Amendment No. 35 is significant and relates to section 94 of the Planning and Development Act 2000. I wish to signal to Senators and, indeed, Deputies that I will table an amendment that integrates for the first time the consideration of homeownership as already set out in the guidelines I brought forward in May 2021 under the Regulation of Commercial Institutional Investment in Housing for certain types of housing development, whereby we banned bulk-buying. Section 94 now sets out provisions related to the prepara…

I will happily deal with that question. The Senator may not have had a chance to look into this, but that is exactly what this will do. Local authorities will have to submit that as part of their housing strategies. This is about tenure mix because home ownership is a tenure mix. Social housing is a tenure mix. Affordable housing is home ownership and we have got to make provision for that and prioritise it within the housing plans of all our local authorities and, indeed, the Land Development Agency, LDA. That is …

We will allow the local authority to decide that. It will be above the Part V requirement. From 1 August onwards, any development that comes forward for planning will need to include 10% social housing and 10% affordable housing. We are saying the new thresholds will be above that. Our LDA legislation prescribes that in Dublin, Cork and other areas with population centres of more than 150,000, all developments from the LDA may comprise 100% social and affordable housing. People said that was not possible and we cou…

I thank the Senators. We discussed this issue on Second Stage, at which point Senator Warfield suggested we would not have any transitional arrangements. We want to get rid of SHDs and that is what we are doing, but we require a transition. SHDs exist right now and if people have made their applications under the current planning law and are in pre-planning or in planning, one cannot just tell them they will be redirected into a new process even though they have entered into the existing process. That would leave u…

I assure Senators that this is not a long goodbye and it is not a signal at all. This is about bringing in legislation that will endure, improve on what was there before and end a planning process that has been in place since 2016. One does not just rip it up, throw it in the bin and say that it is done. It is more legally complex than that. We are going in the right direction. This will be in place. It will be a new streamlined planning system for large-scale residential developments. There will be a transition an…

I thank Senator Boyhan for his kind words. Turning to these two amendments, vacancy in residential units is an issue, there is no question about that. One of the four pathways in Housing for All policy is concerned with how we can tackle vacancy. It applies to existing and new stock. We discussed the zoned land tax. It is going to be significant and a major change from what exists now. In addition, the other aspect that will be significant in this regard is the vacant property tax that I and the Minister for Financ…

This question demonstrates Sinn Féin's priorities in housing. It gets two priority questions every six weeks, and it did not ask about rent, homelessness, affordable housing or building capacity in the construction sector but has raised this non-issue. It has done so, and deems it as important, because it wants to create a controversy and sow discontent. It wants to put its own sinister, disingenuous slant on this. The tactic is reprehensible. I watched the party leader earlier in the week and the attitude she had …

I am very serious about the housing crisis and the challenges this country faces, about the people on our social housing waiting list and about the 8,475 people who do not have a home or are homeless. The Government has a plan with 213 actions to tackle it. We have introduced the Affordable Housing Act, which Sinn Féin supported even though it criticised it throughout its passage, and a reformed Land Development Agency to build on State land to increase supply, which is what we need to do, but Sinn Féin voted again…

We are making the largest intervention any government or the State has ever made in housing in Housing for All, a fully financed, multi-annual plan, backed by more than €20 billion, more than Sinn Féin sought. We have banned bulk-buying of family homes and duplexes. Just this week, we introduced an owner-occupier guarantee, which will come forward in the large-scale residential development, LSRD, Bill, which I assume the Deputy will support. An Bord Pleanála, in the conditions of two recent decisions on planning pe…

I thank the Deputy for the question. He will be aware that Housing for All is our Government’s plan to increase the supply of housing to an average of 33,000 units per year over the next decade. This target includes the delivery of about 90,000 new social homes and just short of 54,000 new affordable homes from 2022 to 2030. As I mentioned, Housing for All is supported by an investment package of more than €4 billion each year, through an overall combination of €12 billion in direct Exchequer funding, €3.5 billion …

The Deputy is correct that there are challenges in this area, including in building up resources in local authorities. I agree with the Deputy completely that the challenges we face in housing are not just urban-centric, they exist all across the country in urban and rural areas. Our job as a Government and my job as the Minister is to support local authorities to enable them to deliver in this regard. We are providing the human resources for county councils, like the one in Tipperary, to enable them to create thei…

I am familiar with the proposal from St. Patrick’s College in Thurles. On Tuesday of this week, I had a bilateral meeting with the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris, to discuss several issues around student accommodation. Included in those discussions was the issue of how we might be able to assist in providing accommodation on the campus of St. Patrick’s College in Thurles. We met with senior officials and representatives from the area and we are progressing…

I thank the Deputy for his question. It is important, relevant and particularly timely. Under section 159 of the Local Government Act 2001, each local authority chief executive is responsible for the staffing and organisational arrangements necessary for carrying out the functions of the local authority for which he or she is responsible. The role and duties of biodiversity officers comprise a matter for local authorities within the context of their wider obligations under the relevant legislation. Importantly, how…

The Deputy is 100% correct that it is a real emergency and needs to be tackled. Right now, five local authorities - Fingal, which is my local authority, Wexford, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Dublin and Kerry - employ biodiversity officers, so there are 26 other local authorities where we have to get dedicated biodiversity officers in place. Neither I nor the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, want that role to be shared across other functions. It is crucial. There is a need to have a person at local authority level to br…

We support every local authority in any way we can. The Deputy, as Chairman of the joint Oireachtas committee, has an important role in encouraging local authorities to get up and running in this space. We have a lot of work to do. There is no question about that. As I stated, we have a robust plan to arrest the decline in biodiversity and it needs to be led at local level. The biodiversity grant scheme is still supporting actions around the country. Approximately €1.35 million was made available in 2021 and 119 pr…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 8 and 66 together. As the Deputy rightly stated, the programme for Government committed to establishing a commission on housing. The Deputy was central to those negotiations. It is in the programme for Government. The commission will examine issues such as tenure, standards, sustainability and quality-of-life issues in the provision of housing, which is really important, and will take a longer-term view on matters. The programme for Government also commits to holding a referendum on…

We are on track to get the commission up and running on time. There has been a lot of work in this. Obviously, we want to ensure the commission is populated with the right people with the right expertise and that we have a cross-section of knowledge and expertise feeding in. It will meet formally once a month, with 12 meetings each year. Work will also be done within the subgroups. I expect the Chairman of the joint Oireachtas committee, Deputy Matthews, has no question regarding the fact that if the committee wish…

I thank the Deputies. The commission will be independent of my Department and independent of Government. I do not want to set its work programme. However, the terms of reference will be broad enough. The Deputies will see that. I expect that the commission will look at areas such as standards, delivery, cost and constitutional reform, where it is required. The terms of reference will be broad enough for the commission to set out its work programme. On Deputy Bruton's point regarding delivery, I am acutely aware of …

I thank the Deputy for his question and for his engagement on behalf of his constituents in Clare over recent months on this issue. A lot of work is going on with regard to the defective block mica scheme that I hope to bring to a conclusion very shortly. This will impact on other counties in a positive way. I visited Clare over the summer and I met homeowners and visited their homes with the Deputy and colleagues. We received a submission from the local authority in July requesting an extension of the defective bl…

I thank the Deputy. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Cleary and Mary Hanley in Clare and the group of residents. We are not losing time. I want to say very clearly there is no objection to expanding the scheme. If the data stacks up, and I have no reason to think it will not, the scheme will be extended to take in the county. It is important to note that even if there was nothing outstanding in the current submission and it was fully in order, it would not be to the homeowners' advantage right now to access the cu…