legislation is passed, there will be no guarantees. We need to see a firm commitment to providing that; otherwise, we will be creating bad planning.

Deputy William Aird

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill and support its passage on Second Stage. Ireland faces a housing infrastructure challenge that is well known to every Member of this House. Families are struggling to access affordable housing, communities need vital infrastructure to be delivered and businesses require certainty within our planning system. Good planning must always protect public participation, environmental standards and proper oversight but it also must be capable of making timely and effective decisions. The Bill builds on the reforms already introduced. Its main objective is to ensure those reforms can be implemented smoothly and effectively by removing barriers that have caused delay, uncertainty and unnecessary costs throughout the planning process.

I welcome the measures relating to judicial review procedures. Planning decisions must always be open to challenges where genuine legal issues arise, but we must recognise that lengthy and complex court procedures can delay housing, public infrastructure and investment projects for years and years, as the Minister of State can see himself. I welcome the reforms in the Bill intended to streamline procedures, reduce unnecessary delays and provide greater certainty for all stakeholders.

One of the most important aspects of this legislation is the clarity it provides around transition to ten-year county development plans. Moving to a longer term planning scope is a significant and necessary reform if we are serious about meeting Ireland's future needs. The Bill provides certainty that local authorities will move to this new ten-year cycle. That clarity is essential for local authorities, communities, developers and our infrastructure providers. A ten-year planning framework will help ensure that we maintain an adequate supply of zoned land for housing over a much longer period. Too often we have found ourselves planning for immediate demand instead of anticipating future need. By extending the lifespan of the development plans, the local authorities will be in a better position to zone sufficient land, co-ordinate infrastructure and investment, and create the pipeline of housing delivery that our growing population requires. Long-term housing supply demands long-term planning, and this reform represents a very important step in that direction.

Another welcome measure in this application of the revised Department standards is to the existing planning permissions. This is a practical and sensible reform that has the potential to unlock housing delivery in the short term. By allowing those updated standards to apply to existing permissions, the Bill will improve the viability of a large number of schemes and help turn permissions into homes. I also welcome the increase to the borrowing limit of the Housing Finance Agency. At a time when the delivery of housing remains a national priority, we must ensure that the agency has the capacity to support housing investment. Access to finance is a critical aspect of housing delivery. This measure strengthens the State's ability to support local authorities, approved housing bodies and wider housing initiatives.

Of course, legislation alone will not solve our housing challenges. We must continue to address issues relating to infrastructure provision, the servicing of lands, construction capacity and the availability of skilled workers. However, an efficient and modern planning system is an essential foundation for all other housing measures. It is also important that as the Bill proceeds, we continue to engage constructively with local authorities, planners, communities, environmental groups and the legal profession. Effective planning reform requires public confidence. The public must be sure that transparency, accountability and environmental protections are at the heart of the decision-making. Ultimately, what people want is homes built more quickly, infrastructure delivered more efficiently and decisions made without unnecessary delay. They want certainty, fairness and common sense.

The clarity provided on the transition to ten-year development plans and the measures to improve the viability of apartment developments are practical reforms that will directly support housing delivery. I acknowledge the work the Minister of State and his Department have done on this to try to ease the burden that is on people out there. We are talking about rural development as well as urban development. When we talk about urban development, we must include, or else have it separated, all the villages we have throughout all our counties. I am a firm believer that if we can get the infrastructure into our villages, then people who come from there and want to build in a rural area and who are looking to buy a site there will consider moving to the village. I will give an example from my own area. If somebody wants to build in Camross, perhaps they would prefer to build in the village rather than go 2 miles or 3 miles outside the village, where there might be problems that the Minister of State and I know about as public representatives, and where they might not get the planning. At least they could live in the rural village. If we do not adopt that attitude, and I am thankful this Bill will do that, I will have to come back and stand up here and criticise the Minister of State, which I certainly do not want to do. I believe this is our opportunity to ensure we give viability and oxygen back to all our small villages throughout our counties, for the people who left those villages because they could not get planning.

