Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Gallagher for raising this important issue. The national planning framework, NPF, published in 2018, sets out the Government's overarching strategic planning approach underpinning the sustainable development of urban and rural areas in Ireland to the period 2040. To articulate the broad context of the NPF in clear and understandable terms, the framework contains the national planning objectives, NPO, to guide and inform the planning process.

National planning objective 15 of the NPF fully commits to the concept of sustainable development in rural areas. It seeks to encourage growth, arrest decline in areas that have experienced low population growth or decline in recent decades, while also highlighting the need to manage certain areas around cities and towns that are under strong urban influence and under pressure from unco-ordinated and ribbon-type development in order to avoid over-development in those areas.

This is supplemented by national policy objective 19 which points to the need to ensure that providing rural communities meet housing requirements, a policy distinction should be made between areas experiencing significant over-spill development pressures from urban areas, particularly within the commuter catchment of cities, towns and centres of employment, and other remoter and weaker rural areas where population levels may be low or declining. Regarding weaker rural areas, objective 19 provides that determination of planning applications for single houses in the countryside should be based on general siting and design-based criteria for rural housing in statutory guidelines and plans, having regard to the viability of smaller towns and rural settlements. These criteria include matters such as landscape, vehicular access and wastewater disposal.

On the other hand, where development pressures and the risk of haphazard development in the vicinity of cities, towns and centres of employment as designated in the local authority development plans are evident, objective 19 advises that it is reasonable that the determination of applications for housing in such rural areas should be informed by considerations beyond the siting and design criteria for rural housing contained in statutory guidelines and plans which I just referred to. In particular, account should be taken of whether or not there is demonstrable functional requirement for such housing in social, economic or occupational terms and whether or not such development, of itself or in combination with existing permitted development, would lead to detrimental, haphazard and unco-ordinated development.

I consider that these objectives represent a balanced approach, consistent with long-standing Government policies on sustainable development and previous planning guidelines issued in 2005 under section 28 of the Planning and Development Act. Planning authorities are required to have regard to these guidelines on sustainable rural housing in framing of the planning policies in their development plans and in the assessment of individual planning applications for rural housing. Under the 2005 guidelines, planning authorities are required to adopt a balanced approach that ensures the housing needs of rural communities are met, while avoiding excessive urban-generated housing and haphazard development particularly in those areas near cities and towns that are under pressure from urban-generated development. Accordingly, the NPF provides an important strategic basis for interpreting the 2005 guidelines as its objectives are aligned with the approach already expected of planning authorities under the current guidelines.

It is important to clarify that the Flemish decree was a March 2009 decree of the Flemish region, a federal region within Belgium, on land and real estate policy that made the purchase of long-term lease of all immovable property, for example, all land and buildings, in certain Flemish communes, which are local authority areas, conditional upon there being a sufficient connection between the prospective buyer or tenant and the relevant purchaser. The Flemish decree case refers to the successful challenge against the Flemish decree in the European Court of Justice which ruled that it was disproportionate and also deemed by the ECJ to be in breach of Article 43 of the EU treaty on the freedom of movement of citizens.

The principles of the judgment are being considered in the context of the review of the 2005 guidelines and given the superseding of the NSS by the NPF in 2018, together with the need to address any relevant aspects of the 2013 European Court of Justice ruling, a review is ongoing within my Department.