[Article] Cullen 'ignored' planners in housing guidelines

Victor

http://home.eircom.net/content/unison/national/1448664?view=Eircomnet

Political storm building over Ahern U-turn on rural homes
From:The Irish Independent
Friday, 12th September, 2003
Alison O'Connor and Treacy Hogan

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern yesterday sparked a nationwide political storm after he signalled a radical shift in Government policy in relation to one-off housing around the country.

In a remarkable U-turn on official Government policy, Mr Ahern said current restrictions were "too severe" and the controversial issue topped the political agenda nationwide.

In comments which infuriated environmental groups, the Taoiseach said he strongly supported people in rural areas who wanted to build one-off houses on their farms.

It was the first time Mr Ahern gave public backing to Community, Rural, and Gaeltacht Affairs Minister Eamon O Cuiv who has long argued for a relaxation of the planning laws.

But the comments sparked an angry reaction. Labour accused Mr Ahern of currying favour in the countryside with a "nod and wink policy".

An Taisce, which has been championing the campaign against rural one-off houses, warned that it was a planning "timebomb".

The Taoiseach said that the matter was raised at half of the workshops held at the parliamentary party meeting in Sligo.

He said the Government would have to look at the current planning and development legislation, although he was not convinced the situation could be improved through legislative change.

"I'm strongly in support of the case," he said, adding that Minister O'Cuiv represented Fianna Fail's views on the issue.

He said there was no case for refusing permission to land owners in the heart of rural Ireland for housing for family members, forcing them to move out of their areas when Government policy was to ensure the viability of rural communities.

Labour's environment spokesman Eamon Gilmore last night unleashed a furious attack on the Taoiseach.

"He is saying to the guys with the sites for sale 'I'm right with ye boys, go ahead and apply for planning permission,' while the Government is telling Bord Pleanala that large scale development in the countryside is not acceptable," said Mr Gilmore.

He called on Environment Minister Martin Cullen to issue a comprehensive statement on the matter.

Inappropriate one-off housing was causing serious water contamination from septic tanks and new road safety risks from thousands of extra entrances, he said.

The Labour spokesman alleged an increasingly unpopular taoiseach was "trying to curry favour in the countryside."

At the end of the two-day Fianna Fail 'think-in' in Sligo, Mr Ahern said the issue was arguably the biggest issue at the moment around Ireland, and also a very divisive one.

Michael Smith, An Taisce chairman, warned that one-off housing was causing major environmental problems such as water contamination from septic tanks.

Victor

Discusssion here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=114986

Victor

http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/breaking/1600495?view=Eircomnet

Anger over rural housing and rental sector
From:ireland.com
Thursday, 2nd October, 2003

The Taoiseach has been accused of making contradictory statements about one-off housing in rural areas and local authorities have been attacked for failing to exercise their duty to register landlords.

The criticisms come on a day the Central Bank warned that the housing market in Ireland is in danger of collapse.

The Irish Rural Dwellers Association (IRDA) today said the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, had performed a "u-turn" in a Dáil statement when he agreed with the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen's view that the building of homes in rural areas should be restricted to local landowners and their immediate families.

IRDA spokesman, Mr Declan MacPartlin, said he was "shocked" that just two weeks after backing a relaxation of current restrictions, Mr Ahern was now behind a regime which is "even more restrictive than that indicated in the National Spatial Strategy".

He said Mr Cullen was also contradicting earlier statements and that of Minister of State for Rural Development Mr Eamon O'Cuiv.

"Members of this Government appear to have diametrically opposed views on rural housing," Mr MacPartlin said. However the IRDA have widespread support among local authority politicians, he added.

Meanwhile, Labour Party justice spokesman, Mr Joe Costello hit out at local authorities' failure to regulate the rental sector, accusing them of "hypocrisy and double standards".

Speaking in the Dáil, the Dublin Central TD said local authorities were required to register landlords under legislation introduced in the mid-90s. However, "they simply did not exercise their duty on the implementation of the law", Mr Costello said.

