Rural Planning: Statements
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-10
============================================================

Gareth Scahill (FG), Nominated by the Taoiseach

The Minister of State is welcome once again to the Chamber. I reiterate the welcome so many of the previous speakers have given, including Senators Flaherty and McCormack, for these guidelines. We are happy to see them. We see the Minister of State addressing what we have all looked for. Well done on that. This is building on the success of the croí cónaithe and vacant property refurbishment schemes. In my county of Roscommon, at the end of 2025 there were 459 applications, 325 approvals and 119 homes brought back into use, with an investment of, I think, €6.8 million, bringing those old buildings back to life. Many of the previous speakers referred to consistency. The Minister of State also mentioned it. If we can get consistency and transparency in decisions and know we have a good chance of achieving it before we put it in, that is effectively all a public representative wants - to be able to support the applicant to deliver on this.
The GAA demographics strategy was mentioned earlier. Many rural clubs are seeing depopulation which means they are struggling to field teams, get volunteers and remain viable. In Roscommon this week, we had news of two rural national schools closing, Drumboylan National School and Slatta National School. The INTO told us this morning that there are 11 other rural national schools in the west in the same position. Predominantly, this is because people are not given the opportunities to build houses where they want. As a previous speaker said, we want local people to be able to build their own houses close to their family in their local areas. That is what the guidelines do.
To go back to simplicity, one of my colleagues in Roscommon County Council, Councillor Ruth Conboy, has repeatedly asked for transparency and far more information in relation to planning decisions, such as details on planning applications, approvals and refusals, but also, whenever a local authority requests further information, where that goes. She does not want this information buried in management reports. Every local authority should have this on their site and should be held accountable by this information. I would love to go into wastewater treatment, EPA codes, section 1.3 and the domestic wastewater treatment grants system. I believe new guidelines are coming out for some of the local authorities on that. That is holding up a lot of decisions in my area. If that could be speeded up, it would be brilliant.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

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