Aidan Davitt (Fianna Fail)
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I appreciate the Minister of State coming here today. It has been quite a while since we met in County Kilkenny. I congratulate him on his elevation to this great office.

The Project Ireland 2040 plan goes a long way back and much work has been done on it. Its inception was to iron out some of the problems that may have arisen in the previous plan. It is not just from a development point of view but I fundamentally believe there are serious cracks in this plan, which will unfold in an extreme manner over the next year or two.

I will give one example where I was contacted by a Longford-Westmeath constituent. The Minister of State is familiar with a town called Castlepollard in which there was a development called Cluain Mullan, which is an estate of 30-odd houses. The developer built out his first section of 22 houses and followed on with another eight houses. Between social housing and affordable housing, Westmeath County Council and the community benefited by approximately ten houses out of that 30, which was a great success.

Part of the field, however, was heretofore zoned. It was de-zoned under the previous monster plan to de-zone all these lands that were not in use. This shows an example of a builder who was on a site building but whose lands were de-zoned. He is the only active builder in Castlepollard at present. It is a provincial town, which are graded on their size and development. It is called a grade 3, or category 3, from a development point of view.

This guy can build; he has the wherewithal and he is on site. The development plan has come up in County Westmeath; that is my example. Perhaps, he has four acres left in his field, which was previously zoned but has been taken out. The councillors in Westmeath sought to put it back in, and under the new national framework, Westmeath County Council has said there can be no further developments in towns such as Castlepollard, Kinnegad or all these different towns.

The amount of stuff that has been rejected includes small, piecemeal sections of lands that councillors have sought to zone but have been told "No". This is fundamentally wrong, particularly where a developer is on site building and working with the community. This is crazy; we will never build anything. If they were seeking to build somewhere out the road or elsewhere, well and good, but as part of our greater plan we are trying to encourage people to build in towns and villages.

I am surprised, given the Minister's Green Party background and the areas in which he has been active. I have followed much of the work he has done over the years. This, however, is a no-brainer to get people into settled areas where they have sewerage, water and all the facilities. The councillors had to vote against this, of course, to vary the plan. It will now have to go to the regulator to examine it under the new Act and, possibly, onto the Minister. I do not know. I believe the regulator makes the decision and, perhaps, the Minister looks at it from there.

That is just one example, aside from getting onto one-off housing or anything to that effect. There is, therefore, a fundamental problem if reasonably large towns such as Castlepollard, Moate, Kinnegad or Delvin, which have what were naturally zoned sites in infilled sites, cannot develop in particular sites. The Minister of State will have to review this plan because we said we will build 550,000 houses by 2040.

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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The Senator's four minutes are up.

Aidan Davitt (Fianna Fail)
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Over the last number of years, we built between 15,000 and 18,000 houses. We will have Covid-19 this year and it will be something similar.

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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I must ask the Senator to wrap it up.

Aidan Davitt (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Acting Chairman. I am finished now. We will not hit the target. Unless we look at villages and town such as these and ease up in settled areas, there will be a serious problem and it will come back to haunt all of us. It is evident in the housing market already.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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I will address the national planning framework, NPF, first, if that is okay, because my understanding was that the question particularly related to one-off housing. I will, however, specifically reference the issues the Senator spoke about.

First, to clarify, the national planning framework does not either remove one-off local needs planning for rural houses or impose rezoning or de-zoning population caps. The national planning framework provides important national rural planning policies supporting the growth and regeneration of our rural areas, including new housing for local communities. National policy objective, NPO, 15 of the NPF fully supports the concept of sustainable development of rural areas by encouraging growth and arresting decline in areas that have experienced low population growth or decline in recent decades, such as the Senator spoke about.

NPO 15 is supplemented by national policy objective 19, which aims to ensure that a policy distinction is made between areas experiencing significant overspill development pressure 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 and or declining.

I consider that these NPF objectives represent a balanced approach, consistent with long-standing Government policies on sustainable development and previous planning guidelines. Under the sustainable rural housing guidelines of 2005, planning authorities are required to frame their development plan policies in a balanced and measured way that ensures housing needs of rural communities are met, while avoiding excessive urban-generated housing.

The NPF objectives, together with the 2005 guidelines, therefore, enable planning authorities to continue to draft and adopt county development plan policies for one-off housing in rural areas in a structured and considered manner.

Turning to the anticipated population growth within individual counties, this issue is central to NPF strategy which projects growth in our national population of over 1 million people by 2040. This projection is based on demographic and econometric projections undertaken by the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI. To assist in the preparation of individual city or county development plans, over much shorter six-year timelines, an NPF roadmap circular was issued to all planning authorities in 2018, setting out projected county population ranges for both 2026 and 2031.

Importantly, this approach includes minimum and maximum population growth parameters, which provide flexibility to accommodate factors such as lower or higher migration correlated regarding national economic conditions. These projections provide a targeted base for each planning authority to undertake the statutory development plan review process, some of which are now under way across the country.

The NPF population projections provide a coherent approach whereby, in its development plan, each planning authority has clear population growth parameters to consider on the basis for strategic decision making in the formulation of its core strategy, settlement strategy and housing policies generally. Regarding zoning policies, each planning authority retains the decision-making function whereby county level population target ranges may be translated into geographical zones for housing. Planning authorities must consider such decisions in accordance with national guidelines, regional policy and good planning generally, in particular ensuring there is a strong alignment to the facilities and services needed to support local communities and sustainable employment.

To the core of the point raised by the Senator, I believe he is absolutely right. It is correct to say we should be clustering housing, insofar as we can, in and around existing urban settlements to give capacity but also to unlock the potential in our town centres of buildings that are already there. That is core to what the Government is trying to achieve through the "town centre first" policy, where there is access to services, they are walkable and cycleable, give capacity to our shops and are connected into waste water infrastructure.

In answer to the Senator's question, it is important that local authorities strike that balance between achieving good capacity and building the capacity of our town centres. I believe that is the point the Senator raised.

Aidan Davitt (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister of State. It was a comprehensive answer but there is a problem, which I can tell him as a fact and he can take it out and look at it. In Westmeath, the zoning happening is mainly in Athlone and Mullingar. In all the regional towns, any little projects like that which could be looked at have not been considered this year. The councillors had to use their practicality and went against better advice, which will now be sent to the regulator because they were not part of the development plan drawn up by the executive.

There is a serious problem and this will happen in counties everywhere. Is the Minister of State seeing this anywhere else?

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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It is primarily a matter for the local authority and its members to work on the core strategy with the executive. This is the important point. There is a core strategy in the development plan that is able to give capacity to the smaller towns and villages in the county development plan. All of the development plans are aligned at present and making their way through the process. They have to go through appropriate assessment and the checks and balances that meet national planning framework guidelines. At the core of this is that the local authority needs to strike a good balance to ensure all towns and villages are given the capacity to grow in a sustainable way.

Aidan Davitt (Fianna Fail)
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The national planning framework should be tweaked more towards those smaller towns and villages. They are not part of it. They are numbered and categorised but they really are the orphans in this process. I refer to towns such as Castlepollard and Kinnegad. They should get more priority. We should look at this. It is within the remit of the Minister of State.