He pointed out that the legislation was self-financing because the local authority was entitled to charge a registration fee of £40 per unit of accommodation.

"Compare this with the rush to implement the legislation on waste collection ... the ink was scarcely dry on when the Dublin local authorities threatened dire consequences ... and Fingal County Council put a TD in jail for a month.

"We will have to wait a long time to see a landlord in jail for a month for evicting a family," Mr Costello said.

He said hundreds of thousands of people who cannot afford to buy were being discriminated against as a consequence.

The authorities' failure to implement the provision meant the opportunity to ensure good standards and tax compliance had been lost, he added.

Victor

http://home.eircom.net/content/unison/national/2288133?view=Eircomnet

Top composer decries new plans to allow one-off houses
From:The Irish Independent
Friday, 2nd January, 2004
Martha Kearns


COMPOSER Andrew Lloyd Webber, who has a home in this country, has criticised government plans which will allow thousands of one-off houses to be built in the countryside.

He wants a return to a proposal of former Taoiseach Charles Haughey that grants for new buildings should only be given if they fit in with the landscape.

The composer of Cats and Phantom of the Opera told the Irish Independent that Ireland's landscape was already marred by some of the most "hideous and inappropriate housing anywhere in the world".

He said he was "gobsmacked" to read that planning regulations were set to be dramatically changed to allow thousands of one-off houses to be built.

Environment Minister Martin Cullen's proposals for more a more liberal approach to planning has infuriated environmentalists.

Mr Lloyd Webber said he realised there were few things more infuriating than "some outsider pontificating about the affairs of another country.

"But I plead a huge affection for Ireland and it grieves me to see such a special landscape besmirched by houses that have absolutely no sympathy for local vernacular architecture whatsoever," he said yesterday.

The multi-millionaire, who owns the 12th century Kiltinan Castle in Co Tipperary, said it was clear it was the fabric of Irish life to have a rural house with a plot of land.

"But I would urge that the new building must be in keeping with local tradition, unless of course the builder is aiming to create something modern that is a work of art."

He understood that when Mr Haughey was in government, there was a proposal that grants for new buildings would only be given to those designs that respected the local tradition and used appropriate materials.

"This initiative should be re-examined if there really is a need for new housing on the scale suggested."

He said we should take an example from Mallorca which introduced strict planning laws that recognised the need for new and low cost housing while respecting the Mallorcan landscape and tradition.

"Even window shutters can only be painted in certain colours. The result is that Mallorca's reputation is hugely on the up," he said

He added that over the Christmas period, British TV had been blitzed with an advertising campaign promoting Ireland as a holiday destination with most of the ads citing the Irish countryside as the prime reason for a visit.

But there seemed to be no connection being made between the challenges facing the Irish tourist industry and bad planning permission decisions, he said. The Friends of the Irish Environment said the erosion of planning controls was a "frightening concession to populist demands.

"It flies in the face of all professional advice and will ultimately cost the environment dearly. His (Minister Cullen) sole concern appears to be aesthetics, which is the least serious of the consequences this decision will cause," said spokesperson Tony Lowes.

Victor

http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0304/planning.html

Cullen announces new planning scheme
March 4, 2004

(18:28) New guidelines aimed at greatly reducing the overturning of planning permission for one off housing have been introduced by the Minister for the Environment, Martin Cullen.

Martin Cullen says that the current overturn rate of 76% should be reduced to around 10%.

He says the guidelines will ensure that people who are born in an area, who live in an area and who contribute to an area will be entitled to build a home there.

Mr Cullen's stated aim is to ensure that both local authorities and An Bord Pleanála adopt a more 'positive and pro-active approach' in dealing with rural housing.

The new guidelines, which follow a year-long review, are contained in a 50-page document.

The guidelines will replace the previous Government rural housing strategy as outlined in the 1997 document 'Sustainable Development'. Minister Cullen believes this policy was 'interpreted over-rigidly' by the planning authorities.

The Green Party has said the new guidelines issued are a recipe for a bungalow blitz in the countryside.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/2004/03/04/story136888.html

Cullen announces one-off housing regulations
04/03/2004 - 12:43:52 pm

Environment Minister Martin Cullen has announced the new regulations governing the construction of one-off houses in rural areas.

