The Government has been accused of advancing rural planning reforms without establishing how many extra homes they might produce, according to Sinn Féin spokesperson on Rural Affairs, Community Development and the Gaeltacht, Conor D. McGuinness TD.

The Waterford TD made the comments after questioning Minister of State John Cummins at the Oireachtas Housing Committee about the Draft Sustainable Rural and Gaeltacht Housing National Planning Statement.

Teachta McGuinness said: "I agree with the Minister that we need to move from a restrictive approach to rural planning to one that facilitates people to build homes and remain in their communities.

"But ultimately, delivery has to be the test. The question is: how many additional homes will this actually help to deliver.

"I asked the Minister what analysis his Department had carried out on the expected increase in housing delivery as a result of these proposed changes.

-- Advertisement --

"His answer was stark. There is no projection. There is no target. There is no estimate of the additional number of homes that this policy is expected to facilitate.

"Nobody is asking the Minister to guarantee a particular number of houses. It would be unfair and unrealistic to hold a Government to an exact figure when housing delivery depends on many factors.

"But it is entirely reasonable to expect the Department to have done the basic analysis and to have some projection of the impact these changes are expected to have.

"We are 15 years into a housing crisis. People in rural Ireland have been waiting years for a meaningful change to the restrictive planning regime. This policy has been presented by Government as a major intervention.

"Yet the Department cannot tell us how many additional homes it expects that intervention to deliver.

"That raises serious questions about how ambitious this policy actually is.

"I have been consulting with people working in construction and planning, and the feedback is that these changes may only make a meaningful difference in a relatively small number of cases.

"We don't know yet whether that assessment is correct. But that is precisely why the Department should have carried out the analysis.

"Government needs to be able to demonstrate that this is more than a change in planning language. Rural families need homes, rural communities need new people, and Ireland needs more housing.

"The success of this policy will ultimately be measured not by the wording of a planning statement, but by whether more people are actually able to build homes and whether more homes are actually delivered in rural Ireland."