2026-07-08

I move amendment No. 1: In page 10, between lines 11 and 12, to insert the following: “Report on impact of amendments related to Judicial Reviews 4.The Minister shall lay a report before both Houses of the Oireachtas within 12 months of the commencement of this Act detailing the impact of the amendments to Part 4 of the Principal Act related to Judicial Reviews and detailing whether the procedural changes have resulted in a speeding up of planning related Judicial Reviews or increased the volume of planning litigation resulting in increased delays for residential and infrastructural development.”. This is a poor way of progressing a complex and technical piece of planning legislation. It is unlike the Bill we have just disposed of, in respect of which we had three dedicated committee sessions and were able to interact with ministerial colleagues and officials. While not successful in changing any of the Bill, we were able to obtain significant clarifications. Essentially, we are being given two hours to do Committee and Remaining Stages of an 83-page Bill. In this format, on the floor of the Dáil, it is incredibly difficult to do the work that many of us would like to do. I am not going to dignify the way in which the Government is rushing this through by attempting to conduct Committee Stage, because this format is not conducive to doing so. I know the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, will not accept the amendment, but there are concerns that the proposed alterations to judicial review could result in increased litigation. My primary concern is that, as a consequence of the relevant sections of the Bill, there will be increased litigation and, therefore, increased delays. We are asking for the Minister and his officials to track how this operates over the next 12 to 24 months and report back to our committee in some form or another. I do not want to waste people’s time in having an argument about an amendment that the Minister of State is clearly not going to accept. However, I think he will be able to accept the principle that if the changes the Government is making have the unintended consequence of increasing litigation and causing delay to much-needed critical infrastructure, housing or renewable energy projects, they will be monitored and, if necessary, legislative amendments will be brought forward to rectify those problems into the future.

I support this amendment. Given the nature of the way these changes have being put forward, it is important that there be a process and a clear setting out of an assessment as to the impact the changes will have, particularly in view of the need to have accountability in respect of decisions. That is very important. I support the amendment on that basis.

I also support this amendment. It is important because we need to determine the exact implications of this piece of legislation, which is being rushed through the Houses. When the debate on Second Stage took place last week, the deadline for the submission of amendments preceded that debate. This is a recurring theme with the Government across multiple Departments. It is concerning because we should be able to tease out the substantive issues relating to Bills. I laid out my concerns on Second Stage. I am not going to go into them again, other than to say that I hope the Minister of State engages sincerely in respect of this amendment and the intention behind it.

At the outset, I will address the timing piece. I am not saying this to be provocative, but I have to put it on the record that I stood here last Thursday and concluded my contribution to an empty Chamber. We finished 30 minutes ahead of schedule. I have to say that because we made sufficient provision for debate on Second Stage. I am happy to debate the substance of any of the amendments. I am aware also that a couple of the sections are opposed. The amendment tabled by Deputies Ó Broin and Gould seeks to insert a new section into the Bill. It stages: The Minister shall lay a report before ... the Oireachtas within 12 months ... detailing the impact of the amendments to Part 4 of the Principal Act related to Judicial Reviews and detailing whether the procedural changes have resulted in a speeding up of planning related Judicial Reviews or increased the volume of planning litigation resulting in increased delays for residential and infrastructural development. I am not in a position to accept the amendment. First, on a technical matter, judicial review planning procedures are set out in Part 9 of the 2024 Act. However, the proposed amendment makes reference to Part 4 of that Act. I presume the reference in the amendment is in error. That is one of the reasons I cannot accept it. Second, the monitoring, analysis or reporting of data relating to judicial reviews, including associated timelines and durations of proceedings within the courts, is a matter that falls outside the remit of my Department. The management of the courts is the responsibility of the Courts Service, which is independent in the performance of its functions and under the aegis of the Minister for justice, Deputy O’Callaghan. My understanding is that there is a ten-year modernisation programme already under way within the Courts Service and that significant progress is being made in that regard. Accordingly, it would not be appropriate to provide for a reporting requirement in relation to judicial reviews relating to planning. The amendment, as proposed, is not considered workable because it would place a statutory requirement on a Minister to report on matters that are subjective in nature. As the Deputies will appreciate, there are a wide range of factors that could give rise to an increase or decrease in the number of planning judicial reviews. It may not always be possible to determine the exact reason for changes in such levels or in the average duration of proceedings. Judicial reviews against the State, in which my Department may be included as a party, are co-ordinated by the Chief State Solicitor under the guidance of the Office of the Attorney General. An Coimisiún Pleanála can also be challenged by judicial reviews on a range of its functions, including decisions on appeals and planning applications in respect of strategic infrastructure developments. Moreover, it already publishes details with respect to legal cases in its annual report. It is for these reasons I cannot accept the amendment.

