PJ Murphy (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister for coming in. I am sorry I missed the earlier part of his address; I was engaged in the Seanad.

I will start off by congratulating the Minister on the guidelines that propose to reduce the minimum size of apartments. I fully agree with this proposal. As he just pointed out, viability and affordability are key. Apartments that are not being built, irrespective of size, are of no use to anybody. It was a good move on the Minister's part.

I have spoken about unserviced settlements in the Galway area in this committee on a number of occasions. In the Gort-Kinvara local electoral area, in my own area of south Galway, just two of 14 settlements, Gort and Kinvara, are serviced. The wastewater treatment plant in Gort, the larger of the two settlements, is at capacity. Therefore, Kinvara is the only settlement in the whole of the south Galway district in which planning permission can be granted. We urgently need to find a way of granting planning permission for housing developments in unserviced settlements when it comes to wastewater. As far I can see, that can only be done through developer-led, on-site package treatment plants. I know a task force is in place to look at progressing this. For many young people in rural areas such as my own who want to live in the communities where they were born and reared, time is of the essence. In 12 of the 14 villages in south Galway, no planning application has been granted for a housing development since 2009. As a result, with the exception of one-off rural housing, no young person from the south Galway area has been able to acquire a new house in their native place since 2009. The clock is ticking fast. I urge the Minister to do everything in his power to put in place, I hope by the end of this year, a means by which Galway County Council and other local authorities can grant planning permission to developers to put in place development-led solutions for wastewater treatment on site in unserviced settlements across rural Ireland, including small unserviced villages.