Paula Butterly (Louth, Fine Gael)

I wish to apologise to the Chair, as I had to attend another committee meeting for the first hour of this meeting, so I missed the opening statements.

I am from County Louth. We have the two very large towns of Dundalk and Drogheda. I have found that the challenges in housing are divided between the urban and rural areas. In rural areas, the challenge is one-off housing. In urban centres, the challenge is that developments have started to sprawl into rural areas where, technically speaking, people cannot even get a one-off house. I would like to hear the opinion of our guests on this matter.

I am from a rural area and, all going well, the public-private partnership that was mentioned will deliver to the Ballymakenny area of Drogheda 7,500 houses in the next couple of years. That would be fantastic but I would like to see local authorities planning infrastructure while addressing the issue of density because we are sprawling from town to country areas even though people who live in rural areas cannot get planning permission. Due to specific policies dictated by the OPR, we are unable to build houses for our own communities within the rural department. I would like to hear the witnesses' opinions on the density issue, the fact that urban dwellings have sprawled into rural areas and one-off housing.