I move amendment No. 2: In page 10, between lines 11 and 12, to insert the following: “Report on impact of amendments related to alteration of existing planning permissions 4.The Minister shall lay a report before both Houses of the Oireachtas every 6 months from the commencement of this Act detailing the impact of the amendments to Part 4 of the Principal Act related to alterations of existing planning permissions and detailing the location, nature and volume of such alterations by project and local authority area and the resulting commencement of developments that have secured the alterations.”. The Minister of State has been in this House for long enough to know it is highly irregular for an amending deadline for Committee Stage to be held before the Second Stage debate. The reason we have Second Stage, Committee Stage, and Report and Final Stages is because we come into the Chamber, debate the Bill, and consider the matters in front of us. Having done that, we submit amendments which are ordinarily taken with detailed scrutiny in Committee where we can go through details of the legislation. That is the ordinary procedure. What the Minister of State did in this instance was to publish an 83-page Bill of highly technical changes to planning law on a Friday. I acknowledge we got a very good, detailed briefing from the Minister of State’s officials and we have thanked them for that but we had an amendment deadline at 11 a.m. on a Thursday before Second Stage. The Minister of State gave four hours for Second Stage but the really important part after the speeches is committee scrutiny of the legislation. The idea that somehow the Minister of State speaking to an empty Chamber at the end of four hours in any way negates the argument that giving us just two hours, not having had an adequate opportunity to submit amendments after Second Stage. is the norm is just not true. From my long experience in this House, when detailed, technical planning legislation entailing changes to our planning codes - including sections of this Bill that I fully support, because there are elements of this Bill in which the intention is absolutely fine – is introduced in a very rushed manner without adequate scrutiny, particularly Committee Stage scrutiny in this House, unintended consequences arise. We have had occasion after occasion of this in the past decade. Officials are put under undue pressure to meet unrealistic deadlines and the technical outworkings of the Bill are challenging. In the real world, the Bill then does not do what the Government said it would. That is a fact. This is a bad way to make legislation and if the Minister of State does not agree, it is something he needs to carefully consider because this will affect his constituents as much as it will mine. There are no votes to be got from technical discussions around planning legislation; I learned that a long time ago, but this stuff is really important and to do it in this way is the wrong way to do it. With respect to this amendment - and I want to pick up on the response to the last amendment - the Department is introducing a set of changes. This amendment relates to sections 62 and 63, which the Department hopes will result in an acceleration of apartment delivery. It is hoping to have an outcome but saying it is not its job to monitor whether the legislation has those outcomes but that of the Office of the Planning Regulator, the board, or whoever else. All we are saying is it is not unreasonable to ask the Department to track the impact of the legislation it passes to see if it has had the intended consequence or not. This amendment refers to the relevant sections. I apologise in advance if my technical proficiency is not as good as that of the Minister of State’s expert officials. These sections are meant to be about accelerating delivery of apartments. The Department is creating a facility whereby people who have planning permissions will be able to significantly alter them in line with new apartment design standards, which are not yet law themselves, in terms of the planning policy statement before the courts. All I am asking the Minister of State to do - I accept he cannot accept the amendment - is to take some responsibility for the changes he is proposing and monitor them. If they have the intended impact the Minister of State is saying he wants them to have, he can come into our committee and say “Opposition, you got it wrong. We told you it was a good idea and it was going to work and here is the evidence.” The real reason the Department does not want to track these things is not because they are somebody else's responsibility. It is because if it tracks them and reports them to the committee and if they do not have the intended consequence, we will highlight that the Government got it wrong. That is the real issue. I am not going to labour the point but I think the spirit of this amendment is one the Minister of State should endeavour to embrace, notwithstanding the fact that he opposes the letter of it. If not, we will continue to raise these matters and whether through freedom of information requests or parliamentary questions - which the Ceann Comhairle knows we are very persistent about - we will get the information one way or another. How about just a little bit of transparency, accountability and reporting to the Oireachtas committee, which is part of our function, whether this legislation has good consequences, no consequences or, as many of us fear, negative consequences, particularly for the people who will be affected by the changes in the Bill?

