Rural Planning: Statements
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-10
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Niall Blaney (FF), Agricultural Panel

I welcome the Minister of State and I will get straight to it. I have two points to make. As someone with a civil engineering background who used to draw up plans, the first issue I wish to raise is in relation to national secondary routes. I believe they should not be dealt with in the same manner as national primaries, particularly those that have a low annual daily traffic volume. Regional roads that have high traffic volumes need to be looked at in relation to this set of guidelines. We should take a rough average of perhaps the top 20 and get a figure for the annualised average daily traffic from those. Then, whenever we go below that volume on a national secondary, we should start allowing some opening of the planning system to areas of low traffic volume and with fewer road safety difficulties, such as large portions of the N56 in Donegal, the N59 across Sligo, Mayo and into Galway, and many more examples across the country. It is a simple thing to do but it would be massively helpful to many rural parts of Ireland that are suffering decline and where people cannot get planning for themselves and their families, and businesses alike.
The second issue is a simple matter in relation to planning when it comes to dealing with effluent from the average house. Currently, planners make a decision based on a design that is given by an architect. That architect is trusted with the build of that house but the planning decider can turn around and say they do not accept that design for the effluent system. That is wrong. The architects are trusted to build the house; they should be trusted to put in the system that is designed. If they do not, it is on them. The architect is responsible for that house build. They also should be responsible for the septic tank. It is a simple measure. If we could trust the architects for that, we should be able to trust them to put in the proper system as well.

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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