Paul Bradford (Fine Gael)

I congratulate the Minister of State, Deputy Calleary, on being given additional responsibilities and wish him well.

I listened with interest to the previous speaker. While I have not read the Bill in great detail, I have read the explanatory memorandum. Section 25 deals with the disposal of what might be described as small sites. It states that, for the purposes of the exemption which is being allowed, I presume, to landowners selling a site to a neighbour, son, daughter etc., a small site is one which does not exceed 1 acre and whose market value at the time of disposal does not exceed €250,000. Those of us who represent rural constituencies, including the Minister of State, are aware of a significant number of planning applications, in respect of which there may be an obligation on an applicant to develop a single site which may be more than 1 acre in size. With a small field of 2 acres, it is often a provision of planning law that the application for planning permission cover the entire site or field in order to ensure a second site will not be sold by the landowner. That will often be a clause in planning permission that the minimum size of the site be greater than 1 acre, depending on the circumstances of the landowner, the land-holding and how the farm is structured. I recently came across such a case. The planning applicant brought to my attention a rather difficult application involving a field of approximately 5 acres, where in order to ensure there would not be a second application, the client's engineer and I advised him to include the entire field as a strong assurance to Cork County Council that there would not be a second planning application. We then learned that he could not do so because in order to come within the terms of the exemption, he had to cut back to 1 acre.

While I do not expect the Minister of State to resolve the matter now, it is one that needs to be reviewed. He will know that with rural planning applications there are many occasions when the planning authorities will deem that a site should be bigger than 1 acre in the interests of proper planning and development to ensure a second or third site will not be developed. In these cases the field will need to become the site, even though it might be 2 or 3 acres. If the Bill is as the explanatory memorandum suggests, there will be difficulties in that regard.

I hope the departmental officials are giving the Minister of State helpful advice but I would like to hear his views on the matter. The provision stipulates that a site must be one acre or less, while the market value must be less than €250,000. Without any deliberate ill intent on anyone's part, we could be causing a difficulty for certain planning applications by way of the definition of the size of a site.