Pearse Doherty (Sinn Fein)

It will not be possible to do it for the foreseeable future unless the local authority is a very rich one, of which there are few, if any.

The Minister refers in the document to proposals on limits for lower density, which would be an alternative for those who want to build one-off housing. In many of the towns and villages in my county, such as the one in which I live, many people build one-off houses. Will this still be allowed to happen under these guidelines? If somebody has half an acre of land, perhaps family land, can that person build for himself or a daughter, for example, or are these proposals geared so that if all land in the town or village is zoned residential, the development needs to be of high density? The Minister said that this has nothing to do with the one-off housing but a number of references suggest that this provides an alternative to one-off housing.

I am concerned about the way we are dealing with one-off housing. The 2005 guidelines need to be tightened up and strengthened. We need to allow people the right to build on their own land in their own communities and give life back to rural Ireland. What we have seen since the publication of the guidelines is a constant stepping back while more challenges and difficulties are put in place for people trying to build on their own land in rural areas. While I welcome the idea of proper integrated planning in towns and villages, we need to accompany this. I ask the Minister to examine the rural planning guidelines and to come up with an approach, as he did with the urban guidelines, to strengthen them in order to allow people the right to build on their land for one-off housing.