All in this House will agree that Ireland has a housing problem. Many constituents call to my constituency office to complain that they cannot get planning permission to build their dream house because of local needs. If one looks at the advertising in newspapers, the first thing one sees is "subject to planing permission" and then the dreaded words "local needs". I do not think it is fair to stop people living in the countryside. People nowadays will commute to the nearby towns and cities. I live in County Louth, where a home house has to be within a certain radius of the site. In my neighbouring county, County Monaghan, they cannot wait to get people to come and live in the countryside. My questions to the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, are whether we can get rid of local needs provisions and whether we are breaking European law by using the words "local needs".

I thank the Deputy for the question. I have no role in individual planning decisions made by local authorities. In Project Ireland 2040, we have signalled some new aspirations for the country concerning where and how we build our houses. There have been some changes and some comments at the European level that are being reflected upon by the Department at the moment but until such time as those new guidelines come into place, the current guidelines are the law.