Thomas Lyons 
The Rural Independents Group has called for the establishment of a new €20,000 grant-aid package for anyone who wants to build a permanent one-off house on their own lands. The group has also urged the immediate publication of “the long-promised new rural housing guidelines” and new statutory timelines for An Bord Pleanála appeals. The proposals are part of a private members’ motion which the Rural Independent Group will bring to the Dáil for debate next week.
The Rural Independents believe that practical solutions to the “housing crisis” must now be implemented. Rural housing regulations are “overly zealous” and have exacerbated the housing crisis “by blocking many from building on family lands”, according to the leader of the Rural Independents, Tipperary TD Mattie McGrath. He also said that the government’s lack of a coherent and practical strategy to tackle the housing crisis has resulted in a dysfunctional planning system and rising costs of construction materials, causing a significant obstacle to house building and a major cost driver of expensive housing.
Deputy McGrath said that there are currently more than 70,000 homes “held up in the planning system due to appeals to An Bord Pleanála or the courts”. The group of TDs also claim that the coalition government has taken “an especially aggressive and unhelpful anti-rural stance on one-off housing”.
Deputy McGrath said that the last set of rural housing guidelines were published 18 years in 2005, which means there is now a lack of a housing policy document. He said this has left local authorities “with no universal roadmap for rural housing policy.” The group of TDs have also blamed the “government’s inactivity” as the key reason behind why some young people have “been forced off the land”.
Deputy McGrath said that the current planning laws are outdated and almost impossible to navigate when it comes to obtaining planning permission for homes such as log cabins. “Equally, the current planning process can take up to four years for a project or applicant to be determined, and An Bord Pleanála has become a dysfunctional organization,” he said.
The Rural Independents Group is hoping that their proposals will be debated in the Dáil next week. They are calling for a more practical approach to the housing crisis, which they say has been exacerbated by overly-zealous rural housing regulations. The group is also calling for the immediate publication of new rural housing guidelines and new statutory timelines for An Bord Pleanála appeals.
The group of TDs have blamed the government’s inactivity as the key reason behind why some young people have “been forced off the land”. They say that the current planning laws are outdated and almost impossible to navigate when it comes to obtaining planning permission for homes such as log cabins. The current planning process can take up to four years for a project or applicant to be determined, and An Bord Pleanála has become a dysfunctional organization.
The Rural Independents Group is hoping that their proposals will be taken seriously and that the government will take action to address the housing crisis in rural areas. They believe that the current system is not working and that a more practical approach is needed to ensure that people can build homes on their own land without facing unnecessary obstacles and delays.
