Limerick TD calls for relaxation of rural planning rules
16 May 2016
Deputy om Neville has called for the liberalisation of planning laws to allow farmers sell sites to prospective buyers in rural areas
Colm Wardcolm.ward@limerickleader.ie
LOCAL Fine Gael TD Tom Neville has called for the liberalisation of planning laws to allow farmers sell sites to prospective buyers in rural areas.
This was one of the measures proposed by Mr Neville to ease to financial pressure on farmers due to the current low price of milk.
Speaking in the Dail, he pointed out that many farmers in Co Limerick were “hurting” due to low milk prices. “However the same product continues to maintain its pricing to the consumer,” he added.
“Meanwhile materials involved in production such as feed products, fertilizer and silage sheeting have all maintained their pricing if not increased.”
He called for a number of measures to help farmers get through these financial difficulties, including relaxing planning rules to make it easier for farmers to sell sites.
“The current planning guidelines were born and are in situ since the time of the building boom over 10 years ago. They do not mirror the current happenings on the ground in the likes of Co Limerick.
”The liberalisation of these planning laws would make it easier for more people to access a place in rural Ireland, thus enhancing the communities. It will also offer the landholder an option selling sites to offset against current financial stress,” he said.
Mr Neville also called for improved broadband in rural areas, noting that: “farmers are being encouraged to make their submissions online to speed up their payments but the access to rural broadband is not adequate in allowing them do so”. And he stressed the need for a “positive inspection environment for the agricultural sector”. “Inspection bureaucracy must be examined in a lean approach with a view to removing any surplus criteria.”
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Stephen
Cooney
18:06, 16 May 2016
Very short minded thinking. Firstly this will only help these farmers in the short term, but secondly and more importantly the worse knock on effect of this idea is it will lead to an increase in one off rural housing. This is the main reason rural villages and towns are in a decline at the moment and are under serviced with guards, public transport, shops, high speed broadband etc because it costs too much to provide these services to sparsely populated rural areas. Furthermore it's been shown that most people who live in one off rural housing tend to work and shop in the larger cities (in this case Limerick) and will not add much to the local community. Making it easier to allow farmers to sell land immediately near existing villages and towns should be promoted but continuing the building of one off rural housing throughout the country needs to be vastly reduced.
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