I support this amendment and I add that there is a real issue in terms of us understanding what is getting planning permission, what is the nature of the tenure, and who is developing it. Particularly in the area of apartments, there is concern in my own constituency and in Dublin generally regarding the proliferation of the build-to-rent model, how many apartments are being developed and who is developing them. I have asked the Department through parliamentary questions a number of times whether we gather data on how many build-to-rent developments are being planned or developed and there is no information. That is really important. For good planning we need to understand what is being developed in different areas and whether there is an excessive number of build-to-rent complexes versus, for example, what is for sale. This is a real gap we have in understanding, developing and planning communities.

I thank the Deputies. As a general point, my priority is to ensure the Planning and Development Act 2024 is enabled and that we have all provisions in force before the end of this year. To do that, I have to pass legislation that will enable the transitionary pieces to occur. That is the purpose of the Bill before us. If I cannot progress this to conclusion, it means a further delay in the implementation of the substantive Act, which both the Deputy and I spent a considerable period of our lives in the committee room downstairs debating during the previous parliamentary term. In relation to the specific amendment tabled by Deputies Ó Broin and Gould, it seeks to lay a report before the Houses of the Oireachtas every six months detailing the impact of the amendments to Part 4 of the principal Act relating to alterations of existing planning permissions and detailing the location, nature and volume of such alterations by project and local authority area, and the resulting commencement of developments which have secured the alterations. I am not in a position to accept the amendment. I consider a statutory requirement to produce such a report every six months to be entirely excessive. The reason I say that is this is a time-bound measure contained in section 138A. It is a two-year period. It is not something that is going to go on in perpetuity. There may be value in what some of the Deputies are saying were this an in-perpetuity discussion. It is time-bound in nature and as a result, I cannot accept the amendment.

The amendment is a device to allow us to raise the substantive issue, which is whether the Department going to be tracking this. Is that the Minister of State's intention? He is bringing forward amendments to the Planning and Development Act, a Bill on which we spent considerable time and have very different views, which was meant to end the practice of the constant amending of legislation. The reason that review was initiated, as the Minister of State knows, was that the 2000 Act had been amended so many times, it became unwieldy. Here we are and we do not even have the full 2024 Act commenced, yet this is the second amending Bill to it and there will be more. Will the Minister of State at least confirm it is his intention to ensure his officials report back to him over that two-year period? Will he commit to sharing that information with our committee and giving us an opportunity to scrutinise it at whatever interval he thinks appropriate? That is the very least he could do to ensure full transparency with what is a controversial measure in the Bill. Whether one agrees with it is a separate issue we will deal with when we get to section 62, but some monitoring, publishing and accountability would be in everybody's interest.

It is the statutory element of it, as the Deputy will appreciate.

Sure.

Of course we will be monitoring this provision, as we do every measure we implement in the Department. We are acutely conscious this is a viability measure. We will get into the substantive debate on it when debating the section. It is in our interest to ensure it is being utilised. If this activates one apartment development, it will be a good measure. That is what I will base this on. I am in the business of ensuring apartment developments get built. If this measure activates even one apartment development providing people with homes to rent or buy, it will be a successful measure.

