Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2025-07-15
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Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland

In bringing forward our amendments to these amendments, it is really important to begin by saying that we will be opposing this whole section. Leaving aside the way this was brought forward, not that we can really leave it aside, the substantial nature of what has been put forward here and the failure to properly disclose or address these issues during the pre-legislative scrutiny stage but rather produce them at the last possible effective Stage, which is a Committee and Remaining Stages guillotined debate here in the Seanad, is outrageous.
These are provisions in terms of modifications and are completely different. The rest of the Bill is around extensions. This is around modifications to planning permissions. It is, therefore, a completely different and very significant thing to say that someone can change a planning permission application after the fact for residential developments. Again, we have amendments, but they do not actually resolve how terrible the amendment is. What we simply have are some amendments to try to do damage limitation to what is effectively an appalling provision brought forward in an appalling manner.
The developments that will be built as a result of this are already being referred to as brown foxes. They not only potentially affect the quality of housing to be delivered but they risk compromising existing valid planning permissions for people who are going to be applying for them. We will have situations again where the planning permission is there, and nothing is holding back building except the will of the developer. They will now be in a situation where they will apply for modifications, which will leave them potentially open to judicial review because of the multiple serious legal flaws with the proposals. We have a situation whereby there is existing permission and people are ready to build. We are going to replace this with modifications being introduced in a way that unpacks multiple legal issues and may well be subject to judicial reviews in a way the original planning permissions were not. Of course, at a very minimal point, it is going to have delays in terms of issues like fire safety. The fact is that if we change the numbers and the layout and everything about the inside of a building, that has implications for fire safety and health and safety. Therefore, a whole new certification process has to start.
This is recipe for delaying planning and delaying the delivery of housing. Leaving aside the underlying point that as well as all the potential delays from judicial reviews that may arise solely because of this badly provided for set of modifications, and leaving aside the practical delays that when substantial changes are made inside a building, that has serious implications for health and safety, fire safety and all the associated certification processes, it is also a discouragement to building things because the message it sends, yet again, is that if a person sits on his or her planning permission and does not use it, we will reward him or her.
We will give him or her another sweetener. We will condemn a generation to live in shoe boxes.
The Irish Planning Institute issued a press release expressing considerable disquiet among its members and referring to more legal unpredictability that is going to flow from this. Its members understand the motivation to make housing projects deliverable, but they are deeply concerned about the potential unintended consequences. I am concerned about the message it sends to the public, because if a person can get a little bit more money by taking that planning permission he or she had for apartments that maybe families could live in, and turning it into a set of studio apartments to gouge a little bit more money, that is what he or she will do. It is not these people’s fault. Many of them are answering to investors. They are looking for maximisation of profit. That is their obligation. That is their job. If the Department makes it the more attractive financially to create more, smaller apartments with lower standards, it is actively disincentivising the delivery of the kind of apartments a family wants to live in. I am part of a family that lives in an apartment. That will become a less attractive investment component and when we consider the figures relating to the crisis of families facing homelessness in Ireland, the Department is directly doing something that might actually lead to less planning and fewer apartments being built for families because it has incentivised the mass production of studio apartments, which are identical.
I will very quickly address the amendments but it is crucial to make these points because the amendments, I have to emphasise, are damage control. We will oppose this section.
Amendment No. 2 to amendment No. 47 states: “a relevant authority should not grant a certificate if the modification relates to the removal or reduction of communal space or cultural space within the proposed development.” Among the reporting on these new proposed mechanisms for alterations, something that has been mentioned is that this new section will allow for the removal of any obligations on developers to provide communal or cultural space within a proposed development. The developer may have been granted permission by promising a mixed-use facility and amenities attached to the development but the Government is getting rid of that requirement for amenities fulfillment. The amendment to the amendment seeks to address that concern.
