Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to highlight a very worrying trend in planning decisions, especially those made by An Bord Pleanála. Obviously, most county development plans include a rural need if a person is farming a particular area. I recently came across the case of a young couple. The man was transferred a farm from a member of the family and he and his spouse sought to develop a house on it. They were told that because of the size of the farm, it was not economically viable to do so. It is a 40-acre farm. It is not the best land in County Clare, however. It certainly would not compare with some of the land in County Limerick. That said, my constituents have the same right to farm 20, 30 or 40 acres of land in this Republic as Deputy Pringle's and the Minister of State's constituents. It is an absolute disgrace that some pencil pusher in the planning department of Clare County Council or of any other county council in this Republic or, indeed, in An Bord Pleanála - one of the most defunct organisations the history of the State - can make these decisions. The only response the head of An Bord Pleanála had in respect of the complete dysfunction that is going on within the organisation was to blame lawyers who are taking cases. Lawyers take cases because the decisions are crap and because, week in and week out, An Bord Pleanála cannot stand over those decisions.

I do not wish to go back over that matter. I want to talk about these pencil pushers who determine that farms that brought up families all over this State, from which representatives in this House came and were proud to come, are being told their farms are not big enough to build houses on. If this continues for much longer, there will be an uprising because rural people have had it. To try to farm marginal land is difficult enough; for people to be told by some pencil pusher with a quasi-degree in something that they have to live in the nearest big town because the farm is not big enough to live on, where they can get up in the middle of the night to calve cows, help ewes to lamb or engage in whatever type of farming they wish to engage in, is a disgrace. It is just not good enough. Are the Minister of State and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Government, many of whose members come from small farms across the length and breadth of this country, going to stand over that rubbish?

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