In 2018, Eoghan Murphy was the Minister for housing. At that point there was a very strong lobby coming from a section of the development community that apartment building was not viable and the problem was that design standards and building height restrictions introduced by our local authorities were making schemes non-viable. Eoghan Murphy introduced a series of section 28 mandatory ministerial guidelines on apartment design standards and, separately, on building heights. His justification was almost word for word the justification the Minister of State just gave, which was that if this got one apartment development built that would not otherwise have been built, it would be worthwhile. The problem is what happened after that. The first thing that happened was a series of conflicts between the Minister's statutory section 28 guidelines and our existing city and county development plans. When there are two sets of rules, planning decisions end up being fought out in the courts. Initially, Dublin City Council sought to defend, in relation to a number of highly controversial developments, its planning decisions and statutory plans. In a few years, we went from having virtually no judicial reviews, JRs, of large residential developments to having an explosion of them. When I first came into the House, it was unheard of for people to judicially review residential developments, particularly estate developments. The misuse of the section 28 ministerial guidelines created conditions for a slew of JRs. What was the consequence of those JRs? Stuff did not get built. Some of those JRs are still lodged in the courts because of the failure of Government to get a grip on that. The lesson is when bad changes are made to planning law, it does not increase the volume of development. The second lesson is that when bad changes are made to planning law, even if stuff gets built, the stuff is of inferior quality. These are people's homes. These are places where places are meant to grow, have children, flourish and feel safe and secure. So bad a mess of our apartment-planning system did Eoghan Murphy make that Deputy Darragh O'Brien as Minister was forced by the weight of evidence to do what many of us in the Oireachtas housing committee in 2017 and 2018 had urged Simon Coveney and then Eoghan Murphy to do, which was to revert to a situation where there was one set of design standards, not two, and where local authorities continued to be the primary decision-makers of planning applications, with an appeal to the board. As a consequence of him introducing under pressure what many of us had argued for for a long time, the number of JRs of large-scale residential developments plummeted. Now, thankfully, there are very few. The one thing the Minister of State and I agree on in this is we want to see fewer JRs. I want to see more good-quality planning decisions made by our planning authorities for public and private sector developers. They have to get on with the job. Imagine our surprise when the Minister for housing, Deputy Browne, this week last year announced that he was going to repeat Eoghan Murphy's fatal error of 2018 and was going to use the same failed section 28 procedure to introduce a new set of design standards for apartments. It beggars belief, albeit that some of the details of the new procedure are different, that he would run the risk of repeating the very same mistakes as his predecessor. As the Minister of State knows, that section 28 guideline has been subject to a legal challenge. I am not involved in the legal challenge and do not have an opinion of it. Others can speak to that. Since the legal challenge clearly has some weight, notwithstanding the fact that the Government's current position is that the section 28 guidelines are the law, the Minister and Minister of State then decided to gazump their own guidelines with what I think is the first use of the new and highly controversial so-called national planning policy statements that were published a month or so ago and are currently out for public consultation. My big fear - issue number one - is this. Design standards are there for a reason. They are there to ensure that, within each development, there is an appropriate mix of studios, one-beds and two-beds, an adequate amount of natural light and storage for long-term living, an adequate amount of community amenity, and so on. Those things are there for a reason. To reduce those standards in a manner that runs the risk of seeing increased litigation, not just of the section 28 rules themselves in the first instance but of individual planning applications, is quite reckless. The more substantive point is that the Minister of State is saying that, in order to fix the housing crisis, renters will have to live in smaller, darker, less well designed apartments. If we add into the mix the other policy innovation that the Minister announced this time last year and was enacted earlier this year, those renters will not be subject to any meaningful rent controls at all and will therefore pay the highest possible rents. That is not a credible solution to the housing crisis. To make matters even worse, it is provided in sections 61 and 62 of the Bill and their related sections that, where a developer had secured planning permission already under the existing rules, they will now be able to go back and, through a relatively simplified procedure, seek to alter that planning permission in line with the new design standards. Keep in mind that those design standards are currently in front of the courts and undergoing a public consultation. Those design standards have a very considerable amount of uncertainty around them right now. In fact, if I was a developer, I would be very reluctant to use those design standards, given their legal uncertainty and because of the risk that the mismanagement of the section 28 guidelines last year and the planning policy statement this year has created. Who has done that? The Minister of State and his lead Minister have. As the Minister of State knows, I am against the section 28 guidelines. They were a terrible mistake. I do not agree with the repackaging of those in the planning policy statement put out for public consultation. I am opposed to these provisions of the Bill. There was a time in this country - the Minister of State is too young to remember it - where anything could be built because all that mattered was building stuff. We have learned at great cost the legacy of that. If you literally allow anything to be built without adequate attention to standards, in this case design standards, what you get is poor-quality, expensive homes that the Minister of State and I would not live in, so why should we expect hard-working people, contributing to society and taxes, to live in them either? In the vast majority of cases, renters will tell us that they want a pathway out of the private rental sector. They want more homes to own. They want more social or affordable homes, not smaller, darker, ever more expensive apartments. This entire episode over the last 12 months has been a classic case of the Government repeating the very bad mistakes of the past. It runs the risk of having the same negative impact on planning, development, delivery and, crucially, the standards and quality of the homes the Minister of State is expecting people to live in into the future. On that basis, I am strongly opposing both sections 61 and 62. To save time, I am not going to repeat my speech when we get to the second section. Both sections are bad planning at their very worst and I make no apology for opposing them.

The Deputy will be appreciated by his peers. Is he sure it was not me who was too young to remember?

I could not possibly comment on the Ceann Comhairle's age.

I was just checking. Deputy Sheehan is next.

That was a compliment to the Minister of State, by the way.

