I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill and support its passage on Second Stage. Ireland faces a housing infrastructure challenge that is well known to every Member of this House. Families are struggling to access affordable housing, communities need vital infrastructure to be delivered and businesses require certainty within our planning system. Good planning must always protect public participation, environmental standards and proper oversight but it also must be capable of making timely and effective decisions. The Bill builds on the reforms already introduced. Its main objective is to ensure those reforms can be implemented smoothly and effectively by removing barriers that have caused delay, uncertainty and unnecessary costs throughout the planning process. I welcome the measures relating to judicial review procedures. Planning decisions must always be open to challenges where genuine legal issues arise, but we must recognise that lengthy and complex court procedures can delay housing, public infrastructure and investment projects for years and years, as the Minister of State can see himself. I welcome the reforms in the Bill intended to streamline procedures, reduce unnecessary delays and provide greater certainty for all stakeholders. One of the most important aspects of this legislation is the clarity it provides around transition to ten-year county development plans. Moving to a longer term planning scope is a significant and necessary reform if we are serious about meeting Ireland's future needs. The Bill provides certainty that local authorities will move to this new ten-year cycle. That clarity is essential for local authorities, communities, developers and our infrastructure providers. A ten-year planning framework will help ensure that we maintain an adequate supply of zoned land for housing over a much longer period. Too often we have found ourselves planning for immediate demand instead of anticipating future need. By extending the lifespan of the development plans, the local authorities will be in a better position to zone sufficient land, co-ordinate infrastructure and investment, and create the pipeline of housing delivery that our growing population requires. Long-term housing supply demands long-term planning, and this reform represents a very important step in that direction. Another welcome measure in this application of the revised Department standards is to the existing planning permissions. This is a practical and sensible reform that has the potential to unlock housing delivery in the short term. By allowing those updated standards to apply to existing permissions, the Bill will improve the viability of a large number of schemes and help turn permissions into homes. I also welcome the increase to the borrowing limit of the Housing Finance Agency. At a time when the delivery of housing remains a national priority, we must ensure that the agency has the capacity to support housing investment. Access to finance is a critical aspect of housing delivery. This measure strengthens the State's ability to support local authorities, approved housing bodies and wider housing initiatives. Of course, legislation alone will not solve our housing challenges. We must continue to address issues relating to infrastructure provision, the servicing of lands, construction capacity and the availability of skilled workers. However, an efficient and modern planning system is an essential foundation for all other housing measures. It is also important that as the Bill proceeds, we continue to engage constructively with local authorities, planners, communities, environmental groups and the legal profession. Effective planning reform requires public confidence. The public must be sure that transparency, accountability and environmental protections are at the heart of the decision-making. Ultimately, what people want is homes built more quickly, infrastructure delivered more efficiently and decisions made without unnecessary delay. They want certainty, fairness and common sense. The clarity provided on the transition to ten-year development plans and the measures to improve the viability of apartment developments are practical reforms that will directly support housing delivery. I acknowledge the work the Minister of State and his Department have done on this to try to ease the burden that is on people out there. We are talking about rural development as well as urban development. When we talk about urban development, we must include, or else have it separated, all the villages we have throughout all our counties. I am a firm believer that if we can get the infrastructure into our villages, then people who come from there and want to build in a rural area and who are looking to buy a site there will consider moving to the village. I will give an example from my own area. If somebody wants to build in Camross, perhaps they would prefer to build in the village rather than go 2 miles or 3 miles outside the village, where there might be problems that the Minister of State and I know about as public representatives, and where they might not get the planning. At least they could live in the rural village. If we do not adopt that attitude, and I am thankful this Bill will do that, I will have to come back and stand up here and criticise the Minister of State, which I certainly do not want to do. I believe this is our opportunity to ensure we give viability and oxygen back to all our small villages throughout our counties, for the people who left those villages because they could not get planning. I do not ever talk myself up as a representative, but I will tell the House one thing here. I have probably been involved in more planning applications in my county of Laois than any other public representative ever. I gave over 40 years in Laois County Council and a lot of my work went into planning issues. It was awful to see that people could not live in an area in which they had gone to school in, been reared, played football and where they were members of the community. They could not live in that area because they could not get planning. I assure all those people here today that this Bill, once enacted, will give them an opportunity. I will take this opportunity to thank all the people involved in planning, not alone in County Laois but throughout the country. They had a very hard job. They never wanted to refuse planning but they were forced to do so under what we would call the very famous county development plans. I will argue all my life about county development plans. County development plans were supposed to be plans of the public representatives of the county council at the time they were being drawn up. While plans were always presented to us in the county council chambers, however, and while we could put observations in and vote on the plan, which we did several times, a message would come back to the local authority. In respect of what we the public representatives were asking of the chief executive about the plan that he had produced, and which we were not agreeing with, we would be overruled by a Minister. Whose plan was it at the end of the day? I am delighted that I am getting an opportunity to stand in the Houses of the Oireachtas and to repeat what I have said for many years. When we did our county development plan every five years, I would inquire as to which Minister had said we were not to zone the land or that people from a rural area could not live in that rural area, but I could never get a copy of the letter from the Minister who had sent it to the local authorities. With regard to the county development plans going forward, I ask one thing of the Minister of State. Will he allow the public representatives who are elected throughout this country and who engage in county development plans in their own local authorities to be provided with the same advice that the executive staff can get when they are preparing the plan to present it to the councillors? This is not a big ask. The Minister of State and every public representative who sits in this House will at some stage make representations to their local authority and to their planners. What will the planners say to them in return when they are making that observation on behalf of a constituent who wants to live in a particular area or wants to get planning permission? In my time the planners would hold up the piece of paper and say, "That's the bible; you drew up the plan." This is why I ask the Minister of State to ensure that every possible advice is given to local authorities as well so that they will have a throughput into the make-up of a county development plan. I will move on to the type and quality of housing that the Minister of State will preside over in the Department of housing. I ask him to please look at the size of the houses being built. I do not have a problem with apartments but I do have a problem with the size as a family grow. At the moment in our local authority, I will make representations, as I have done and always will do, for people who need a one-bedroom house. Again, the officials in the housing section of Laois County Council go on what is presented to them and the plan they have to work off. I will be told that where two people cohabitate or whatever, they would maybe get a two-bedroom house. A person with one child would get a two-bedroom house. As time progresses, however, all these people should be given the opportunity to move up to a three-bedroom or four-bedroom house, or whatever the case may be. With regard to the housing we are building, I am very concerned about the amount of recreational space that is left available. I ask the Minister of State in his own good time, and maybe he knows it, to go back sometime and look at what happened in the Marian year in this country. The Government of the day took the initiative and thousands of houses were built. I would say that there is not a person in this House who does not have a "Marian something" in their area. The Minister of State should look at the quality of the houses. A green area was built around them, and if there was misbehaviour or anything, the lady of the house would knock on the window and say something. I want to take this opportunity to thank the Minister of State and all his officials who have worked on the new plan. This is oxygen that has been given to people. I thank the Minister of State for the very good job he has done.

Sentiment score: 0.23