David Norris (Independent)

I am sorry that the debate must be brief, but I understand the Minister is under pressure. Some aspects of these guidelines are welcome, for example, the drawing of a distinction between urban and rural housing. The development needs of rural areas are based on the desire to sustain rural communities, which I understand completely. I also understand the desire to have one's family close by and to develop on one's own land.

I note that the guidelines set down certain restrictions such as the following: vehicle access should not endanger the public; waste water disposal systems must be adequate; siting and design must be taken into account; an integrated approach must be taken to the visual surroundings; and so on. However, in the context of the savage attacks on organisations like An Taisce, these guidelines sound like pious aspiration. I do not believe they will work or that they are intended to work. They are intended as a populist measure and will do damage to the country. This can be demonstrated by examining the facts.

One in four of the 290,000 housing units built since 1991 was an individual one-off house in a rural area, namely, a detached building with an individual septic tank. The counties with the highest percentages of such housing units are Galway, 63.1%, which is a very high figure; Monaghan, 54.1%; Roscommon, 52.5%; Cavan, 52.4%; and Leitrim, 52.3%. Such housing developments increase car use and car ownership. We already have car ownership levels that are far higher than in other countries.

The Irish Planning Institute has commented on current rural housing development and listed 16 concerns, of which I will mention but a few. The institute pointed to the potentially negative impact on important landscapes and rural amenities, although that is not likely to bother the Department that has given us the Tara motorway. Other concerns included the potential loss of distinctive rural conditions, cultural traditions and heritage in the built form and the detrimental impact of the proliferation of septic tanks. This latter point is a particularly important one to which I will return later. The institute went on to point out that one-off housing development leads to an almost exclusive reliance on the car for all journeys, ribbon development and dereliction in rural towns and villages.

It is clear that the rural housing guidelines have been produced without any assessment or consideration of the capacity of the Irish countryside to absorb this kind of housing development. One third of all applications for housing are for one-off houses in rural areas. This has increased from 17,572 in 2003 to 23,744 in 2004. We do not know what the figure will be for 2005, but we can presume it will be higher than last year.

There has been no examination or audit to determine what percentage of one-off houses constructed over the past decade have efficient waste water disposal systems, supplied and maintained in accordance with EU directive standards. Concern has been expressed that water treatment systems are installed in one-off houses and are not maintained. In some cases, the system installed by the builder is not a specified proprietary treatment system but an ordinary septic tank. The company that manufactures the proprietary treatment system becomes aware of a problem only when the customer complains about a fault. It sends an operative to carry out repairs and discovers that the wrong facility has been installed. We do not have an audit and we do not know what is going on in terms of waste water treatment. What we do know, however, is that we have extraordinarily polluted water tables.

The argument has been advanced that people should be allowed to build one-off houses in rural areas to sustain family links. While I can understand this argument from a human perspective, let us examine the facts. How many of these houses are actually built for family members? I draw the attention of the House to an article in The Irish Times of Wednesday, 15 December 2004.

The individual quoted in the article is not someone who can be dismissed as a crank, a do-gooder or a partisan member of An Taisce. Mr. Jim Harley is a senior planning official with Donegal County Council. He outlined 16 examples to councillors where planning permission was sought by local people who said the planned property was for their own use. However, the properties in question had never been owner-occupied and were put up for sale before building was completed. This is one instance of behaviour that is endemic throughout rural Ireland.

Members of this House have referred to this issue. They asked why farmers were not entitled to sell their sites, build houses and so on, in order to pay for their children to go to college. Let us be honest about it and not pretend that these houses are for families. They are built so that people can make money.

In another case, a letter was received from a local priest confirming that a planning application for three new homes was for three brothers, but all three houses are now for sale. The council dealt with these matters as bona fide applications and what else could it do? There was another case where an application was supported by a letter from a solicitor. One of the conditions of the planning permission was that the house would be for the owner's use, but it was put on the market immediately. Mr. Harley said that such scenarios are making a mockery of the entire planning process. Councillor Francis Collins gave an example of somebody in Derry who made a successful planning application by using his driving licence as evidence of residence. The driving licence was from Donegal.

The article in The Irish Times was published before the guidelines from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government were released. Those guidelines are intended to ease restrictions in the planning process even further.

We must make progress but we should not fool ourselves. We must ensure we know about waste water disposal and have a complete audit. We need to ascertain the capacity of the countryside to absorb one-off housing developments. In those circumstances where families want to build in order to stay together, that is fine. However, people should not be allowed to engage in profiteering. We must keep a close eye on the situation because it is not right to destroy the tourist potential of the country in order to allow a few fat farmers to make money.