It has been - in many cases - much easier to get planning permission for holiday house schemes than it has been for families living and working in said localities to get permission for a single family house. While I realise that there are issues around one-off houses, the blight of holiday homes is not quite as simple as you would put it. The truth is that much planning in this country is done on an ideological basis without consideration to the needs of the local community. An effective ban on one-off houses is worthy of criticism in this respect, particularly when you examine the multi-house developments that are being built.
In truth, I have lived in several different newish estates in Dublin, and most of those houses have been built, not with the needs of the occupants upper most in the minds of the designers, but the need to extract the most amount of profit with no regard at all to the needs of the potential occupants.
I don't think centralised planning is the answer because in recent times, a great deal of planning has left a great deal to be desired, both in urban areas and rural areas. The point relates to holiday homes, and the fact that they are effectively untaxed. If we had proper regional representation with tax raising powers, I would suggest that a tax should be payable to the regional authority on second homes so that the costs arising from them to localities can be mitigated. Central planning has done little to benefit either the health system, or public transport to any great extent. Planning should be done at local level, but it should, above all, be done with the requirements of the local communities uppermost. The rezoning kerfuffle during the week was actually evidence of good sense. Housing really should be planned on a utilitarian need basis, not a profit-extraction basis. Unfortunately, both in holiday and non-holiday areas, the profit motive is of first importance. And because of this, we have people who want single houses because their needs are not being fulfilled by collective developments. I have a lot of sympathy for them. Whilst saying that I have to say that I would be strongly against one off holiday homes.
In the short term, however, I would tax the hell out of homes which are unoccupied for more than six months. The net benefit of that would be to sort out supply issues in Dublin as well.