Mr. Paul Hogan:

To put things in perspective, over the last ten years, one in three houses built in Ireland have been one-off houses according to the Central Statistics Office. In the three counties that have large Gaeltacht areas, Mayo, Donegal and Galway, more than three quarters of all houses built in the last ten years have been one-off houses. That adds up to approximately 8,000 or 9,000 houses in those three counties alone. That is not insignificant. There is great demand near larger towns and cities and that has to be managed. There is also the question of more scenic areas. We often hear about the problematic cases, that is, those that are more borderline and difficult. People are obviously very aggrieved if decisions do not go their way but permission is granted for approximately 88% of planning applications in Ireland.

There are absolutely quite significant problems and constraints in particular areas and there are issues to be addressed but we do have guidelines in place. They are out of date - they are from 2005 - but they do exist. The policy put forward in the national planning framework seeks to simplify and clarify those guidelines and to work with them. It does not contradict or change them. There are outstanding issues with Europe in respect of cases elsewhere, particularly cases involving family ties, a ground that is seen as problematic. To comply with European legislation, we should really be relying on local social ties. However, by and large, all local authorities have rural housing policies. As we know, it is a long time since 2005 and there has been a drift in terms of what people have done. Even looking at the eight local authorities that have Gaeltacht areas within their jurisdictions, there is quite a variance in what is considered local when building in one's home place. It varies a lot. We need to put in place an updated set of guidelines that offers a consistency in approach for comparable parts of the country. That is what we are trying to do.

The reality is that there have been many other urgent legislative needs in recent times. We have seen the reform of the strategic housing development, SHD, legislation in respect of large-scale residential development. We contributed significant elements to Housing for All that have materialised as legislation. We are feeding into the Attorney General's review of the planning system. We have prepared development plan guidelines, which had to be done as a matter of urgency.