The regulations stipulate that people who live in an area or contribute to the locality should be entitled to build a one-off house in that area.

Local authorities throughout the country have mounted crackdowns on the proliferation of one-off houses in rural areas, a move that has been criticised by the Taoiseach and the Minister for Rural Affairs.

Environmental groups and planning authorities argue that such houses are unsustainable and detrimental to the beauty of the Irish countryside.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/2004/03/04/story136884.html

Lobby group welcomes one-off housing plans
04/03/2004 - 12:22:36 pm

The Irish Rural Link lobby group has welcomed moves to ease restrictions on the construction of one-off houses in the countryside.

Environment Minister Martin Cullen is set to announce an easing of the restrictions later today.

Despite welcoming the expected announcement, Irish Rural Link said a Rural Housing Commission should also be established to ensure that any increase in one-off houses did not impact the environment adversely.

Victor

http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/topstories/2670768?view=Eircomnet

Blanket ban on one-off housing ruled out
From:ireland.com
Thursday, 4th March, 2004

Draft guidelines on housing in the countryside due to be published today will not impose a blanket ban restricting one-off houses in rural areas to people engaged in farming, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor.

The guidelines attempt to strike a balance between genuine housing need and the goal of restraining urban-generated housing in rural areas, particularly in the vicinity of cities and towns.

According to sources, the guidelines will not be a recipe for a free-for-all on one-off houses, but neither will they impose a blanket ban restricting such housing to those directly involved in agriculture.

The document being issued by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, draws together for the first time a range of different constraints on rural housing, such as drainage, road access and protection of heritage areas.

It recognises that the debate on one-off houses has become extremely polarised, partly because planners have failed to communicate with the wider public and are perceived as being overly rigid in their application of existing rules.

Last September, the Taoiseach said there was "no justification" for preventing the sons and daughters of farmers building houses on their land. This was arguably "the biggest issue around Ireland at the moment", he declared.

Mr Ahern also said that the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Mr Ó Cuív, represented the Fianna Fáil view in championing the cause of rural housing against environmental groups and the planning authorities.

Fine Gael also endorsed a more liberal approach. Mr Tom Hayes TD, chairman of its parliamentary party, said he was "delighted that the Government has finally decided to take action on this issue". He said he had been campaigning on behalf of the thousands who want to "build a home in their native area".

Victor

http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/breaking/2670868?view=Eircomnet

Housing guidelines will not allow 'bungalow blitz' - Cullen
From:ireland.com
Thursday, 4th March, 2004



People who want to build one-off houses in the countryside will not suddenly be allowed to build "on top of a mountain or beside a lake" in a scenic area, despite new planning guidelines, the Minister for the Environment has insisted.

Those with "rural links" are to be accommodated in the building of one-off houses in the countryside under the Sustainable Rural Housing guidelines published this morning. But Mr Cullen said the guidelines, which critics have already suggested will allow a 'free-for-all' in terms of one-off rural housing, will not allow for a "bungalow blitz".

Mr Cullen said there were areas of the countryside that needed to be repopulated and that issues such as tourism, new sources of income for those working in agriculture and other economic concerns had to be taken into account when considering planning applications for housing.

"People who are born in an area, who live in an area and who contribute to an area will be entitled to build their home in that area", Mr Cullen said. He said that in the interests of sustaining population levels in the future, planning authorities are "required under the guidelines to ensure that any demand for housing in rural areas which are suffering from population decline is, subject to good planning practice, accommodated".

"To those who might argue that these guidelines open the 'floodgates' by abandoning any sense of a planned approach to rural housing I would respond that it is more than reasonable that persons who are an intrinsic part of and contribute to the rural community should be accommodated by our planning system.

"The guidelines make it clear, however, that housing development in rural areas should complement rather than dominate its natural surroundings."

He said about one-third of people overall live in the countryside, with a much higher proportion than that in some parts, especially the midlands and the west. "People will continue to live in rural areas for the foreseable future," he said. "We owe it to rural communities to support the future vibrancy of all rural areas."

