I thank the Senator for his good wishes. We will probably meet in Killarney again soon.
The European Commission wrote to the Department on 27 June this year seeking its views on whether the so-called local needs test contained in a number of county development plans for the granting of planning permission for one-off dwellings in rural areas is compatible with Articles 43 and 56 of the European Community treaty which guarantee respectively the freedom of establishment and the free movement of capital. My Department responded to the Commission's inquiry last week and presented a strong defence of our current rural planning practices and policies.
On the basis of legal advice available to me, I am precluded from publishing either the correspondence from the Commission in respect of inquiries or investigation into possible infringements or the State's responses because these documents are part of legal proceedings. For this reason, I cannot provide specific details of my Department's response to the issues raised by the Commission. Nevertheless, I wish to outline some general points regarding the Government's sustainable rural planning policies.
In line with international best practice, we operate a policy and plan-led planning system which is aimed at providing for proper and sustainable planning in economic, social and environmental terms. Each development plan contains specific policies to ensure the integrity of the environment and local landscapes is preserved and protected and that development is sustainable in terms of its scale and nature, and reflects the local authority housing strategy. The development plan must also have regard to national policies and priorities and its objectives must be compatible with the national spatial strategy and regional planning guidelines.
There is also a need to maintain the rural fabric of our society, to secure more balanced regional development which will facilitate continued economic prosperity in both urban and rural locations and to reverse population decline in more remote rural areas. One of the core objectives of the Department's 2005 sustainable rural housing guidelines for planning authorities has been to achieve a balance between facilitating rural communities to meet their own internal housing requirements by allowing a certain number of new dwellings, and avoiding large-scale and widespread suburbanisation of the countryside through a highly permissive approach to development of houses in rural areas close to the main cities and towns.
The guidelines provide that, in areas under pressure from urban development, reasonable proposals on suitable sites for persons who are part of, and contribute to, the rural community should be accommodated, subject to the proper consideration of matters such as adequate waste water disposal, road safety and design standards. While the guidelines give illustrative examples of those categories of people who may be assessed as having local roots or links, this list is not intended to be exhaustive. Each planning authority carries out its own assessment of the rural housing needs to be catered for, taking account of local conditions and planning issues as appropriate.
The elected members of each planning authority formally adopt their own local needs criteria for inclusion in the development plan. It is appropriate that elected members should exercise this responsibility, in conformity with general national and regional policies and principles, because they are best placed to understand the development pressures and housing needs in their particular areas. Moreover, the local need criteria are among several issues considered by a planning authority when an application for permission to build a single dwelling is submitted. In rural areas not under pressure from urban over-spill and those rural areas that have suffered population decline in recent years, there is a more flexible approach to planning applications in order to facilitate community building and repopulation. In such cases, there are no local needs restrictions but anyone can apply to build a single house, subject to proper planning principles and requirements.
My Department will continue to monitor implementation of sustainable rural planning policies to ensure an appropriate level of consistency in the application of the guidance across all counties. I hope I have indicated to the Senator the strong principles held with regard to local needs and local planning applications.