I thank the Deputy for acknowledging my youth.

Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle. You are definitely too young, as am I.

Thank you, Deputy.

There was a couple of things I wanted to say on this. I, too, am opposed to sections 61 and 62, for many of the reasons that were outlined by my colleague. When I think about stimulating supply, the type of supply that these new apartment guidelines will stimulate, if any, will be expensive, high-yield, build-to-rent apartments in Dublin and only very specific parts of Cork. It certainly will not build anything in Limerick, the city I represent. We saw last year the debacle when the Minister, Deputy James Browne, tried to use section 28 and the Government failed to undertake an environmental impact assessment, and then had to basically pull the guidelines. It is now coming back with this national planning statement on the revised apartment guidelines, which will result in smaller, darker apartments without dual aspect, studio apartments that are just 32 sq. m. Einstein's definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting different results. We have a method that has been tried and tested and has failed. We know that, with soaring construction inflation, the mooted cost savings the Minister gave at the time have been all but wiped out in the last year. By going down this road, the Minister of State is creating a system of making apartment living unviable for people as a permanent living solution, as someplace where they can build a home. We will end up with very small, dark, expensive apartments that will be very hot in the summer. That is a point that is not often made. These apartments will mainly be occupied either more permanently by people who are social housing tenants or, if they are occupied by renters, those renters will not be protected by any sort of meaningful protection in respect of the cost of their rent. They will be paying upwards of €3,000 in cities like Dublin. They will barely be able to afford it, or they are not going to want to live there long term. It is going to contribute further towards hollowing out the urban core of places like Dublin, driving people out of inner city communities. Many previous Ministers have gone down this road, including, truth be told, one of my own party colleagues, going back as far as 2015. It has not worked. Every time we have reduced apartment standards, we have had the same heavy, developer-led lobby coming along every two or three years and claiming the viability measures introduced around design guidelines or size do not work and that we need to go smaller and cheaper. The entire model we are using is not working. The State is in many cases paying way over the top for apartments. With these revised guidelines, we are not going to get the high-quality, decent, permanent, sustainable homes that people actually want to live in. I think that gets completely lost in this discussion. We will go and do this, and that will be fine, and it may stimulate some expensive build-to-rent residential development, but unless there is a fundamental change in approach, either the Minister of State or somebody else will be back here in two to three years' time looking to go further and smaller again.

I will not comment on my own age.

The Deputies are all very young. I do not mind saying it.

I am ageing very quickly in here tonight, but-----

The Deputy's hair is even changing colour.

It is. There is a key concern that I outlined last week and we have outlined a number of times before. I wish to make a number of points on it. The first point is that this change is a result of intense lobbying by institutional investors and developers about this whole idea of viability. Viability is about profitability. Were the guidelines that existed prior to this good planning or bad planning? Were they guidelines that were about ensuring that people had liveable spaces and apartments were of decent design standard and liveable? Clearly, they were. The reason that the Government is making these changes is not to improve liveability of apartments. As the Minister of State said very clearly, it is actually about viability. What does viability mean? It means reducing cost, increasing the number of units that we can get on a site and reducing the quality of what has been delivered in terms of space, balconies, windows, etc. Of course, the biggest critique of apartments that were built during the Celtic tiger - and people spoke about them - was that they were shoeboxes. After the Celtic tiger crash, we had the introduction of better guidelines that were about creating improved apartments that people would want to live in. However, what the Government is now doing is going back on that. We will back in the same situation, creating shoebox apartments that people do not want to live in long term and cannot live in long term. We are trying to support people to have families and go through different life stages. What these guidelines are going to do is make that more even difficult. As the Minister of State said, if this builds one more apartment, that is great and he will be happy about that. That is what this is about. However, it is not an apartment that it is building, it is a unit. It is not a home. Regarding who is going to be living in these, they will not be able to afford them. I have also heard that it is about trying to get more social housing units in. It is creating lower quality and standards of social housing. Again, this is adding to stigma. It is not actually building. We can say that we built a unit, but we need to be building affordable homes for people. This will not achieve that. It will build units. It will add to the numbers that are being built. It will give a roof over someone's head but is it building an actual home on a permanent basis? It is not going to be achieving that. It is essentially about incentivising and enabling institutional investors to get more profit. It will also add to land speculation and land prices. It will push that up and lead to further speculation and the use of planning to do that. It is not a measure that will provide decent homes for people. On that basis, I oppose it.

