Since the adoption of the current County Development Plan the Government have published ‘Rebuilding Ireland: An Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness’. The Plan acknowledges that ensuring sufficient stable and sustained provision of housing that is affordable, in the right locations, meets people’s different needs and is of lasting quality, is one of the greatest challenges facing the country at present.
The County Development Plan must put in place provisions to ensure that there is enough zoned and serviced land, in the right locations, to meet the needs of the planned population of the County. In this regard there are a number of ‘town plans’ included in the County Development Plan, which will contain zoning plans. For the larger towns, which have their own stand alone Local Area Plans, the County Development Plan will indicate how much zoned land is required in these towns. The NPF identifies national core principles to guide the delivery of housing.
National Core Principles to Guide Housing
- Ensure a high standard quality of life to future residents as well as environmentally and socially sustainable housing and placemaking through integrated planning and consistently excellent design.
- Allow for choice in housing location, type, tenure and accommodation in responding to need.
- Prioritise the location of new housing provision in existing settlements as a means to maximising a better quality of life for people through accessing services, ensuring a more efficient use of land and allowing for greater integration with existing infrastructure.
- Tailor the scale and nature of future housing provision to the size and type of settlement where it is planned to be located.
- Integrate housing strategies where settlements straddle boundaries (county and/or regional).
- Utilise existing housing stock as a means to meeting future demand.
(Source: National Planning Framework, 2018)