Michael Finneran (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fianna Fail)

The answer to the question whether the regional planning guidelines be modified is "Yes". They are draft regional planning guidelines. They go out for public consultation and they can be modified on foot of that.

One of the key objectives in requiring development plans to include a core strategy is to ensure greater consistency between the national spatial strategy and the regional planning guidelines on the one hand and the city and county development plans on the other. This is of particular importance in co-ordinating development objectives across local authority boundaries, for example, where within a national spatial strategy gateway two or more authorities control parts of the city, as in Waterford where there are three authorities within the gateway, those of Waterford city, Waterford county and Kilkenny county, and also in co-ordinating development of strategic infrastructure within the region.

I do not know where the figure mentioned for Carlow of 60 houses came from. Every local authority and housing authority has had engagement with my Department's officials over recent weeks on their plans for the coming year and I have not seen anything to suggest that I, as Minister of State with responsibility for housing, am to instruct housing authorities on their housing needs in their areas. I cannot state off-hand what are the housing needs in County Carlow, but I can state what they are nationally. There are 56,000 people on the housing lists of this country. They are spread throughout all of the local authorities. Without having figures in front of me for Carlow, I would be of the opinion that the members of Carlow County Council have a requirement way in excess of 60 houses. There is no question that any national spatial strategy would interfere with the entitlement of a local authority to house citizens on its housing list. The big issue is whether I have enough resources for them to do it, and that is why I brought in some schemes.

On taking the low figure, the Central Statistics Office figures are being taken. The general expectation now is that population growth will not be as large as might have been expected some time ago. The lower figure is possibly a more realistic figure to be working off at this time.