Housing is not just a place for people to return to after a day's work so they can eat, sleep and return to work the following day. These are places where people exist and live their lives. It is crucial that this dreadful modification does not create atomised living quarters that provide no opportunity for people to develop social relations with the people around them, or their surrounding community. The Dublin city development plan obliges developers of sites that are 10,000 sq. m or more to include a minimum of 5% community or cultural space. The mechanisms in section 17 of this Bill will gut these provisions. Yes, we need housing, but we also need facilities to serve that housing. We need playgrounds, open spaces, community centres and facilities such as crèches. Our artists need work and performance spaces. Developers have always tried to get around these obligations, with the redevelopment of the Tivoli theatre being a prime example. The infrastructure of the Tivoli provided cultural facilities for Dubliners in Dublin city centre for 80 years. As part of the planning permission for redevelopment of the Tivoli as an aparthotel, again, not addressing the housing crisis, developers were required to provide performance and exhibition spaces. The space was provided and then used as storage space. It has never been used and never been delivered. This would formalise getting rid of those obligations and not delivering on them. A prominent example is artists Eve Woods and Aoife Ward. They hosted an exhibition space to highlight how unfit it was for its purpose, for example, containing no toilet facilities.
Amendment No. 3 to amendment No. 47 provides that any permitted ratification would need fire safety certificates, health safety certificates and other appropriate certification. That has been very clear. It is standard, but this is as a reminder that these elements will need to be provided. We know the dangers in terms of fire safety that are created when more people are packed into higher buildings.
Amendment No. 4 to amendment No. 47 provides that any permitted modifications to the mixture of apartments in different classes in the proposed development should require a varied mix of different classes of apartment. This is crucial in order that the modifications would not result in entire apartment buildings consisting of one-bedroom or studio apartments. There are no restrictions in section 17, yet the financial incentive to provide substandard arrangements for apartments means the we could end up with the same kind of apartment throughout. There is no space in these apartments to form a relationship, bring a child into it, or have a friend or family member visit. The figures we have for these apartments are 24 sq. m or 36 sq. m. They are tiny potential rooms. There should be a mix. When we spoke about wanting to have social housing built, we were told we needed that mix in order not to create ghettos. We need to have a mix of the kinds of apartments that are going into these buildings. We need to have facilities, for example, for family apartments.
Amendments Nos. 5 to amendment No. 47 seeks to put a time limit on any modifications granted if substantial works are not commenced. This is an attempt to prevent developers from using the modification secured under section 17 to gain financially from such modifications. Planning permission goes on the developer's list of assets, and he or she can trade it as an object or product. It is an investment artefact, rather than something that actually gets built. If substantial works have not begun within six months on a proposed development - and bear in mind, these are proposed developments where all planning issues have previously been resolved - the delay will have been caused by the changes being justified here, which means this legislation is creating an additional new six-month delay or more, or if it is not going to create such a delay, then it should be reasonable to require them to have commenced within six months of getting these modifications.
Notwithstanding anything else in this Act, the section would expire by 1 January 2027. It is a sunset clause. The Government amendment states: “the section is motivated by the acute shortage of residential accommodation in the State and the rise in homelessness, as well as the rise in cost.” It is one of the most remarkable admissions of failure to put in the language "rise in homeless" in the Bill, as a fact.. That is floating there. We have had the same Government parties for a large number of years. It is almost putting in a marker to put that criterion in that they are admitting these failures in the Bill. The key issue is that it should not be implied that these are conditions that somehow suggest the poor are always with us. The rise in homelessness is a permanent thing. It has been permanently put into legislation as if it is an immutable fact of nature, rather than a situation that has arisen from policies and so forth. Given the science, gravity, and the existence of various factors it has been described as a permanent factor, along with the acute shortage of rental accommodation. If the Government is serious about addressing these issues, it should not be putting them into legislation for the long haul as provisions and situations which the legislation, as it is written now, assumes will continue indefinitely. There should be a sunset clause. If it is an emergency, then frame it as an emergency and put a sunset clause on those provisions that use that language rather than framing it as an ongoing provision.
I want to be clear that we will be opposing the rest of the Government amendments to this Bill. As I said, our amendments are simply an attempt at damage control. These are the kinds of measures which lower standards that were tried before. They did not deliver housing. They did deliver greater immiseration for the people of Ireland, for those who were forced to live in lesser standard developments and housing situations. I hope the Minister of State will address these amendments. We will see sad consequences from the provisions the Government has made.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-07-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:03+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-07-15