Michael Finneran (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fianna Fail)

I have visited most local authority areas and know from my contact with local authority members that area plans are being developed for villages with populations from 300 to 1,000. That will not change. We are raising the bar to 5,000 as the mandatory population base for which a plan must be made. I have not heard of any conflict between local authority members and their executive as regards area plans. This has been a working practice in recent years. I have said that local area plans, even for a small village, are helpful, even if there will be no development, as guidelines to communities for tidy towns and so on who see it as a blueprint for their work. I do not see that changing.

In response to Senator Alex White, we are changing one word, from "a local area plan" to "that local area plan". The subsection states:

Notwithstanding section 18(5), a planning authority shall send a notice under section 20(3)(i) of a proposal to make, amend or revoke a local area plan and publish a notice of the proposal under section 20(3)(ii) within a period not exceeding 10 years from the date on which the authority 10 last made a local area plan.

If there is no plan one will not send out a notice. That is my interpretation of this amendment. The Parliamentary Counsel has advised me that it is appropriate to make that minor change so that it is not possible to interpret the section as referring to any plan.