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

I thank Senator Boylan for raising this very important issue. To provide some background, under the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended, all development, unless specifically exempted under the Act or associated regulations, requires planning permission. Various exemptions from the requirement to obtain planning permission are set out in the Act and regulations and these exemptions are subject to compliance with general restrictions on exemptions set out in the Act and regulations. Included among the planning exemptions are those applying to the installation of solar infrastructure on a variety of building types including houses, business premises and industrial and agricultural buildings, to which specific conditions are attached. My Department, in the context of the climate action plan and in consultation with the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications, has undertaken a review of the existing solar panel planning exemptions set out in the regulations, with a particular focus on facilitating increased self-generation of electricity and in recognition of the limitations of the current exemptions. This review is now complete. Substantial changes to the current planning exemption thresholds for solar panels are proposed, in addition to the introduction of new classes of solar panel planning exemptions relating to their use in apartments and in educational, community and religious buildings.

In light of the need to appropriately address aviation safety concerns arising from the glint and glare impacts of solar panels and the easing of the solar panel planning exemption thresholds, my Department is in the process of commissioning the development of detailed aviation safeguarding maps which will identify and delineate specific but limited areas in the vicinity of airports and aerodromes, referred to as exclusion zones, within which the exemptions will not apply. Project scoping feedback has been received from interested parties through the draft request for tender process and has been considered by my Department in the development of the final tender documentation. My Department intends to publish the call for tender imminently.

While this work is ongoing, my Department has advanced interim regulations, adopting a temporary, albeit more stringent, approach incorporating initial defined exclusion zones around airports and aerodromes. These interim regulations, allowing for increased solar panel planning exemptions, will cover the vast majority of the land area of the country, only excluding those limited exclusion zones around airports and aerodromes.

The draft interim regulations have been reviewed under the strategic environmental assessment, SEA, directive, 2001/42/EC, and it is considered that they are likely to have significant effects on the environment, thereby necessitating the undertaking of a full SEA on the draft proposals. The Senator referred to this in the context of the need for a robust planning system. The completion of the SEA screening stage has been delayed by a further requirement for completion of screening for appropriate assessment, AA, under the habitats directive, by my Department's ecological assessment unit. Once this AA screening process is complete, a formal SEA process will commence with scoping of the SEA. Following the latter, the SEA environmental report will be published alongside draft interim regulations for a period of public consultation of not less than four weeks. This public consultation is expected to commence in December. Written submissions or observations will be taken into consideration before finalisation of the draft interim regulations in the first quarter of 2022.

As required under planning legislation, the proposed exempted development regulations must be laid in draft form before the Houses of the Oireachtas and receive a positive resolution from both Houses before they can be made and the SEA process concluded. Accordingly, the process for finalising the interim solar panel planning exemptions as referred to above, with interim exclusion zones around airports and aerodromes and allowing for the vast majority of the country to be covered by the exemptions, is now expected to be completed in early 2022.

Work on the development of the aviation safeguarding maps for airports and aerodromes is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2022. The final supplementary set of regulations, which will delineate the final exclusion areas around airports and aerodromes in which the exemptions will not apply, will be prepared thereafter and, subject to environmental reporting considerations, will subsequently be laid in draft form before the Houses of the Oireachtas for approval.