Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage Seanad Éireann — 2025-07-15 ============================================================ Victor Boyhan (IND), Agricultural Panel I support amendment No. 34, which Senator Collins has just set out. It makes a lot of sense. It is a very practical suggestion. It introduces some sort of monitoring and engagement, which is important. It is also important that this engagement be on the record because we have heard many excuses. The amendment refers to an explanation as to why a developer has not yet commenced and requires a viability assessment. Let us keep it simple. These developers put in these applications at great expense to themselves. They must have thought the developments were viable. Otherwise, why would they have put them on the drawing boards in the first place? They then got these permissions. One of the kernels of the problem is that we have all of these developments approved and ready to go on serviced sites in the key locations where we want them but we are told they are not making enough money. The developers are making a profit. No one is doing this at a loss. Let us not fool ourselves. The Vienna model is interesting. My colleague Senator McDowell searched it on Google a minute ago. We are talking about €300 a month in Vienna for the studios the Minister of State has mentioned. I respect that there is a market for studios and I have no difficulty with that but you cannot talk about the Vienna model, where units are €300 a month, when a man has told me he is paying €1,050 a month. If anyone is talking about the Vienna model - I am not referring to the Minister of State per se - that is the reality. Amendment No. 34 is a very practical suggestion. It seems to be run of the mill for Government not to accept amendments. No amendments have ever been accepted. Some Ministers come in here reading out pink sheets stapled together saying they cannot accept amendments for whatever reason. It is all pretyped and ready in advance then a fresh set of stuff comes in for the next Minister. We have not yet had the Minister here, although we have had two Ministers of State. We live in a democracy. This is a democratic bicameral parliament. We are meant to be enhancing and revising legislation, as the Minister of State's former leader reminded us in this House on many occasions. I will again put on the record that it is exceptionally disappointing that senior civil servants prepare papers, staple them together and then hand them to the Minister of State or someone else - I am not commenting on the Minister of State personally - to be read out. There is a record of opposing everything. The Minister of State has been on the other side of the House himself, although his group has been in government for many years. Every few months, there is another excuse. There comes a time when we have to put our hands up and hold people to account. Our job is to hold the Minister of State to account as he has held many people to account over his own political career, which is right and proper. I just wish he would go back to someone in his Department. Sometime, it would be lovely for a Minister to come in here and say, "Actually there's a bit of sense in what you're saying, Senator, and we're going to accept it." However, there is a mentality of opposing everything for the sake of opposing and then having spin doctors go out on the airways to tell us they have the problems all sorted. They have not got the problems sorted. The country is in a mess in relation to housing. The last three Administrations in this country have failed to deliver. That is the reality of it. This is a legacy issue on the Minister of State's hands. He needs to be realistic. We hear all these things about the disappointment and everyone is mad and a lunatic because they are outside the gate complaining. People have no homes. People who work here are coming from the midlands every day. People cannot afford to pay for anything. They are in rooms. The only place they can get away from their partners is to lock themselves in a toilet with a shower, not even a bathroom. Let us have a bit of empathy here. Let us be practical and respectful to everyone involved. The Minister of State has put his best foot forward, but it is simply not good enough. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. 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