Housing guidelines designed with elections in mind, say opposition

THE new guidelines on one-off houses will not solve the rural planning problems and were only designed to give the Government a boost in upcoming local elections, opposition politicians said yesterday.

Labour's environment spokesman Eamon Gilmore said the guidelines were issued in a vacuum and the department had little information on one-off housing when it appeared before an Oireachtas Committee recently.

"They had little information about the number of houses being built in rural areas, the size of the houses, for whom they are being built and their purpose." The department did confirm yesterday that they do not have the figures on the exact number of one-off houses build in recent years the Central Statistics Offices compiles them.