Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The core strategy. It is preventing us from zoning lands to have a supply of lands available for residential development in our towns, our villages and our cities because we have to follow this core plan based on population increase. In most cases, however, we are zoning lands that may not be available at all for one reason or another, we are zoning lands that will never be sold for development and we are zoning lands that may be landlocked. We end up with a situation in which the price of land which is zoned goes through the roof and creates huge viability issues for housing - and we wonder why we have a dysfunctional market. I am of the strong belief that we should take this whole planning process and decide that we are going to make it user-friendly and try to encourage developments rather than preventing developments from happening.

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