Response of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to Covid-19: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2021-01-28
============================================================

Michael Fitzmaurice (IND), Roscommon-Galway

We talk about building houses. There is currently a problem with flooding in Lough Funshinagh, County Roscommon. Will the Department and especially the NPWS help in every way and not obstruct solutions to that problem?
Second, people build one-off houses in rural Ireland. There might be one or two, at most, on site. At present, they are off-site due to the Covid regulations. Is that prudent if there are only one or two people in a one-off house in the middle of the countryside?
Third, there are 35,000 units of State land throughout the country. Is it prudent to have councils, housing agencies, private builders and vulture funds buying private lands outside those and considering houses? The fast-track planning system for developments of more than 100 houses is being challenged left, right and centre in the courts. Will anything be done about this? I have examined it in the past fortnight and it has stopped 1,400 or 1,500 houses.
Regarding horticultural peat, will the Minister introduce planning permission to resolve this issue across the country? With regard to legislation for natural heritage areas, NHAs, a solar farm in the Nore Valley in Tipperary cannot proceed because the NHAs that were to be de-designated have not been de-designated. The matter was due to come back before the Dáil because an amendment was made in the Seanad. Will that be brought back to the Dáil?

---

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/dail/2021-01-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:00+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-01-28