Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

-----shows how out of touch with reality the Minister of State is. He should talk to people who live in rural Gaeltachtaí and ask them whether that provision, which already exists in the existing planning development legislation, is not new and provides no new powers or functions to local authorities or planning authorities, is adequate to ensure that our planning system takes decisions and has full visibility on the impact of those decision on the growth or decline of use of the language as a living language. They will tell him it does not.

There were three questions that the Minister of State just did not answer. I hear what he says on exempted development. I do not accept it. It would be a simple and straightforward thing to do. He did not address my concerns in regard to amendment No. 603 which deals with co-ordinated plans and area plans that clearly should have a requirement to have language impact assessments to ensure those plans, among all the other tasks they must do, adequately address the promotion of the use of the language of Gaeltachtaí and líonraí. He did not address the question on social need. This is a fundamental one. The Minister of State should know this because I presume he read the draft rural planning guidelines that are on his desk and were there with his predecessor. The failure of central government to provide a clear definition of social need for the purposes of rural countryside planning to our planning authorities has led to widespread confusion and variance in the granting or refusal of decisions.

I am in favour of sustainable rural planning. I am one of those people who want to see those guidelines published. I want to see consistency and certainty across the local government sector. Part of that means that the Government has to actually tell people what social need means because there is not a definition of social need in the national planning framework. The Minister of State has not published the guidelines either for rural housing or for Gaeltacht housing. I would be interested in hearing his view. For example, does he believe that the use of the language constitutes a social need for somebody who is desirous of living in the Gaeltacht? That is a pretty fundamental question. He also has not answered the question in terms of language impact statements for new developments. Again it could be argued that two or more is too small, it could be different sized developments in different sized areas.

However, I am going to press the Minister of State for much clearer responses to amendments Nos. 603, 647 and 890. When we have expedited those we will come through to the other clusters as well. Maybe there is a conceptual problem here. For me this has nothing to do with other Departments. This is about how we think about our planning system. I say this as somebody who is not an Irish-language speaker but who wants our planning system to be plan-led. That means, who are these plans for, who are the actual people who are going to live in these planned areas, whether urban or rural? For example, with Gaeltachtaí and líonraí, if we are saying that a portion of these people are to be Irish speakers, then our planning system has to have visibility on that.

Finally, with respect to the methodology, I have no issue with the Minister of State reaching out to another Department for the methodology and impact assessment. That makes complete sense but the decision to require the language impact assessments is a planning matter. It is not a matter for another Department. How that is then calculated is separate. Given that we are going to have several years of enactment of this Bill - I meant to ask yesterday, I get the impression that there is kind of an enactment schedule that is to be drafted - it would be really great if we got a copy of that for the committee.