Dr. Conor Norton:

I will try to answer. It is a fairly big question, if the Deputy does not mind my saying so. He is right that, insofar as possible, we should be able to accommodate communities and allow them to grow and flourish. However, there is no absolute right to that. I would say that our biggest responsibility, of course, is to sustainable development. We have a responsibility now to make sure we are living sustainably and contributing to that large effort.

One of the key issues at the moment is the national planning framework, which sets out a plan for balanced regional development and identifies the important role of cities in developing and driving the development of the regions, as well as a certain counterbalance to the city, and the importance of that in terms of viability of the regions etc. That is elaborated in the regional spatial strategies as well, where the regional assemblies identify a series of larger towns and county towns that have a key role in that regard. As the Deputy knows, it is up to the democratic county or city development plan to look then at how that settlement strategy and other core strategies are applied across the counties.