I do not ever talk myself up as a representative, but I will tell the House one thing here. I have probably been involved in more planning applications in my county of Laois than any other public representative ever. I gave over 40 years in Laois County Council and a lot of my work went into planning issues. It was awful to see that people could not live in an area in which they had gone to school in, been reared, played football and where they were members of the community. They could not live in that area because they could not get planning. I assure all those people here today that this Bill, once enacted, will give them an opportunity.

I will take this opportunity to thank all the people involved in planning, not alone in County Laois but throughout the country. They had a very hard job. They never wanted to refuse planning but they were forced to do so under what we would call the very famous county development plans. I will argue all my life about county development plans. County development plans were supposed to be plans of the public representatives of the county council at the time they were being drawn up. While plans were always presented to us in the county council chambers, however, and while we could put observations in and vote on the plan, which we did several times, a message would come back to the local authority. In respect of what we the public representatives were asking of the chief executive about the plan that he had produced, and which we were not agreeing with, we would be overruled by a Minister. Whose plan was it at the end of the day? I am delighted that I am getting an opportunity to stand in the Houses of the Oireachtas and to repeat what I have said for many years. When we did our county development plan every five years, I would inquire as to which Minister had said we were not to zone the land or that people from a rural area could not live in that rural area, but I could never get a copy of the letter from the Minister who had sent it to the local authorities.

With regard to the county development plans going forward, I ask one thing of the Minister of State. Will he allow the public representatives who are elected throughout this country and who engage in county development plans in their own local authorities to be provided with the same advice that the executive staff can get when they are preparing the plan to present it to the councillors? This is not a big ask. The Minister of State and every public representative who sits in this House will at some stage make representations to their local authority and to their planners. What will the planners say to them in return when they are making that observation on behalf of a constituent who wants to live in a particular area or wants to get planning permission? In my time the planners would hold up the piece of paper and say, "That's the bible; you drew up the plan." This is why I ask the Minister of State to ensure that every possible advice is given to local authorities as well so that they will have a throughput into the make-up of a county development plan.

I will move on to the type and quality of housing that the Minister of State will preside over in the Department of housing. I ask him to please look at the size of the houses being built. I do not have a problem with apartments but I do have a problem with the size as a family grow. At the moment in our local authority, I will make representations, as I have done and always will do, for people who need a one-bedroom house. Again, the officials in the housing section of Laois County Council go on what is presented to them and the plan they have to work off. I will be told that where two people cohabitate or whatever, they would maybe get a two-bedroom house. A person with one child would get a two-bedroom house. As time progresses, however, all these people should be given the opportunity to move up to a three-bedroom or four-bedroom house, or whatever the case may be.

With regard to the housing we are building, I am very concerned about the amount of recreational space that is left available. I ask the Minister of State in his own good time, and maybe he knows it, to go back sometime and look at what happened in the Marian year in this country. The Government of the day took the initiative and thousands of houses were built. I would say that there is not a person in this House who does not have a "Marian something" in their area. The Minister of State should look at the quality of the houses. A green area was built around them, and if there was misbehaviour or anything, the lady of the house would knock on the window and say something.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the Minister of State and all his officials who have worked on the new plan. This is oxygen that has been given to people. I thank the Minister of State for the very good job he has done.

Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (Deputy John Cummins)

I thank all of the Deputies for their engagement in the discussion on this Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill. As I stated at the outset, the commencement and implementation of the Planning and Development Act 2024 is a key priority for this Government.

While I appreciate some of the concerns that have been raised about the length of the debate, we are going to conclude this debate ahead of the time that was allocated to it, and I am speaking to a practically empty Chamber. I suspect that this is not lost on most people who might be looking in.

It is my priority as a Minister of State to ensure that we have the timely commencement of the 2024 Act. That is why we need to ensure that the transitionary provisions that are provided for in this Bill are enacted before the summer recess. As I stated at the outset, I certainly hope that all Members will support those endeavours as we take this Bill through the Houses over the next couple of weeks.