I propose to discuss these sections together as the amendments are linked. Sections 61 and 62 are connected and operate together. It is important that both stand as part of the Bill. Section 61 is a technical clarifying amendment to the definition of material alteration in section 138 of the Act of 2024 to add a cross-reference to the new section 138A as inserted by section 62 of this Bill. Section 62 inserts a new section 138A into Chapter 5 of Part 4 of the 2024 Act in relation to alterations of existing permissions allowed for the purpose of alleviating the shortage of residential accommodation and to enable construction of a greater number of dwellings in apartment schemes. These sections operate so that. subject to meeting the specific criteria set out in the Bill, a request may be made to a deciding authority under section 140 of the 2024 Act to make alterations to an existing permission for an apartment scheme. Under section 142 of the 2024 Act, where a requested alteration of a permission is non-material, the deciding authority shall alter the permission accordingly. Section 138A will apply to the development of dwellings and apartment buildings in circumstances where the permission was granted before the coming into operation of section 138A where a request for an alteration under section 140 is made before the expiration of two years from the coming into operation of section 138A and where the development has not yet been commenced before the date on which the request is made. The specific criteria allowing for alterations to apartment schemes that are covered by this measure are already established policy with over 12 months. They relate to apartment mix, apartment floor areas, dual aspect ratios, lift and stair cores, the floor-to-ceiling heights of ground floor apartments and consequential works necessary for the purpose of the above alterations or ensuring access to the development, including works to footpaths, boundaries, gardens and balconies. The Bill also sets out restrictions to the measure, including in the case of residential development in a strategic development zone, SDZ. The alterations cannot cause the number of dwellings situated in that SDZ to exceed the permitted number applicable in the planning scheme. It also ensures that an alteration of permission cannot result in the proposed residential development being designed to accommodate more occupants than would be designed to accommodate where the alteration was not made. This measure is to help support the viability of the development of apartments in the immediate term by allowing the alteration of permissions already granted in certain circumstances. This is targeted at the significant number of apartment developments that have received planning permission but have not yet commenced. Where the specific criteria are not met, depending on the circumstances the option remains open to a developer to either apply for a new planning permission or to apply to make an amendment to the permission, as the case may be. The Government continues to be fully committed to ensuring that housing is delivered as quickly and effectively as possible and ensuring that a key part of that is viability. I wish to address some of the specific points that Deputies have raised. I do not accept the description here of smaller, darker apartments. I have heard every Deputy who is in here in this House on many occasions lauding the Vienna model. That is true. Every single person in this Chamber on the opposite benches has lauded the Vienna model. It is true to say that the size of studio apartments in Vienna is 30 sq. m to 35 sq. m. That is the-----

They are not €3,000.

Excuse me?

They are not €3,000 a month.

What the Deputies are talking about here are smaller and darker apartments. I am simply making the comparison to our minimum standards. They are comparable to where the Deputies opposite have lauded the introduction of housing in other jurisdictions. It is true to say that by virtue of the comments that have been made by Deputy Sheehan here where he has said that cost savings have been eroded as a result of inflation that the Deputy is acknowledging there were savings attached to the revised apartment standards. He will also be aware that, at the Oireachtas committee of which he is a member, some of the biggest developers in the country cited savings on average of €60,000 per scheme in terms of apartments. That is not insignificant. If we had not made those changes and we had significant cost inflation, what we would be talking about here would be a significantly increased cost of development. What we are about here, in terms of the viability measure, is taking apartment developments that already have permission and applying a two-year duration to it where internal configuration changes can be made. It is not to increase the number of beds or the number of persons who are accommodated. It is simply about ensuring that the mix can be altered to ensure there is greater viability within the system. I stand by the point that if this measure has the effect of ensuring that one apartment complex is delivered in this country and has permission that would not otherwise be delivered without an alteration to this, it will have been a successful measure.

