Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate. Planning is fundamental to how we develop our island as we move forward. First, we must examine how Ireland has developed over the past 25 to 30 years, with continuing urbanisation and development on the east coast, in particular, in recent times. We then have to consider our natural resources in rural Ireland and how they are integrated into planning and the greater scheme of development. One of the most fundamental difficulties is it is becoming almost impossible for young people who have gone to college and worked in urban centres such as Dublin Cork, New York and Sydney and who want to return to where they are from and where their family is based to build a house in rural Ireland because of the planning restrictions on one-off houses. If the site is at the outskirts of a village, they could face charges of up to €20,000 for connections to water and sewerage schemes and development contributions. That does not encourage people to live in these communities, which have a basic infrastructure. By and large, they have excellent primary schools and excellent secondary schools, which have served the population for almost 50 years since the late 1960s and have done an impeccable job. There is a great social infrastructure comprising sporting and other facilities. There are, however, connectivity issues, primarily relating to broadband, which is as important to rural communities now as the ESB was in the 1940s and 1950s and the telephone in the 1970s and 1980s.

There is a direct contradiction in the framework document between what the authors perceive should be available and an emotional tie to the area being no longer acceptable when granting planning permission. It is beyond credibility that people can sit in an office, whether is in Cork, Dublin or Brussels, and say that housing can no longer be sustained in these communities. I recall an appearance by An Taisce representatives at a meeting of the environment committee in 2000 at which they outlined all the reasons planning permission should not be granted for one-off houses. They said everything should be built in urban settings or on the outskirts of towns and villages. Planning permission was then granted for huge developments on the outskirts of towns and villages, for which there was no demand whatsoever, between 2004 and 2007. This was the new planning regime, which resulted in ghost estates all over the place. Significant pressure was put on county councils to grant permission for one-off houses to people who were from the area and had bought sites or who were working in the area and had kids going to school there. They had to build up a raft of documentation as the planning application when through the system. As one-off houses were built and the people who lived in them had families, they became embedded in their communities and they have contributed extremely well to them, whereas the those living on the estates that have been built at the edges of towns and villages are isolated and segregated from their communities. There is no proper integration whatsoever. It is the same as when west Dublin and Ballymun were developed and slums in Dublin city were cleared out in the 1960s.

We are creating issues for the future and the nonsense in this document about one-off housing is absolutely crazy. I do not know what the bureaucrats and An Taisce and the other fine bodies are thinking because they are not connected to rural communities. If we were to have a serious chat with ourselves, we would have to make it more acceptable to grant planning permission for such houses and we would have to make it easier for couples to secure permission and to integrate with communities. If we go down the economic route and say that everything has to be based on critical mass and economics in cities, it will be like Dublin. The city has expanded at an alarming rate and that has hollowed out towns such as Carlow, situated an hour's drive from here, because people are pulled towards Dublin. Will villages and small towns be hollowed out in County Cork to create a critical mass in Cork city?

There is also a social aspect to planning. As families grow, grandparents help out and family support is available if there is a crisis. No path ever runs smooth and help and support is sometimes needed. I know of families who have moved to Dublin and if one of the children is sick, the grandparents travel up from the country by train in order to help out. There is no other way because the two parents are working. That is not sustainable. The document before us is flawed in its interpretation of what has happened at European level. It is absolutely flawed to think that we cannot have one-off housing.

3 o’clock

The treatment plants that are out there are far better than the treatment plants in small towns and villages. We saw the report earlier this week in terms of the pollution that has been caused. They are putting down their own wells and are not a burden on the State in any way, shape or form. It is almost as if we have to close down every village and national school and move on. However, in 50 years' time, whoever will be here will be debating why this policy was pursued and the thinking behind it.

We have seen in the marginal parts of this country that land and community abandonment are real factors. Two hours were allowed for this debate, which is as fundamental as the debate on the Finance Bill or any other issue being debated in this House at this time. It is fundamental to how we will order our society over the next 25 years or 30 years. The policies that have been pursued by environmentalists, those in the Custom House and others in terms of centralising the population is not working and is bad for society in the long run. Consider the enormous daily cost to the State associated with the development of Limerick and west Dublin over the past 40 years or 50 years. If we are to continue with this and say that there is to be no more once-off houses in the country, I firmly believe that we will rue the day and environmentalists, when they will have done a complete about-turn on their nonsensical policies, and planners will come back and say it was a folly. We are leaving behind a good, integrated social infrastructure. We will not have all the same age group in the one estate. We will have people of all age groups, as well as help, support and commitment, which is how the community should be defined. Communities should be defined in terms of how they support their people.

In whatever we do and in terms of our contributions to this debate, we have to appreciate and support what we have. We must encourage people because people will live in rural parts of Ireland. I said last night during the debate on the Finance Bill that there are many fine jobs in rural parts of Ireland. Small and large companies have built up significant employment and given social cohesion to communities. That is readily available if the people who are extremely well-educated by our education system are encouraged in some small way and the blocks are taken away and they are helped to build their own houses, rather than having the absolute nonsense and bureaucratic bullshit that is going on at the moment.

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