Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Planning authorities provide a target for new housing as part of their statutory development plan, including for rural areas outside of their towns and villages. There is one statistic that may not be well known, which is that it has generally been one quarter of delivery nationally for the last 30 years. In terms of overall house construction, one quarter has been new rural homes, including one-off houses. About 4,000 to 5,000 homes built every year are rural homes. That gets lost in all of the narrative around the undoubted challenges in planning for housing, particularly one-off housing.

Both current and draft planning guidelines allow county development plans to provide for rural housing. The planning system in Ireland continues to deliver a substantial number of planning permission decisions for new homes every year in Ireland, including 42,991 permitted homes in 2021 and 34,177 in 2022. This includes permission for 7,499 one-off homes in 2021 and 6,924 in 2022, the vast majority of which are located in rural areas. There is strong housing provision in rural areas. Last year we built close to 30,000 houses nationally, a 45% increase on 2021. Of these, 5,515 or 18.4% were single, one-off dwellings in rural Ireland. New dwelling completions in rural areas were up by 16.6% in 2022 compared to 4,069 built in 2021. There is a balance needed in the debate.

In Louth, about 789 new dwellings were completed in 2022. However, 143 single houses were built in Louth in 2022. This amounts to 18% of total completions, which is similar to the figure for 2020 of 18.4% and 2021 of 18.7%. That ratio corresponds broadly with what is happening nationally. Rural housing is delivering nearly one fifth of annual housing output in Louth. The Louth county development plan for 2021 to 2027 contains a housing delivery target of around 1,300 new homes per year for the county, which is substantially above the 789 units that were built in 2022. There is also a significant amount of social housing being built in County Louth. Around 1,000 social houses have been delivered since 2020.

The other important scheme-----

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