Rural Planning: Statements
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-10
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Pauline Tully (SF), Cultural and Educational Panel

I welcome that the publication of the new planning guidelines will be later this year because this is well overdue. We have been waiting for about a decade for these guidelines. I welcome that they are going to be published and that they are subject to proper consultation and scrutiny. There is a lack of consistency across rural areas in the planning sections, and the Minister of State acknowledged this himself. In fact, there is a lack of consistency within county councils between the different planners.
Many people brought up in rural areas do not want to live in the larger towns or in the cities. In many cases, they cannot afford to. They do not want to settle down in the towns and cities, especially after a few years.
They want to move back to be close to relations for child minding and so forth. The policy of providing serviced land on the outskirts of villages is a good one. It gives an option to people to live in their local community but still have serviced land and a village beside them and so on. There are cases where the council does not have any land banks next to villages or towns, so that needs to be addressed. We do not want to see the mistakes of the past repeated, where, under Fianna Fáil Governments, house building was allowed on flood plains. We now see the consequences of that when there is actual flooding within developments.
In relation to once-off planning, I have come across cases - somebody mentioned it in the Chamber already - in which people who bought or built houses in rural areas with no connection to the locality end up making complaints about agricultural activity. They are coming out of cities and so forth. People from a locality, especially family members of the land owner, should be allowed to build a lot easier. I have come across situations where they have had to jump through hoops to prove a connection to a local area. That should not be happening if they have grown up in that local area. They want to be close to their family and so on.
The timing of utility connections is having a huge impact on the building of houses, as well as the lack of supports for small- or medium-sized developers in this country. Many of them find they cannot afford to build houses in the locality.
In relation to Senator Flaherty, we are devising a drinking game that every time he mentions Sinn Féin in one of his speeches, we will have a drink. He will have to stop or we will end up as alcoholics.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-10