Galway East TD Seán Canney has defended ‘one-off’ rural housing as a way of helping rural communities to survive.
He argues that a house in a rural area allows someone to have a home in a location of their choice and it also enables them to continue to live and raise a family in their own community.
The Independent TD said that people will argue that this type of rural development is contrary to good planning and that houses should only be built in towns and villages.
“But the reality is that many of our towns and villages cannot accommodate houses because they do not possess wastewater services,” said Deputy Canney.
“We cannot allow our rural areas to die, we cannot allow our communities to die”.
Deputy Canney pointed out that the Flemish Decree case taken in the European Court of Justice decided that restrictions on where people lived breached the Treaty on the free movement of citizens.
“I am adamant that Irish people have the same rights of free movement and certainly local people have the right to remain living in their own communities,” he said.
“I am also concerned that bodies like TII are also dictating who can build and where people can build which is giving them unwarranted powers.”
