Latest figures show that just 30% of Strategic Housing Development planning permissions have been activated, officials in the Department of Housing have told an Oireachtas committee.
The Strategic Housing Development process allows large-scale developments to bypass local authorities and go straight to An Bord Pleanála.
Terry Sheridan, Principal in the Planning Policy and Legislation Section of the Department, said that the department is drafting legislation to bring forward the implementation of a "use it or lose it" recommendation.
He said figures up to end September indicate that 47 of the 163 SHD permissions granted up to that date had been activated.
Mr Sheridan said the purpose of the SHD arrangements was to speed up the planning decision making process providing greater certainty for developers in terms of the timelines in which they are decided.
He said there was a "clear commitment" from Government in the Programme for Government to terminate the SHD arrangements from the end of December 2021.
An Bord Pleanála's deputy chairman Paul Hyde told the committee that 40,000 residential units have been permitted under Strategic Housing Developments provisions.
He said that since the SHD legislation came into operation in 2017, 265 planning cases have been decided.
In his opening statement, he said that 183 of these were granted permission, 79 were refused and three were withdrawn.
Mr Hyde said the 40,000 units permitted includes 29,000 apartments and 11,000 are houses.
Sinn Féin's Housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin said that the Strategic Housing Development legislation should be scrapped.
He said it was a developer-led piece of legislation implemented through successful lobbying and that he had warned that this legislation would lead to land banking and developers using it to increase the value of developments.
He asked if it was correct that SHDs would not expire at the end of 2021, but at the end of Feb 2022 because of the delays in planning decisions due to Covid-19.
In response, Rachel Kenny, Director of Planning Operations with An Bord Pleanála said it was correct to say SHDs would not expire until February 2022 due to the pandemic.
Social Democrats TD Cian O'Callaghan said that the legislation was "hugely flawed" and he said the lack of an appeals process was highly problematic.
He said that some developers were using the process to increase the value of their land.
Deputy O'Callaghan also said that the SHD process is failing in its key objective in terms of delivering housing on scale.