On so-called Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), designated as such for their scenery, wildlife or other environmental value, Mr Cullen said he did not believe the planning authorities should "prevent anything from happening" in those areas. Ireland had a need for sustainable energy, such as wind farms. However, he said he was "not suggesting for one minute that you turn around and you concrete over SACs".

Mr Cullen said he did not want to see a "bungalow blitz" as it has been referred to in the media. But the guidelines took account of a changing environment, he said. The minister said the "necessary environmental safeguards" would continue to be implemented. However, he was satisfied that previous guidelines on rural housing "have sometimes be operated over-rigidly, in a way that has not always been in the best interests of the rural community".

He said the new policy was "not a panacea for everybody to do what they like" and he urged those looking for planning permission to seek advice from architects. He added that applicants for housing in rural areas must still meet normal planning requirements in relation to matters such as the proper disposal of waste water and road safety. The guidelines also include recommendations concerning site selection and design of rural houses.

Mr Cullen said he did not want to see clusters of rural housing being used for just two weeks of the year as holiday homes. Questioned on one-off housing and strings of bungalows along stretches of scenic coastline, he said that just because there was housing along the coastline didn't mean "there's something wrong with it".

The minister has ordered planning authorities and An Bord Pleanala to take the guidelines "on board" straight away, although they are still in draft form and subject to a public consultation process.

The guidelines can be downloaded at www.environ.ie or www.irishspatialstrategy.ie

http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/breaking/2673366?view=Eircomnet

Housing guidelines election-driven - Opposition
From:ireland.com
Thursday, 4th March, 2004



Fine Gael has given "a guarded welcome" to new guidelines on rural housing published by the Minister for the Environment today.

The party's environment spokesman, Mr Bernard Allen, added that the guidelines "obviously signal the start of the local election and European election campaigns".

Mr Allen said: "In the case of one-off rural housing, good planning practice and environmental protection that create sustainable rural communities are vital.

"In giving a guarded welcome to the announced guidelines, one must be mindful that this is an election year and also bear in mind that the National Spatial Strategy announced two years ago lies dormant at the present time and the decentralisation programme is becoming bogged down simply because public servants were not consulted adequately before the premature announcement."

Mr Allen said today's guidelines "obviously signal the start of the local election and European election campaigns".

The Labour Party's environment spokesman Mr Eamon Gilmore said the draft planning guidelines had more to do with "keeping an eye on the forthcoming elections than [with] the planning of housing in the country".

"These draft guidelines have been introduced in the absence of any serious research or analysis done into the reality of rural housing. These guidelines are only a draft and it is misleading to suppose that they will have an immediate or any impact on decisions made by planners in individual cases," he said.

"The Labour Party will be studying these guidelines very carefully and will respond once completed."

Cork

Our capital city is a disgrace - a prime example of dire planning with people commuting many miles to work.

In prefamine times - millions lived in rural Ireland.

But I would tax holiday homes. They are driving the locals out of the market.

Victor

http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/topstories/3027765?view=Eircomnet

Planning guidelines 'nightmare' warning
From:ireland.com
Saturday, 17th April, 2004

Regional planning guidelines currently being drafted represent the removal by stealth of the power of local authorities to develop their counties, a conference was told yesterday.

Addressing delegates at the 21st annual Local Authority Members Association (LAMA) conference in Ennis, Cllr Brian Fitzgerald, of Meath Co Council, said: "These guidelines come with a major health warning and if you read them closely, the guidelines will do nothing other than to over-rule county development plans."

Cllr Fitzgerald claimed that the guidelines pose the greatest danger to the development of counties by elected council members and officials. He said: "If the drawing up of these guidelines are not policed carefully by regional authority members, we will have serious problems."

Cllr Fitzgerald claimed the drawing up of the regional planning guidelines are being driven by consultants and some public officials who base their plans on theory and have no understanding of the practicalities councillors face and the needs of ordinary people.

He said: "They don't give any real logical reason for many of their proposals and the guidelines could become a planners' nightmare."

