Ulick Burke (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister to the House. I hope that, before he leaves it, despite his earlier address, he might clearly indicate how he sees the guidelines making a difference. Regarding what Senator Brennan said, I was a member of Galway County Council until very recently. On a cross-party basis, we had to engage a consultant to provide global professional guidance to us, at our own expense, to make such adjustments as we wanted, fairly and legally, to bring about a proper county development plan. We were the first county under the new legislation to draw up such a plan.

The issues the Minister is now including in future guidelines for change and improvement have already been incorporated into our plan. I am not being political when I say that the guidelines that he has now introduced to bring about massive change to improve the situation of someone from rural Ireland applying to build a house are already in existence. I say this with the greatest respect to him and regardless of whatever political reason was behind his raising this issue now in the current climate of the run-up to the local and European elections. Be that as it may; let that be his political outlook, if such it is.

These guidelines will not make any change whatever. I have consulted the planners in the council and it is clear that the local authorities which devise the county development plans and the officers who implement them, including the county manager, are bound by the legislation that has been in force from 2000. We must work within those restrictions. Nothing in these guidelines shows any variation or change from that.

I was surprised and disappointed that the Leader of the House was trying to say that we are against rural housing.