Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As Minister with responsibility for local government I am either being told to give local authorities more autonomy or to take more functions away from them, depending on the issue. My responsibility and first concern is people living and working here. A person returning to Dublin to trace relatives or whatever is welcome and we like that to happen but our primary concern is accommodating people living and working here. Essentially, what we are talking about is a blanket refusal. Good law allows for flexibility and exceptions. For that reason, I do not favour mandatory minimums. What we are providing for is blanket refusal but we have to allow local authorities to apply common sense. People get so frustrated when we bring in laws that do not allow for the person on the ground with the knowledge to apply some common sense in his or her decision making powers without having the flexibility to abuse those powers. In the regulations, we will allow for that common sense approach. Essentially, we are taking a blanket approach unless it can be shown that there is scope to show some flexibility in a part of an RPZ area, of which there will be only a small number of instances.