The Minister of State is just provoking me so I will allow myself to be provoked. The real issue is that if one apartment scheme is delivered but ten, 20 or 30 are delayed because they end up being litigated in the court because of these bad measures, that is not a measure of success. That is the problem here. Let us also talk about studio size. There is a fundamental misunderstanding of the argument from all of us on this side of the House. If a residential development is to be a good development, it has to meet the needs of the community who will live there. That means we need an appropriate distribution of studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom homes in each development, in each neighbourhood and beyond that. In order for those to be good quality homes, dual aspect is not a luxury. There has to be the appropriate volume of dual aspect, storage and amenity. What this change facilitates in respect of the section 28 guidelines and the planning policy statement - whichever, if either, of them ultimately becomes law - is that it skews the standards that exist to allow an overconcentration of studio and one-bedroom homes, and it reduces the amount of storage space, dual aspect and other community amenity. That is the problem. I would like to make another point about apartment design standards. When Irish Institutional Property produced a report on this some years ago, it compared our apartment design standards with those of other countries. It ignored that in many jurisdictions, there is far more public and amenity space which is part of people's living circumstances. Vienna is a good case in point. It is not just about apartments, but community facilities and amenities as well. That is something we struggle to do here in much of our public or private high-density developments. The argument just does not stand.

It stands.

The Minister of State either does not understand the arguments we are putting forward or is wilfully ignoring them. Deputy Sheehan's point on the erosion of savings is a really important one. The Minister grossly inflated the savings. He alleged that there could be savings of €100,000 per unit. All of the industry, including Paul Mitchell from Mitchell McDermott, quickly came out publicly and said that was nonsense. The maximum saving from the design standards, according to reputable industry figures, is in the region of €30,000. Of course when you add in the VAT reduction, that is where the figure of €60,000 comes from. What has happened with apartments since these changes were announced? They have been in the ether now for a year. We are not seeing a dramatic increase in planning applications or grants for apartments, according to the data on the websites of the Department and the CSO. We are not seeing a significant increase in commencements or completions, particularly in the first quarter of this year. It is really interesting that new apartment inflation is running at almost double the level of new property inflation. It started off at about 6% this time last year, ratcheted up to 9.2% and then 9.4% in March and April, and levelled off in May at 8%. The Minister of State said that these measures would not just bring down the cost of delivery but bring down the cost of purchasing or renting as well. If they have had any effect at all - it is too early to say - all they have done is further inflated the market. That is before gifting developers another €20,000 to €30,000 in a VAT reduction that the apartments that were under construction last year, this year and early next year clearly did not need. They were already viable. To be clear, what the Minister of State is doing here - the Royal Institute of Architects made this point when the announcement was made last year, and the Irish Planning Institute made similar points - is facilitating bad development and substandard development. If these developments end up getting built - the Minister of State's view is that if one gets built, it is a success - their success will be determined by the quality of the homes and communities we provide for working people. If they are of poor quality and inferior to what we have today, that is definitely not success for these people, about whom I am ultimately concerned. I accept there is a viability problem; I think there are far better ways of addressing it. We should not force renters who will live in smaller, darker, more expensive apartments to pay the cost of that. That is a debate for another day. I really think the Minister of State has got this one badly wrong. I am not even convinced he fully understands how much he has gotten this badly wrong. I make no apology for opposing these sections.

The Minister of State referenced the size of a studio apartment in Vienna. The average rent of a studio apartment in Vienna is about €600.

During the debate Deputy Sheehan was talking about the size.

If the Minister of State will allow me to make my point, the average rent of a studio apartment in Dublin is €1,850. With these revised apartment guidelines, the Minister of State has allowed developers to build entire developments of tiny studio or one-bedroom apartments. When you go to someplace like Vienna, there is an appropriate mix of one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments. In addition, there are community facilities and amenities, which the Minister of State has also removed during the past year. He has removed them from the LDA. There was a big row with Dublin City Council about removing community space from apartment developments. When you leave your apartment in Vienna, you can board a world-class public transport system. We have a situation in this country where we have so-called transport-orientated development with no bloody public transport. People are going at it hammer and tongs over car spaces in suburban parts of Dublin because they never got their train or DART services. They have been delayed and delayed again. The Minister of State cannot compare the two. Even the LDA, which comes under the auspices of the Minister of State's Department by extension, said the savings would be marginal in most units - it said they would be nowhere near what the Minister trumpeted them to be last year - and that is what they turned out subsequently to be. This is the core point. We are essentially paying way over the top. In many cases, the taxpayer and the approved housing bodies are paying out an absolute fortune for tiny shoebox apartments. The entire model is fundamentally broken.

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.

