Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

From the point of view of the Social Democrats, it must be an absolute given when building with more sustainable materials that it must always be done while building homes to high-quality standards and meeting building regulations and standards. Strong independent inspection and strong enforcement are needed when it comes to building any home. We have a poor recent history of that, unfortunately. All buildings used to be built with sustainable materials in Dublin city. They were built with wood. The reason we moved to less sustainable materials with respect to carbon was fire risk and fire spread. If we are serious about moving to sustainable materials and the use of timber, and we need to be to meet our climate change targets, it must go hand in hand with strong independent inspection, enforcement and other measures.

I welcome one of the comments the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, made about taking action to address the serious housing and planning issues affecting people who speak our primary language in Gaeltacht areas. People whose primary language is our national language, Irish, are being driven out of Gaeltacht areas. It is important that is done. People whose primary language is our national language, Irish, are being driven out of Gaeltacht areas. They cannot get affordable housing in those areas. That must be addressed. We can all think of Gaeltacht areas where new housing has been built and rather than it being made available to people in the local community and to speakers of Gaeilge, it is being bought up as second and holiday homes and rented out on short-term letting platforms. I have no issue with some short-term lets in tourist areas but failing to regulate that, to have a balance and to protect the ability of local people to access housing at affordable rates in their areas is a massive planning mistake which must be addressed, along with looking at other measures such as language criteria in Gaeltacht areas. That must be worked on urgently.

The Government countermotion states there is no prohibition on the use of timber construction from a planning perspective. Yesterday in the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage, we heard from architects with expertise in this area. Claire McManus, who has a huge amount of expertise in this area, specifically stated that the building regulations as they currently stand are prohibitive with respect to the full use of timber in construction. She stated that in most construction using timber frame, the inner leaf is indeed timber frame but it is rare to get the outer construction leaf to be done with timber because of issues with the building regulations. That needs to be addressed.

Fundamentally, if we are going to be able to tackle this properly and if we want to move towards more sustainable development, sustainable building materials and a more sustainable approach to housing and planning in rural communities, the issue of affordability is key and must be addressed. I thank the Rural Independent Group for tabling this motion and I thank Macra na Feirme, which has been campaigning on this and other issues recently. If we are going to tackle the issues around sustainability of housing, affordability is key. We must distinguish between two primary types of housing need being generated in rural communities. We need to distinguish between rural generated housing need and urban generated housing need, that is the spilling out of cities and into towns and rural communities. A lack of affordable housing options in urban areas means some people feel they have no choice but to go to where housing is more affordable for them, which can be a rural community. That can have a negative impact in pushing up house prices in those rural communities and creating issues for people who have a rural housing need. It is important that planning and achieving affordability addresses that. Affordability must be at the heart of good planning. We cannot have good planning and sustainability without affordable housing. It is at the heart of good planning in other countries.

I will address some of the issues in the Rural Independent Group's motion on the planning system. The best thing we could do to improve the planning system, and this came across strongly from a range of different quarters during the pre-legislative scrutiny on the Bill, if we want a better planning system that works for everyone is to hire more planners in An Bord Pleanála and to make planning decisions in local authorities. We must also invest in more planners for forward planning. This is an area we are weak at. Other countries have invested in forward planning and doing master plans to get certainty and have cut out a lot of the risk and speculation. That makes housing more affordable and means the infrastructure is delivered at the same time, which is important.

A case study done by Mark Scott and Liam Heaphy on this matter is relevant. They analysed planning applications in a rural part of Tipperary between 2010 and 2020. Their analysis showed that new growth in the area they studied was almost entirely stimulated by local need with a strong emphasis on family clusters, which is a sustainable way of doing housing in rural communities. They pointed out the huge advantages to this approach as regards kinship-generated dwelling and the family supports that go with that, especially for ageing parents and families with young children. Being near grandparents or aunts and uncles brings family supports. The study also makes the point that the visual impact of new building in rural areas can be successfully mitigated through the retention of natural hedgerows and tree planting rather than ad hocfencing solutions and variable planning regimes. It also makes the relevant point that existing buildings that are vacant in rural communities must be a key part of addressing housing needs in rural areas. It is worth noting that rural regions away from larger towns and cities have experienced continued population decline and exodus in recent decades. This is leading to an ageing rural population and a declining base of services in the community. It is important this be addressed. Ireland has a strong history of a considerable amount of our population living in rural areas and communities. We might be quite different from some other countries in that regard.

If we want to address the issue of urban-generated housing need in rural communities, we need to provide viable options for people with respect to affordability in urban areas and the opportunity for people to self-build in more sustainable and urban settings as that is part of what drives the wish of urban populations for housing in rural areas.

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