Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the sentiments of Deputies Canney and O'Sullivan, on which I will make several points. It is a firm priority for the Government that people can continue to live in rural areas where they were reared. Deputy Canney asked that people be allowed to build and live in rural areas. We want this. Croí Cónaithe is a nationwide scheme. We want people to restore old houses in rural areas. There is now a grant for additional funding for consultancy fees with regard to protected structures such as farmhouses and older buildings. We want to get the rural planning guidelines correct.

Deputy O'Sullivan made points on log cabins. The national planning framework provides guidance. In many cases, there are differences in how local authorities interpret the NPF. Development plans are a reserve function of councillors. We are giving these rural planning guidelines detailed consideration. We are very much working on the basis that we want people to be able to continue to live in rural Ireland. This is an underlying principle for us. We want to ensure that we do this in a sustainable way that complies with all EU legal requirements. We want to get this right.

The assurance I want to give both Deputies is that our abiding underlying principle is that we want to ensure we have a measure in lace that allows people to continue to live in rural Ireland. We are not looking to do anything else. In terms of planning for log cabins, we undertook to examine this issue to see how we can ensure that, once again, we are moving with modern times on planning.

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