I want to address some of the points that have been raised throughout the debate by Members. One area of concern that was raised by a number of Members relates to workforce plans and ensuring that we have sufficient planning staff within our local authority system. It is important to note that under the ministerial action plan on planning resources, 244 planning staff have been approved over the past number of years, including an additional 45 intern positions and another six members of staff for our regional assemblies, and I will continue to support the increased provision of staff within our local authority system and within our planning system overall. However, what I am trying to do as Minister of State is remove red tape from the planning system by introducing the likes of exemptions, and I know that provisions for modular housing were mentioned by one of the Deputies earlier. It is my understanding that these provisions were laid before the House today and will go to the Oireachtas committee on 14 July 2026, and I will sign those provisions shortly thereafter. I know they have been eagerly awaited by many people.

Removing red tape from the planning system will free up resources within our local authority staff, as well as the provision of the eplanning system, through which 80% of all applications are now being made, which is very welcome.

Section 138(a), on apartment standards, was mentioned and many Members spoke about the viability of apartment development. It is important to understand the difference between the construction of regular housing units and apartments. When a developer goes into the ground to develop an apartment complex, they have no out. They cannot release apartments in phases. They all have to be completed before they are ultimately approved, certified and released to the market. The changes and provisions that are provided for within this Bill ensure that we have a viable apartment sector. It is not about profitability. It is about ensuring that we delivery in terms of the apartment space.

In addition to that, we have made available the likes of the croí cónaithe cities scheme. I note that one of the Deputies who raised viability measures also opposes the provision of the croí cónaithe cities scheme, which is specifically intended to provide apartments for sale to individuals and families across our cities.

Parallel consent were raised by a couple of Deputies. It is, of course, the priority of this Government to ensure that we have parallel consenting permissions across Departments. It requires that technical work across all Departments. It is contained within the accelerating infrastructure task force recommendations and we are working on ensuring that they are in place before the end of the year.

A number of Members raised the judicial review process. I do not propose to reopen the discussion on this matter, which was dealt with in the 2024 Act. Many long debates were had at the Oireachtas joint committee, which I was a member of at the time, and in both the Dáil and the Seanad. Importantly, the provisions in this Bill are about providing for decisions made under the 2000 Act post the commencement of this part of the Bill. It is taking what has already been legislated for under the 2024 Act and applying it to decisions that are going to made post the commencement of the provisions within this Bill.

On the move to ten-year development plans and the transitionary provisions provided for within this Bill, I spent 11 years on Waterford City and County Council and I respect and understand the importance of the role of local government. A local democracy task force implementation plan will be coming to Government shortly following the work done by the task force over a period of a year, and I thank its members for the work they put into that. The provisions of the ten-year development plans are important in ensuring that we have sufficient land zoned across this country and to ensure the transitionary provisions provided for are contained within this Bill. It puts a deadline of the end of next year in terms of the regional spatial and economic strategies. That is a hard deadline to ensure that there is alignment for the first batch of local authorities that will be progressing the reviews of their development plans by July of next year.

In terms of the key town provision, and I am sure this is something Deputies will take up on Committee and Report Stages, it is not about creating a two-tier planning system. It is merely about reflecting the number of towns that have populations above 10,000 and are not currently reflected in the regional spatial and economic strategies. They are key growth towns that have the capacity to provide further housing and opportunities, but certainly not at the expense of rural villages and towns. Members mentioned the rural national planning statement, which I published on Tuesday following Cabinet approval, and I thank people for their support in that respect.

Affordable housing was referenced. We have gone from a standing start a couple of years ago to having over 6,000 cost-rental units in the country.

The provisions relating to the Housing Finance Agency and what is provided for in this Bill will ensure the continuation of the funding provision arrangements that are in place. The purpose of the vacant site and RZLT provisions is to ensure that we do not have a double taxation element, and that in repealing one, we have the RZLT in place.

I agree with Members when they say that timely decisions are important. There are statutory timelines for decision-making within the 2024 Act. This Bill will allow the transitionary provisions to be brought forward in order to bring those statutory timelines into force. I acknowledge the significant work that has been done by An Coimisiún Pleanála in reducing the number of cases on hand from over 3,600 to fewer than 1,300 cases last month. That is significant progress. Of course, we need to continue that, and the statutory timeline provisions are important.

I commend the Bill to the House and look forward to the Committee and Report Stage debates next week.

Question put and agreed to.

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht - Thursday, 2 Jul 2026

Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 2 Jul 2026