Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 14 October 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage
Planning and Development (Exempted Development (Act of 2000)) Regulations 2025: Discussion
2:00 am
Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
Okay. I do not know how it works in the Department of agriculture, but typically with exempted developments, there would not be a local authority building control inspection, for example. There would not be a check-up to see if the building was built in accordance with building control. The responsibility for that rests with the person who constructs the building. This is not meant as an objection; I just want to tease it out. Given the size of the structure and the volume of slurry, will there be any specific checks at the start of the roll-out of this new exempted development category to ensure that a random selection of them are built in accordance with the regulations? I fully accept that the legal responsibility to comply with the Department of agriculture rules rests with the person who is building the structure but that is a lot of slurry in one place if it is the size of this committee room. What we do not want is any portion of those structures to not be built in accordance with the Department of agriculture rules and then to have any unwanted spill-off that could have public health implications or environmental implications, including for the farmers or the rural communities in the area. How do we make sure at the early stages that there are not building control issues or non-compliance issues?
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