Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for the response he has delivered on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Humphreys. I welcome the fact that there is dialogue. The Minister, Deputy Humphreys, tends to take a very commonsense approach to things. I am happy that her officials are engaged in dialogue with local authorities to keep the scheme under review. All I ask of the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, is to ensure my proposition today becomes part of that dialogue. I ask for it to be stress-tested and looked at by officials. I take the point that it is unfortunately just not possible to provide a laneway to one farmer’s place alone. Taking that as a given, I refer to a situation in which there is another house or a number of houses. In theory, as it stands, you could have three or four houses on a 0.5 acre site, as well as a farmer, but they would not qualify because they would not reach the qualifying criteria of having 1 ha. It does need to be reviewed. I hope the Minister of State can assure me that he can convey to the Minister what I am attempting to get across and, more importantly, that it is included in the process that is ongoing within the Department.