Cónal Thomas
speaker
418 appearances
4 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 15 Sep
Cónal Thomas’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Because, you know, there've been a lot of complaints over years about this type of development, you know, whether you can see it from the road, etc.
But it's basically easing that to allow people potentially to downsize on their own land, particularly, say, if you're a farmer.
The other thing would be ribbon development.
Ribbon development is something that's been quite controversial for many years and was kind of tamped out, I suppose, in the early 2000s with the proliferation of, you know, houses along single roads.
Some local authorities don't allow more than four along one stretch, five, six.
Again, they're now saying, don't block that, allow more of that.
So those are the two other things.
No, the main thing is that it will be the back of a dwelling and that is the main point of this.
Could be indeed, yeah.
If that's where you want it to happen.
I think, look, one of the things around this, both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil backbenchers have been agitating this for a long time, particularly the definition of a farmer.
And that's something that they've really kind of honed in on is that the definitions among local authorities of who has a social or economic need are just too tight.
So they're basically looking at two criteria here.
So a person basically looking to build a new single rural house will have to show either social need, meaning they have to have strong ties to an area,
And they'd be able to build a new house, but it must generally be 10 kilometres from where they currently live or originally from.
Now, there's also rules around the number of years that you would be, as it were, associated with a particular area.
But you could grow up there and have gone abroad and come back and you might still meet that criteria.
The other one that I suppose they're broadening the definition of is the economic need, right?
So that would apply to people whose main job depends on living on a rural area.
And that could be farming, could be equine, could be forestry, could be working in essential services, local schools, teachers, etc.
Showing 141–160 of 418 · page 8 of 21
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