Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein)
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602. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the status of the working group established to review Sustainable Rural Housing Guidelines for Planning Authorities 2005 in view of the Flemish Decree; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32888/20]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Under the Guidelines for Planning Authorities on Sustainable Rural Housing 2005, planning authorities are required to frame the planning policies in their development plans in a balanced and measured way that ensures the housing needs of rural communities are met, while avoiding excessive urban-generated housing.

A working group was established to review and, where necessary, recommend changes to the 2005 Guidelines and met on five occasions between May 2017 and January 2019. During this period, in 2018, the National Planning Framework (the NPF) was published and provides an important strategic basis for interpreting the 2005 Guidelines. National Policy Objective (NPO) 15 of the NPF fully supports the concept of the sustainable development of rural areas by encouraging growth and arresting decline in areas that have experienced low population growth or decline in recent decades, while simultaneously indicating the need to manage certain areas around cities and towns.

The 2005 Sustainable Rural Housing Guidelines are framed in the context of the National Spatial Strategy (NSS) 2002. Given the superseding of the NSS by the National Planning Framework (NPF) in 2018, together with the need to address the potential implications of the 2013 European Court of Justice ruling in the "Flemish Decree" case, there is now merit in updating the Sustainable Rural Housing Guidelines in a broader rural development and settlement context. My Department has commenced scoping this work and I expect a draft by the end of this year.

In the interim, the NPF objectives together with the 2005 Guidelines, enable planning authorities to continue to draft and adopt county development plan policies for one-off housing in rural areas.