Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-08
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Rory Hearne (SD), Dublin North-West

I will return to the Minister of State's comment on Vienna. There is a very different mix of floor sizes available in Vienna. There are larger units available for families, in particular. This legislation is reducing the number of units within developments that will be available for families of a size. Fundamentally, they will not even be affordable to families. What is happening as a result of this is a reduction in the availability of two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments. It is shifting, not creating, sustainable communities within the developments and creating soulless places where people cannot live and cannot have families. That is a fundamental issue. The Government is being driven by the investors. They have the Government over a barrel in terms of being completely dependent on them. The Government is just doing what they are asking for and it is deeply disappointing.
One of the examples, which the Minister of State did not come back on, is the issue of windows. It is reducing the number of windows people can have. Is the Minister of State seriously standing over that? There will be fewer windows available to people as a result of these measures. Windows are fundamental in Ireland for two reasons. One, we have major problems with mould and damp. It happens even in new developments because of the wet climate we have. Two, with climate change, as Lorcan Sirr pointed out in The Irish Times and as we see today, we will have a problem with heat because our buildings are not designed to deal with it. I guarantee these buildings are not designed to deal with the major issues of heat that are ahead of us. The Minister of State has not addressed that issue.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-08/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-08