Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

What the Vice Chairman is really asking is how much of a backlog there is. I do not know how many planning applications have been refused. However, I know how many people would go and meet with a planning officer and say they were thinking about applying for planning. People are always encouraged to have a pre-planning meeting. In many of those pre-planning meetings they are told they have no hope and they do not even apply. That is the case for 90% of people who wish to apply for planning. There are parts of Leitrim where people still get planning where there is good land. In different areas around Manorhamilton people get planning permission in some cases. Annaduff is another parish. If I go down through Dromod towards Carrick-on-Shannon there is reasonably good land there where the odd person will get planning permission. It can be difficult even there. Anyway, in most of County Leitrim it is difficult. People do not seek planning because they have been told in the pre-planning meeting that they do not have a chance. That has created a backlog. If we had a situation in my parish where people could get planning, there would probably be eight or ten houses that people would like to build. In the entire county there might be 40 houses. Then, that number would quickly go back down to ten or 12 per year. We are not talking about vast numbers of houses. The numbers are small but the fact that these small numbers of houses are not being built is having a detrimental impact on the rural community. Part of our environment is our people. If we starve our rural communities of people then we run into a major problem.