During a question and answer session however, the assistant secretary in development and planning at the Department of the Environment, Ms Mary Moylan, said the regional planning guidelines are critical to achieve the objectives contained in the National Spatial Strategy.

She said: "That is why they are so important and a lot of work is going into their adoption at the moment. The Act requires that local authorities must have regard to the guidelines and that means that the guidelines cannot be ignored."

The head of planning at Clare Co Council, Mr Ger Dollard, said that much of the national debate on planning has focused on one-off housing in the countryside. However, Mr Dollard said that houses by themselves will not rejuvenate the countryside.

Earlier, the chairman of the Association of Health Boards, Cllr Jack Bourke, told delegates that abolishing health boards and replacing them with a monolithic health executive was a retrograde step.

Victor

http://www.rte.ie/business/2004/0422/planning.html

Spatial plan 'victim of expediency'

April 22, 2004 09:34
The president of the Irish Planning Institute has said the National Spatial Strategy has been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.

Iain Douglas was speaking on the opening day of the National Planning Conference in Mullingar.

Mr Douglas said the planning agenda in Ireland was still being driven by short-term perspectives.


He accused the Government of equivocating in its acceptance of the spatial strategy through 'the overtly political gerrymandering of decentralisation' and the guidelines on rural housing.

Mr Douglas said investment in water and sewerage infrastructure in rural towns and villages was being negated by what he called a free-for-all for housing in the countryside.

He said the rural housing issue was just one aspect of a broader issue relating to the poor quality of much of our urban residential development and under investment in smaller towns and villages.

'On this basis, the commitment of Government to long-term strategic planning has to be questioned, as does the political will to redress regional imbalance in Ireland,' he said.

Victor

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2091-1078867,00.html

Focus: Bungalow kill
Why is An Taisce being dubbed the Ku Klux Klan of planning in rural Ireland? John Burns investigates

An Taisce is a “pariah” that behaves like the Ku Klux Klan and wants to shut down rural Ireland and “make people live on top of each other like rats”. It is “a monster”, a group of faceless, undemocratic, arrogant, elitists. Or it is like the British landlords who evicted tenants in the 19th century.
In Britain, the National Trust is a well-regarded bunch of tweedy types who look after historic buildings. So what has An Taisce done to deserve such vilification?

This kind of thing: When Caroline Sweeney from Beaufort, Co Kerry, got pregnant, her parents gave her a site from the family homestead of 13 acres so she could build a house. Sweeney got permission from the local council for a three-bedroom bungalow, but somebody living 23 miles away objected on environmental grounds and the permission was overturned by An Bord Pleanala.

The Sweeneys changed the plan, reapplied, got planning permission from Kerry County Council, but the environmentalist objected again, and this was upheld too. A third time the Sweeneys changed the location of the proposed house, redesigned it, reapplied, got planning permission. A third time the environmentalist challenged and won.

Caroline Sweeney eventually gave up and bought a site 10 miles away, even though she works in a factory seven minutes’ drive from her parents’ house. The whole frustrating process took five years and cost about €15,000.

“What happened really galls me,” says Mary Sweeney, Caroline’s mother. “My daughter was born and brought up here; she comes here every day to drop off her child for me to mind; she works just up the road. Yet she can’t build a house here. She has been hunted out of her own area by people who are out of touch with reality.”

Actually, An Taisce was not involved in the Sweeney case — the objector was a former member — but try telling that to Joe Public. Because the environmental body has blocked planning permission for dozens of one-off houses in similar circumstances, it tends to be blamed even when it has not stepped in.

And even some of those who accept that An Taisce is right to object to one-off housing in the countryside are unhappy with the organisation’s preachy approach. The trust should be winning over the public, not persecuting it, Senator Martin Mansergh said recently.

An accusation by Ian Lumley, An Taisce’s heritage officer, that farmers were indulging in “fraud and corruption on a national basis” in order to get planning permission infuriated rural Ireland. Even An Taisce would admit that its public relations has been woeful of late.

