I know of a family in Mayo. The mother attended the local primary school in the parish. Her father attended the same local primary school. Her children are now attending the same local school. She sought planning permission to build in the catchment area of that primary school. She was denied on the basis of local planning need. Three generations living in the same area and she was refused planning permission. That is how discriminatory and unfair the planning system is in Ireland. I very much welcome the fact there have been changes and progress is finally being made on this. It is welcome and I support it. I will absolutely fight to make sure the changes will accommodate as many people to live in rural areas as possible, because it was wrong. For too long, we had a planning system that prevented people living. We have a situation in the planning system where families have to go through report after report for bats and environmental report after environmental report. There is no report done, however, on the council's or Government's side to see whether this family need a house and what the impact is on this family and all of the families across Ireland who want nothing from the State except to be left alone and be allowed to build in their local areas. I welcome the progress and I urge the Minister of State to get on with the implementation of that. In respect of the auxiliary units, the modular units, this was first spoken about over a year ago in the Dáil and I welcomed that at the time. I am still waiting for the legislation and the guidelines to be published. We talk about delays, and I welcome some aspects of this Bill because the Minister of State is trying to address the delays, but we have been waiting for this to be published for over a year now. We know, broadly speaking, that the units may be 40 sq. m but there is no insight. People are ringing me, families are phoning me and builders are phoning me asking me what is happening and we do not know. There has been delay after delay. This is a crisis and I believe it is time that Deputy Cummins, as the Minister of State who is working in the Department of housing, actually realised it is a crisis. I want to talk about the Bill in relation to the county development plans and the ten-year timeframe. I understand there is some value to this in terms of processing time and speeding up the timeframes. However, I have concerns and I want to register them here on the floor of the Dáil. I will give an example. A council term lasts for five years and if we are now moving to a situation where county development plans will last for ten years, then obviously that plan should be in line with the new council and the new mandate. If the people of a local area vote out the councillors because they are not happy with the work they are doing or with the development plan, then the new council should have the mandate to change that plan. That is a big concern I have. What is the point in having an election if there will be no impact? The truth is that local government has been downgraded to such an extent that councillors have virtually no power. Now we will see the power they have in terms of development plans being pushed further out and that is a big concern. I ask that changes, flexibility and amendments be allowable. In Mayo, we have a county development plan that was produced in 2022, before I was elected to the council or the Dáil. My understanding is that this plan was supported by all of the councillors in Mayo at the time. It was ratified on 29 June 2022. Now we are stuck with this development plan until 2028. The big problem with this plan is that it classifies huge parts of the east, south and north of the county as being preferred for wind turbine developments. Now the councillors have realised that they no longer support the plan and want to see changes to it. My fear is that if we elongate the duration of county development plans, it will prevent councillors making changes. I urge the Minister of State to ensure councillors have the flexibility and ability to make amendments and so on because that is important. A new council should have the ability and flexibility to change the plan significantly. In relation to key towns with a population of under 10,000 for the purposes of development, funding and so on, the problem is if there is a ten-year plan and the population grows beyond that. There should be a level of indexing within that plan whereby if the population goes above 10,000, it should still be considered a key town. I was going to talk about wind turbines as well but my time is up.

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