A new €20,000 grant-aid package should be established for anyone who wants “to build a permanent one-off house on their own lands”, according to the Rural Independents Group.
The TDs are also calling for the immediate publication of “the long-promised new rural housing guidelines,” relaxed planning rules for log cabins and new statutory timelines for An Bord Pleanála appeals.
The proposals are among a number set out in a private members’ motion which the Rural Independent Group will bring to the Dáil for debate next week. (Wednesday, May 10).
The TDS believe practical solutions to the “housing crisis” must now be implemented.
According to the leader of the Rural Independents, Tipperary TD Mattie McGrath, rural housing regulations are “overly zealous” and have exacerbated the housing crisis “by blocking many from building on family lands”.
Deputy McGrath said:
“The impetus for our motion is the government’s lack of a coherent and practical strategy to tackle the housing crisis, resulting in incoherence and knee-jerk reactions, which has led to 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.”
He said 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”.
“The current planning laws are so outdated and almost impossible to navigate when it comes to obtaining planning permission for homes such as log cabins.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.,” Deputy McGrath said.