Planning system shifts to ‘culture of facilitation rather than restriction’

It will be easier to build houses in rural areas once plans to ease planning restrictions are introduced, the Minister of State for Planning will tell the Oireachtas housing committee on Tuesday.John Cummins is to appear before the committee to discuss draft planning guidelines, published during the summer, which are due to come into force later this year or early next year.They seek to promote house building in rural areas, which has been restricted by many local authorities for years. Once implemented, the guidelines will have to be followed by local authorities, meaning many will have to relax strict requirements on obtaining planning permission in rural areas.The adoption of the guidelines will “end the current inconsistent approach where a house may be permitted in one part of the country while down the road in a neighbouring county, permission would be denied for the exact same type of development”, Cummins will say in his opening statement to the committee.READ MORE“For too long people in rural Ireland have faced a planning system that can feel unnecessarily restrictive, complicated and above all inconsistent,” he will say. “If someone wants to build a home on a suitable site, in the community where they were raised, where their family lives and where they want to raise their own family, we should be asking how we can facilitate that – not looking for barriers to put in their way ... I want to move the planning system towards a culture of facilitation rather than restriction.” Cummins will say that “young people who go to college, get a job, buy a home” and then decide they want to move back to where they are from when they have a family, find themselves shut out by the current regulations. What is driving the abuse and intimidation of politicians here?“That is set to change,” he will say. “We are also addressing the use of blanket bans by local authorities on appropriate, ribbon, infill and back land development or [which] place arbitrary caps on the number of homes that may be built on family farm holdings.”Under the new regulations, multi-unit developments in Gaeltacht areas will have to be accompanied by a “linguistic integration statement”, setting out the proportion of dwellings in the development to be occupied by Irish speakers, based on the percentage of daily Irish speakers in the relevant “language planning area”. “This is to ensure that the development of new housing estates strengthens, rather than dilutes, the existing linguistic character of the community,” according to Cummins’ speech. “These changes represent a fundamental shift away from overly rigid and inconsistent planning practices that some may argue have held rural communities back for too long.” The Green Party has previously criticised the plans, warning that easing restrictions on one-off housing will not alleviate the housing crisis, but would instead harm habitats, water quality and increase traffic.