Due consideration of legislation is the prerogative of the Seanad and is needed in this case more than most. 

Among the measures included in this bill, for instance, is a plan to help deliver social housing on local authority lands without the normal planning requirements such as environmental impact assessments.

This specific proposal is particularly surprising given the flooding and drainage problems in many areas during the recent bad weather. 

In the case of Cork, for instance, the lord mayor suggested that the drainage system couldn’t cope because of the number of houses which had been built.

It is deeply worrying, therefore, that instead of strengthening planning safeguards, the minister appears to be weakening them with this new bill by discarding the need for environmental impact assessments.

This leads to one obvious question: Have we learned anything from the mistakes of the past?

For many people, the long-running mica controversy may be emblematic of the problems left behind by Celtic tiger-era building boom, but there are plenty of other examples to hand. 

The cost of remediating deficiencies in fire safety in apartment complexes built during the boom is a case in point; those costs, running into millions of euro, are another legacy of the rush to build in the past. That is a legacy with which today’s citizens must contend; are tomorrow’s citizens facing the possibility of an equally costly legacy as a result of this new bill?

The housing minister has said the legislation is necessary due to the extraordinary pressure on our broader housing system, and he is correct in identifying the seriousness of the situation. However, hastily enacted legislation which may leave us with further problems in the future is not the way to address the situation.