Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 19 September 2024
175. Deputy Marian Harkin asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the plans in place to ensure a proportionate number of houses are built in the regions in order to achieve the Government's National Planning Framework numbers; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37086/24]
View answerA cornerstone policy of both the existing and the proposed revised National Planning Framework (NPF) is the achievement of a greater regional balance in population and employment growth. The goal is to see a roughly 50:50 distribution of growth between the Eastern and Midland region, and the respective Southern, and Northern and Western Regions, with 75% of the growth to take place outside of Dublin and its suburbs.
Ministerial Guidelines published under Section 28 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 on ‘Housing Supply Target Methodology for Development Planning’ complement the objectives of the NPF and have introduced a standardised national approach, to be applied by each planning authority in projecting Housing Supply Targets in their Development Plan over the six-year period of each plan.
Specific housing targets for both urban and rural areas in each local authority functional area are currently set out in the respective Core Strategies of the 31 City and County Development Plans (as may be applicable) having regard to the hierarchy of settlements of different scales in each local authority area and informed by the targets contained in the 2018 NPF and reflected in the Regional Spatial and Economic Strategies.
The recent results from Census 2022 shows a national population increase of c.390,000, and c.175,000 of this growth occurred in the two regional areas outside of the EMRA region, a proportional split of 55%/45%.
City-based population and employment growth is an important target for the NPF. NPO2(a) of the strategy sets “A target of half (50%) of future population and employment growth will be focused in the existing five cities and their suburbs” as a means of ensuring cities deliver as ‘accessible centres of scale’. The proportion of national population growth achieved in the period to 2022 in the five cities was 124,543 persons or 32% of overall growth.
In order to achieve the overall increase in city-based population growth, the NPF sets ambitious growth targets to enable the four cities of Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford to each grow by at least 50% to 2040. The draft revised NPF published on July 10th has undergone a 9-week public consultation process and it is envisaged that the final revised NPF will be published in October 2024, once it has been approved by the Oireachtas. As such, it should be noted that the National Planning Framework, as published in 2018, currently remains in effect.
As part of the broader body of work undertaken to inform the draft First Revision to the NPF, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) was engaged to provide updated population projections to 2040, based on demographic and econometric modelling and having regard to the results of Census 2022 and other factors with potential to influence fertility, mortality and migration trends. Under the baseline scenario, the research projects that the population of the State will increase to approximately 5.7 million people by 2030 and 6.1 million by 2040. This projection forms the central core trajectory of projected population growth and underpins the strategy set out in the draft First Revision to the NPF.
The current incremental, and ongoing, shift to more regionally-balanced growth supported by urban centres of scale will be important in ensuring effective regional development and in supporting competitiveness, economic prosperity and environmental sustainability.
