Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will go through the groupings I have as best as I can. I am sure I am leaving myself wide open to criticism but I will go through them as best as I can to be helpful to the committee. Amendments Nos. 308, 310 to 312, inclusive, 317, 431, 434, 479, 483, 503, 506, 509, 512, 533, 537, 541, 545, 549, 560, 563, 566 and 1130 were tabled by Deputies Ó Broin, Gould and Ó Snodaigh. Amendments Nos. 307, 309, 316, 430, 433, 478, 482, 502, 505, 508, 511, 532, 536, 540, 544, 548, 559, 562, 565 and 1131 were tabled by Deputies O'Callaghan and Ó Cathasaigh. Amendment No. 1129 was tabled by Deputies O'Callaghan, Ó Cathasaigh, Ó Broin, Gould and Ó Snodaigh.

This set of amendments are grouped together because they concern statutory requirements for the development and assessment of plans, whether development plans, urban area plans, priority area plans or co-ordinated area plans. The amendments propose to merge language plans, established under the Gaeltacht Act 2012, with existing requirements currently set out in the Bill. The discussion we have just had around what I plan to do with regard to separate plans for the Gaeltacht and the islands in respect of the priority area plans is precisely relevant to these amendments. I have been very clear on what I want to do and very clear also on when we will bring forward the treoirlínte. I intend to come back to this on Report Stage. We have listened to and considered what Deputies have said. Some might say we are bringing this back but it is genuinely an area in which we are all extremely interested and where we want to make improvements.

On that basis, I do not propose to accept any of these amendments. I am not asking Deputies to take it on good faith but I will come back to them on this matter. We need to work on the definition of "Gaeltacht settlement patterns" as well. There is no question about that.

I firmly believe it is better that in the counties that have Gaeltachtaí within them, we allow and insist upon special area plans and priority plans for them. That is what I intend to do. For those reasons, for the group of amendments that are effectively proposing to merge the language plans established under the Gaeltacht Act 2012 with existing requirements set out in the Bill, I will not accept any of those amendments, and we have discussed this at some length. I have other groupings that are as logical as we can make them and we can discuss that as part of this grouping as well.