As local and European elections loom, the government realises that taming An Taisce can be a vote-winner. It has revised the rules on one-off housing to ensure that farmers’ children can build houses on their own land.

The Department of the Environment, which recently cut An Taisce funding, is also planning to set up a new national trust, similar to the English and Scottish versions. Indecon, a consultancy firm, has been hired to examine how trusts work in other countries and to report back with recommendations. New legislation is promised by the end of next year.

In response, An Taisce has decided to “reconfigure” its organisation, and especially to improve its media image. But is it already too late?

AN TAISCE believes it is a scapegoat. Farmers and representatives of rural Ireland, seeing agriculture in decline, lash out in frustration at anybody stopping them from unlocking the value of their land by building on it.

“We have been targeted by government, along with their developer friends, as a figure of hate, a way of channelling anger,” says An Taisce. “Farming is in decline, the Common Agricultural Policy will be gone by 2006, and Ireland is at a crossroads in terms of deciding if we are going to build a sustainable society or go for short-term solutions.”

With about 33,000 one-off houses being built in the Irish countryside each year — more than a third of the national total — there is big money at stake. A half-acre site sells for about €50,000, and farmers are estimated to be earning €800m a year by selling them.

The result is bungalow blitz, a disfigurement of the Irish landscape with large tracts of the countryside turned into rambling suburbs.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, the composer, says the country is being marred by some of the most “hideous and inappropriate housing anywhere in the world” and he was “gobsmacked” that regulations would be changed to allow thousands more one-off houses. Acknowledging that he is an outsider, he said it still grieved him “to see such a special landscape besmirched by houses that have absolutely no sympathy for local vernacular architecture”.

And to the claims from rural Ireland that “you can’t eat the scenery”, An Taisce argues that Ireland has been eating its scenery for decades. Many tourists come to Ireland to admire the landscape, and tourism is one of the country’s most important industries.

Despite its fearsome reputation, An Taisce only appeals four out of every 1,000 planning decisions. Usually it makes submissions and observations only.

The planning appeals board has complimented An Taisce on the quality of its objections, about three-quarters of which are upheld. “All we are doing is using existing Irish law and European directives,” the trust points out.

But should planning matters take up so much of An Taisce’s time, and up to half its budget? Like its British counterpart, the trust holds heritage properties on behalf of the people of Ireland. These include Kanturk Castle, Booterstown marsh and Tailor’s Hall. But unlike the British trust, An Taisce has a small financial base. The British organisation has 3.3m fee- paying members; An Taisce has less than 5,000.

The group also runs a successful Green Schools campaign — the model is being copied by the United Nations — and a Blue Flag beaches scheme. So hasn’t it bitten off more than it can chew?

Stephanie Bourke, elected president of the organisation last September, thinks so. “We’ve been perhaps too associated with the planning issue,” she says. “I would be more in favour of bringing people together.” Bourke was elected in succession to Michael Smith, for whom planning was the most important issue. But Bourke resigned recently after a row over the dismissals of two officers and afterwards An Taisce’s 52-member council reaffirmed its determination to stay active in planning.

There is a growing volume of opinion that it can no longer fulfil all its functions. Last year Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach, said his government would set up a trust specifically to look after heritage houses. An Taisce immediately popped up to say it was already doing the job and “must be recognised as such by new legislation”.

An Taisce is setting up a subsidiary, the Heritage Foundation, to look after its 16 properties. It hopes this foundation will be given legal status. But given the hostility of Fianna Fail towards An Taisce, that seems unlikely.

An Taisce’s prescribed planning role is challenged by others in Fianna Fail. A number of councils have considered delisting the organisation — Clare will discuss doing this tomorrow.

Dick Roche, a junior minister, recently called for an end to An Taisce’s special planning status, citing its “appalling” behaviour. The organisation as currently constituted had “no place in planning legislation”, Roche argued, because it wielded “power without responsibility”.

Cullen, the environment minister, is not considering such action but still takes swipes at An Taisce, saying it has allowed itself to be polarised, and “through its own mistakes, it has become the pariah of a large segment of Irish society”. But, he added, he saw signs that perhaps An Taisce was taking a more rounded view of things.

