Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Deputy Leader. I am returning to an issue that I have raised before regarding the national planning framework and how it arrived at its population growth figures, and, more importantly, how those figures were distributed regionally and on a county-wide basis. Something I predicted is now happening live in County Wicklow, as in the first planning application for 98 houses has been refused solely on the grounds that it exceeds the population target for that area. The plan was only adopted in October of last year.

If this same policy is adopted throughout Wicklow, not alone will we have no development in Greystones, Delgany and Newcastle, but we will not have it in Newtown, Ashford, Rathdrum or Roundwood, because we have exceeded our population targets in all those areas. Even Wicklow town, if I did the figures on that, will equally be very close to exceeding its population targets. I identified this as a problem as far back as 2018 or 2019. If this is implemented in the middle of a housing crisis, it is madness in its simplest form. I have called before for a review of the national planning framework, specifically on population targets and growth, and how it is distributed. I am back again looking for that debate to happen because we just cannot allow this to happen. These are towns that have the infrastructure in place. They are not being refused on infrastructure. They are being refused on how a target was set, and they are exceeding that target, and on no other grounds. It cannot stand in the middle of a housing crisis.