Planning and development rules to changes in rural and Gaeltacht areas
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Now, big changes are on the way to planning rules that could make it easier for people to build houses in rural areas, including in the Gaeltacht. The guidelines are expected to be approved by Cabinet this very morning. And to talk us through that and the rest of the Cabinet agenda, I'm joined by Conall Thomas, who's political correspondent at the Irish Independent. Conall, these are fairly substantial changes. I mean, the ministers involved, John Cummins and James Brown, and John Cummins will be with us later on in the programme. They describe it as a fundamental shift. Do you think that's fair?
What changes are being proposed for rural housing planning rules?
Yeah, look, the background to all this is that successive housing ministers have been criticised by opposition for not updating these rural housing guidelines for many years and then not publishing them. The aim of this was to bring consistency. Whether this is a game changer or not, I think, remains to be seen and how local authorities interpret it. But the point in all of this, the new guidelines, which we'll go through now in a minute... are going to be brought forward by way of a national planning statement, right? And the point is that kind of trumps a lot of local planning policy. It's top down and local authorities will have to follow it. So it'll be mandatory now whether the department will be able to step in.
If these aren't followed, remains to be seen. But there's a couple of things, aspects to it. I suppose the headline grabbing ones is what you mentioned there, people being able to build a second home. On their own land, that's what you might call backland development. So there'll be, I suppose, an assumption that local authorities have to make is not to block that type of development anymore. 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.
And road frontage then, I know you mentioned that you can build behind your house if you need a second property to downsize, there will be rules in place around that. But the road frontage rule has driven people wild for decades in this country. Is that going as well?
No, the main thing is that it will be the back of a dwelling and that is the main point of this.
Okay, so you won't be able to build in a field back off the road, that's not going to happen, but you'll be able to build behind an existing structure, which might be a derelict structure.
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.
How will the new guidelines impact local authorities?
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?
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:39
2
What changes are being proposed for rural housing planning rules?
0:39–2:51
3
How will the new guidelines impact local authorities?
2:51–5:15
4
What are the implications of allowing backland development?
5:15–6:36
5
What is the controversy surrounding ribbon development?
6:36–10:33