Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)

——emigrants' remittances.

I have also included a new provision in the guidelines to the effect that planning authorities should grant permission in cases where exceptional health circumstances, as certified by a doctor and the relevant disability organisation, may require a person to live in a particular environment or close to family support. Since the publication of the guidelines I have received a number of letters from disability organisations welcoming that provision and I take this opportunity to thank them for their expressions of appreciation.

This matter was brought to my attention by Councillor Nick Killeen who, representing the Disability Federation of Ireland, met me shortly before the guidelines were completed. The DFI and the spina bifida organisation made the most compelling and cogent argument I had heard. Thankfully, I was on the point of finalising them and with their help and guidance I included this application. It gives me pleasure to recognise the tremendous work disability organisations have done and to make this small change.

New text has been added to the guidelines to stress the need for a balanced and informed approach by planning authorities in assessing the design aspects of proposals and not to be overly-prescriptive, for example, putting a ban on brick in all cases or requiring that all roofs be a particular coloured slate. Critics who like to comment about "bungalow blitz" fail to recognise the role local authority planning departments have played in determining house design and discouraging individuality in design. Nobody wants an inappropriately designed obtrusive house on a good rural landscape but one of the great joys in travelling around this country is that vernacular architecture from place to place differed in times past and perhaps a little variation would be welcome at this stage.

New text has also been added to mention that as well as housing needs in rural areas, which is what the guidelines are mainly about, housing also needs to be promoted in smaller towns and rural villages to ensure that they offer attractive and affordable housing options. The section on holiday and second homes has been expanded to make it clear that distinctive planning policies are required to cater for the different types of development in this category, including the growing trend of resort type development when old estates are developed as golf courses with associated hotel and residential development.

In terms of implementing the guidelines, my Department is in the process of organising, in conjunction with the local authorities and planning institutes, a series of regional seminars for planners on the practical implementation of the guidelines. The seminars will provide practical advice on the implementation of the core messages of the guidelines, including preparation of development plans, how to provide better support and advice to applicants and the issue of more efficient and comprehensive consideration of planning applications. It is also my intention to actively monitor the implementation of the guidelines and the results they are achieving, with a view to ensuring they achieve their objectives.

The guidelines take a progressive and forward-looking approach by emphasising the role of the development plan as the mechanism to bring all the parties to the table, that is, the councillors who make the plan, the planners who advise on it and the public served by it. Adopting development plan policies on a shared basis, where there is ownership of those policies by all interests, is the way to move forward the debate on rural housing. The debate has been stagnant for too long and people have adopted ideological approaches, which do not have any practical value.

The guidelines emphasise the importance of adopting policies in the development plan that reflect the overall wishes of the elected members and the public interests they represent and that represent good planning approaches as well. The guidelines also emphasise the role of effective pre-planning mechanisms and good working relationships between elected members and local authority officials in implementing the development plan and dealing with individual planning applications.

Housing output in Ireland in 2004 reached a staggering record of 76,000 housing units. It often appears to be forgotten that the vast majority of these houses and apartments were built in urban areas. On the issue of the numbers and categories of houses being built in rural areas, more precise information is required on the density of one-off houses, the numbers constructed during different periods and the ratio of permanent to holiday one-off houses.

I attended an inaugural lecture in UCD at which there was a call for more research into planning and its impacts. My Department has commissioned research to get this information. However, the information already available to us indicates that, by and large, the proportion of houses being built in rural areas appears to match the proportion of the population living there. Surely that is as it should be.

The point must be made that the critics who challenge the sustainability of housing in rural areas all too often forget or simply overlook the fact that people are the most essential element in creating a countryside that is vibrant and communities that are sustainable. These guidelines, if properly implemented, will bring balance and certainty to an important aspect of planning where there is a lack of balance and where far too much uncertainty was evident.

If these guidelines are implemented fully and people work with them, we will all win. Housing and planning departments currently under pressure will win because a new more logical and structured approach will be entered into the system. People, particularly young people who want to live and work in their own area, will win too because some of the enormous pressures on them currently will be lifted. I thank the Members of the Seanad for offering me the opportunity to come before the House to deal with these important guidelines.