Departmental Schemes Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-09 ============================================================ Christopher O'Sullivan (FF), Cork South-West I thank the Senator for raising the issue. He made the interesting point that I take many of his Commencement matters. I would say that is because I am in the Department of housing. The Senator has been a champion for the housing issue. In fairness, he tries to raise it on every possible occasion. That is probably why I am getting many of them. The qualification criteria for this scheme are pretty black and white. It will be difficult to try to open it up again. I doubt there are many people in the cohort the Senator is representing. He is talking about individuals, in most cases, who are just trying to get a start in life. Notwithstanding what it says in the prepared response, I will give an undertaking to approach my Department to see if there is any hope that these people can be catered for. I do not want to overpromise because there may be some impediment to that. The purpose of the development contribution levies is to provide funding to assist local authorities in the provision of necessary public infrastructure and facilities to support development. The contribution levies are charged by all planning authorities as a condition of planning permission for all forms of development proposals, including residential, and are collectible before or on commencement of the relevant development works. The rate of contribution applied may vary by unit size or type, or by geographical area. On 25 April 2023, the Government approved additional measures under the Housing for All action plan to incentivise the activation of increased housing supply and to help to reduce housing construction costs. These measures included the introduction of temporary time-limited arrangements for the waving of local authority section 48 development contributions, and the refunding of Uisce Éireann water and wastewater connection charges. The Government recognised that further measures needed to be put in place to help to address cost and viability, with a view to incentivising the activation of a pipeline of new commencements and assisting in the delivery of supply as quickly as possible. The waiver scheme was applied to all permitted residential development, including multi-unit developments, self-built and one-off houses, student accommodation and sheltered housing schemes. It initially applied for one year to all permitted residential development commenced on site between 25 April 2023 and 24 April 2024 and completed no later than 31 December 2025. On 23 April 2024, the Government approved an extension of the waiving of the local authority section 48 development contributions in respect of residential development commenced no later than 31 December 2024 and the refunding of Uisce Éireann water and wastewater connection charges in respect of residential development commenced no later than 30 November 2024. In April 2024, the final date for the completion of development works on qualifying houses under the schemes was extended for a further year, from 31 December 2025 to 31 December 2026. There will be no further extension of the use of the waiver scheme to further extend the required completion date within which housing development that has commenced must be completed to secure the waiver. The answer I have given the Senator talks about the completion dates, and not necessarily about the deadline for application which is more specifically what he is referring to. I suggest, without creating a level of expectation, that I will ask officials to look at it again, especially where people building one-off houses and their first homes were, for whatever reason, unaware of the waiver or the deadline for application for the waiver. However, that is as far as the commitment can go because there may be impediments to allowing that cohort of people back in. I get it; I also have those constituents. It seems a bit unfair because that is exactly the type of person this was supposed to benefit. --- 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/2025-12-09/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-09