Yes: Josephine O’Neill: Liberalising the rural planning guidelines to allow for one-off housing, particularly for young people from farming backgrounds building on family-owned land, is a vital step to securing the future of rural Ireland

The recent publication of Census 1926 was met with a frenzied interest in the life of our ancestors. I, like many others, searched for my grandparents. Both of my grandfathers were recorded there. Like many others, both were farmers’ sons and later farmers themselves. Life in rural Ireland during my grandfathers’ time was undoubtedly vastly different from the landscape we now find ourselves in and the publication of this census amid mutterings of potential changes to rural planning guidelines compelled me to consider not just the differences but also the similarities that myself and my grandparents experienced as rural young people beginning their journey through life.

I remember my paternal grandad sharing stories of the horse and plough. Making hay or harvesting wheat would have taken a village in his time, with extended family and neighbours all lending a hand. One hundred years ago more than half the labour force was working on the land and consequently help was always on hand. Cue technological developments and societal change and today, just 4 per cent of the workforce is employed directly in the agricultural sector. Farming is now an increasingly isolated occupation. The sector is experiencing severe labour shortages, not to mention an ageing labour force, with just 4.3 per cent of farmers under the age of 35. The granting of planning permission for one-off rural housing, not just for the farmer or successor but to other family members, is vital to ensuring a necessary support network is maintained.

And while planners and professors may warn of housing sprawl or the return of bungalow blitz, we are not asking for rogue one-off houses but considered, well-thought-out liberalisation of the rural planning guidelines. Cost of services is repeatedly flagged as a concern should the guidelines be relaxed but our young people are and have always been willing to pay for connections to services. Environmental impacts linked to greater reliance on personal transport is another common argument yet........

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