Fine Gael is urging the Department of Housing to ensure there is no surge of applications for large scale housing developments before legislation governing the process expires.

The party's Senator Regina Doherty said the legislation governing Strategic Housing Developments (SHDs) expires at the end of next year.

She said: "SHDs were never intended to be a permanent development process and it is right that we are working towards the end of their usage. However an abrupt end, I believe, has the ability to cause further problems, not solutions, to our housing demands.

"With a 16-week application processing time, I fear that sometime early next year, we may see an onslaught of large-scale, and potentially rushed planning applications being put in for areas that are woefully unprepared for any such developments. I grew up in Ballymun, we all know how those blocks of flats without the necessary accompanying facilities ended, they ended in rubble.

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"We have potentially already seen the start of this. In Donabate in North Dublin, Residents are preparing to make submissions against ‘fast-tracked’ plans for over 1,300 housing units, including 1,015 apartments. If successful, this plan would see a 57% increase in housing units in this small village, and potentially the same increase in population. This type of development is totally unsuited for a village like this, one that is already lacking in basic amenities, and struggling with transport and congestion issues.

"These residents just want to ensure the quality of life they experience is continued and enhanced, and that any new residents can share in the same. Apartment blocks en masse in a village will not deliver this. The danger in the approaching SHD deadline is that many more communities may be facing the same battle."