Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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191. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if local authorities have the power to remove protected structures from the list of protected structures; how this may be done; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39851/15]

Paudie Coffey (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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Section 54 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 , as amended, provides for the deletion by a planning authority of a protected structure from the Record of Protected Structures (RPS) included in the authority’s development plan where the protection of the structure is no longer warranted. Section 55 of the Act provides that, where a planning authority proposes a deletion from the RPS other than in the course of making a development plan, the authority must serve notice of the proposal on each person who is the owner and occupier of the protected structure, notify the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and other prescribed bodies of the proposal, and publish notice of the proposed deletion in at least one newspaper circulating in its functional area. Particulars of the proposed deletion must be available for inspection for a specified period of at least 6 weeks and written submissions or observations on the proposed deletion may be made to the planning authority within that period.

The planning authority must consider any submissions or observations submitted on the proposal made within the requisite period and have regard to any observations received from the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht concerning those submissions or observations. The authority must decide, as a reserved function, whether or not to make the proposed deletion within 12 weeks of the expiry of the requisite period for the making of submissions or observations on the proposals. Notice of the deletion must be served on the owner and on the occupier of the structure within 2 weeks after the structure is deleted from the RPS.

Furthermore, section 2.7 of the Architectural Heritage Protection Guidelines, issued by the then Minister for the Environment to planning authorities in 2004 under section 28 of the Act , states that deletions from the RPS should generally take place only when “ the structure has entirely lost its special interest value through major accident or where new information has come to light which proves that the special interest value was mistakenly attributed. Deletion from the RPS may also come about where it has been decided that a more appropriate method of protecting a particular structure would be by including it within an Architectural Conservation Area. However, in such cases, the planning authority should be confident that the interior of the building is not of special interest before deleting it from the RPS.”