“There is a difficulty with perception and we need to get more media-literate,” says An Taisce’s new spokesman. “A lot of the problems we have are due to bad media relations. We are formulating a media strategy.”

The organisation also has to find more money since a government grant of €70,000 per annum was cut off. More members would help. “We have to find ways of bringing people in and branding An Taisce,” says the spokesman. “If you don’t adapt, you become extinct. Maybe An Taisce is the one that needs a preservation order.”

WHEN the trust regroups, it may find that the battle against bungalow blitz has been lost.

Enda Stenson, an independent councillor in Leitrim, can usually be relied on to give a spiel on one-off housing and the evils of An Taisce. Instead he is surprisingly sanguine. “I believe An Taisce has backed off and An Bord Pleanala is taking a more lenient view. I think it has been spoken to from a higher level.”

Nowadays, says Stenson, people who resubmit applications for one-off houses, moving them slightly to the left or right, get permission, no problem. “The planning issue isn’t what it was,” the Carrick-on-Shannon councillor says. “Objections seem to be thin on the ground at the moment.”

pork99

Originally posted by Cork
Our capital city is a disgrace - a prime example of dire planning with people commuting many miles to work.

If there were awards for dire planning we'ed be top of the league

In prefamine times - millions lived in rural Ireland.

Yes but it was unsustainable. As you see from the figures below the population exploded from 1700 onwards because the cultivation of potatoes allowed marginal land to support subsistence farming. For a few thousand years before 1600 rural Ireland supported a population of less than a million. The 8 million population of the immediate pre-famine years was a freak circumstance.

Ireland's Population:

1500s - 0.8million

1600s - 1 million

1700 - 2 million

1750 - 2.4 million

1801 - 5 million

1841 - 8.2 million

1851 - 6.5 million

1901 - 4.4 million

1911 - 4.4 million

Victor

http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/breaking/3234044?view=Eircomnet

Cullen 'ignored' planners in housing guidelines
From:ireland.com
Thursday, 20th May, 2004


The views of professional planners were "largely ignored" by the Minister for the Environment in new guidelines published on housing in rural areas, the main body representing planners has said.

The Irish Planning Institute (IPI) said the document Sustainable Rural Housing, published recently by the Minister for the Environment, would "seriously prejudice the substantial infrastructure by the Government in rural towns and villages".

Speaking at the institute's AGM, the IPI president Mr Iain Douglas said there was little acknowledgement of the real social and economic costs associated with one-off housing. He said the guidelines run directly against the principles of proper planning and sustainable development.

"It is likely that the guidelines will lead to a significant acceleration in an already highly unsustainable pattern of urban-based housing development in rural areas," he said.

Despite statements in the guidelines about the need to adhere to "good planning", development would be drawn to "visually vulnerable" areas and the impact would eventually lead to "degradation and loss of rural character", Mr Douglas added.

He said that before issuing the guidelines, the Department of the Environment should have considered the medium to long-term impact of one-off house building and what impact the addition of up to 250,000 new one-off homes in the next 20 years would have on both the countryside and urban areas.

"The approach to rural housing as set out in the guidelines amounts to an attempt to dismantle the planning system so carefully built up over the past number of years and to override the fundamental purpose of the Planning and Development Act 2000 as it applies to rural areas," Mr Douglas said.

The IPI has made a formal submission to the Minister for the Environment on the document.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0520/planning.html

IPI says Cullen ignoring its views

20 May 2004 20:40
The main body representing professional planners says its views have been largely ignored by the Minister for the Environment in new guidelines published on housing in rural areas.

The Irish Planning Institute said the document 'Sustainable Rural Housing', which was published recently by Minister Martin Cullen, would seriously prejudice the substantial infrastructure by the Government in rural towns and villages.

Speaking at the institute's AGM, IPI President Mr Iain Douglas said there was little acknowledgement of the real social and economic costs associated with one-off housing.

Mr Douglas said the guidelines run directly against the principles of proper planning and sustainable development.