Earlier this week, Community Gardens Ireland received some good news that community gardens are set to be defined in Irish law for the first time.

In recent years, Community Gardens Ireland have presented at various Oireachtas Committees on the poor legal status that both allotments and community gardens have in Ireland. As our 2022 “Let’s Get Growing” document detailed, allotments have been included in law largely since 1926.

Community gardens in particular have never been defined in Irish law, and this has caused some issues with some local authorities not planning for community gardens within their development plans. According to a 2020 Local Government Management agency report, 8 local authorities in Ireland didn’t provide any allotments or community gardens.

This is a milestone in our campaign for the provision of more allotments and community gardens across Ireland.

Community Gardens Ireland welcome this announcement. Our organisation have been calling for this as part of a suite of improvements needed to ensure local authorities are providing and planning for allotments and community gardens across Ireland.

A big thank you to Marc Ó Cathasaigh TD, Steven Matthews TD, Minister Malcolm Noonan and Minister Alan Dillon for your support on this.

We look forward to this announcement enabling the government to issue the guidance notes for local authorities on allotments and community gardens, which was originally agreed to be issued by the end of 2023.

Some more details are available here: https://www.greenparty.ie/news/community-gardens-be-written-irish-legislation

For any additional queries for Community Gardens Ireland, please email info@cgireland.org