I will be brief and will not go over points my colleagues have made. The Minister of State used the example of Vienna. I think the minute he said it, he knew he had made a mistake. As has been pointed out, the Minister of State is talking about smaller apartments but they are only a part of it because there is a need for a mix of two-bedroom, three-bedroom and four-bedroom apartments. The Minister of State is proposing apartment after apartment of one-bedroom bedsits. That is what they will nearly end up as. The Minister of State then spoke about space. We have a situation that is like the Celtic tiger all over again, because houses are being built and there are no parks, playgrounds or open spaces. A vulture fund bought up a building in the Blackpool, the late-night pharmacy. It was the only business left. They previously got rid of the gym, they got rid of the doctors' surgery and they got rid of the hairdresser. The only reason they did not get rid of late-night pharmacy is it had a ten-year lease. This vulture fund then came in. There are apartments in Blackpool that are empty right at this minute. This Government always seems to play up to the vulture funds, to the speculators and to the big money, but what does it get? I come from Knocknaheeny, and when Knocknaheeny was built 50 years ago the Government at the time made a decision to build housing 20% smaller with substandard material. Does the Minister of State know what is happening now? For the past 20 years Knocknaheeny has been in the middle of a regeneration that is going to cost €100 million. The Government goes away and takes shortcuts, and then years later the consequences come out. We are making very reasonable points about what we are proposing. We talk about renters. The Minister of State referred to the Vienna model where Deputy Sheehan said the average rent is €600 per month. The average rent in Dublin is over €2,000 per month. The average rent being paid by people in Dublin and in Cork is €2,500 to rent an apartment. Those apartments are only small, with fewer windows and are darker, and the Minister of State thinks that is right. It is a mistake.

These incentives that are being put in place are about activating the development of the 30,000 to 40,000 apartment planning permissions that have not been developed. In the housing committee, of which I am Chair, we recently had some of the largest developers in the country before us. "Developers" and "investors" are not bad words. We need them or we would never build. We would never get building the houses and apartments that we need if we did not get the investment either. What is being put in place by the people who are on the ground is the bricks and mortar to develop and build these properties. They said these incentives will work and will bring down the prices of apartments. They have stated that clearly in the committee.

I would like to respond to some of the comments. This is a sensible proposal to allow the alteration of existing planning permissions for a time-bound period of two years. The alternative being suggested by Deputies is that developers who have schemes that they cannot build for a viable cost should go back through the entire planning process. As the Minister of State, I want to activate apartment development in this country. I do not want to see planning resources within our local authorities wasted. The Deputies opposite raise the issue of planning resources. I will always fight for additional planning resources within local authorities and within An Coimisiún Pleanála, but by virtue of what is being said by the Deputies opposite they want those schemes to go back to the start of the planning process. It will waste planning resources within local authority systems rather than being able to alter the envelope that has been established as a use for residential development. It is a common-sense proposal. It does not go outside the boundary of what is permitted development. It ensures the same existing bed spaces are provided for. I do not accept that I am wrong to raise the Vienna model because the initial comments from the Deputies opposite were all about size. Not once was the cost referenced - and they can go and look back. On size, I merely pointed out the minimum size of an apartment in Vienna, which is 30 sq. m to 35 sq. m for a studio apartment. What we have is 32 sq. m. There is no alteration to the size of one-bedroom apartments from what was there previously, which is 45 sq. m. A change in the studio size is provided for. There was mention that viability is profitability. First, "profitability" is not a bad word. Viability is about deliverability. Deputy Hearne acknowledged that it would put roofs over people's heads. That is what the Government wants to do. We want to put roofs over people's heads. If this measure puts roofs over people's heads I think it will be a positive measure.

We need to build affordable homes and not just roofs, because it is not just about shelter. I want to come back to the issue of profitability. There is an issue in relation to the profits being made. In some ways, the Government is being taken for a fool. I have great respect for Deputy Carrigy as Chair of the housing committee but, seriously, what else are they going to say? They are private developers. They are investor funds. Of course they are going to say that. Michael Stanley who appeared the committee had €8.5 million in remuneration last year, and we are pumping public money into these guys and just taking everything they say as fact. They absolutely have us over a barrel. We are completely and utterly dependent on them and there is no transparency around how much they are making. Of course they are saying it is great and it is working because they are getting all they want and what they are asking for. The Government is giving them everything. There is a real issue here, for me anyway. Housing is about delivering decent homes that people can live in that are affordable. These guys are not interested in that. What they want to deliver is what they can make the most money from. Unfortunately, the Minister of State is reducing the standards that people in my constituency are going to live in, because that is where apartments are being built. They are more expensive and with lower standards. That is what people will have to live in. It is not right.

Is Deputy Ó Broin pressing the question?

Yes.

It is not agreed.

The Bill will now be sent to the Seanad.