Gormley to relax rules on one-off housing along certain National Secondaries

Amtmann

THE controversial ban on one-off houses along the nation's secondary roads is to be scrapped, the Irish Independent has learned.

But new developments, such as fast-food restaurants and giant warehouse-type retail outlets, are to be completely banned from motorway and dual-carriageway interchanges on the main primary network.

Environment Minister John Gormley is proposing to give councils powers to allow one-off developments on main secondary roads under new planning guidelines.

The move is certain to be welcomed by Fianna Fail councillors and deputies who have vehemently opposed the ban -- which has been supported by the Mr Gormley's Green Party.

The ban on fast-food restaurants and warehouse-type outlets from motorway and dual- carriageway interchanges is designed to stop the creation of unnecessary local traffic mixing with cars and trucks moving along the primary national road network.

Currently, there is a cordon sanitaire -- or quarantine line -- on developments on main primary and secondary routes.

The changes give new flexibility for one-off houses and other developments on secondary routes that are not going to be upgraded in the near future by the National Roads Authority (NRA).

The new guidelines are due to be published shortly. They mean that shopping and other commercial developments will not be permitted at key interchanges, such as that at Blundlestown on the new M3, which runs through the Skryne valley in Co Meath.

The NRA routinely objects to one-off houses along main roads because of the dangers involved in cars moving on to and off the roads interacting with fast-moving trucks and cars.

However, the new guidelines giving the green light to housing and other developments will apply only to secondary roads that are not going to be upgraded.

Guidelines

It is expected that normal safety criteria for main secondary roads will apply and will not be affected by the changes.

The ban on one-off houses on the main inter-urban primary routes will remain, due to those same safety concerns.

The planning guidelines will be put out to public consultation, after which they will be finalised.

Local authorities and An Bord Pleanala will then have to take account of the guidelines when deciding on planning applications and any objections to them.

Another feature of the new guidelines is that developments already in place on motorway or dual-carriageway interchanges cannot be altered for other uses.

For instance, a retail shopping premises could not be turned into a fast-food outlet.

- Treacy Hogan Environment Correspondent

Irish Independent

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/gormley-to-drop-veto-on-oneoff-houses-on-main-roads-2229552.html

Sponge Bob

Green logic Rural secondary roads are crap so lets build more entrances onto them and make then even crappier. Then rural people will suffer even worse delays than they do now and will leave the countryside so that urban green types take over on their bicycles.

He should be extending the ban to R Roads not relaxing it from N roads. Moron

Zoney

Greens continue their transition to becoming Grianna Fail.

Chris_5339762

But new developments, such as fast-food restaurants and giant warehouse-type retail outlets, are to be completely banned from motorway and dual-carriageway interchanges on the main primary network.

There go the chances of unofficial MSAs. Well done.

Amtmann

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

There go the chances of unofficial MSAs. Well done.

On the face of it, it seems so. But the NRA is committed to working with the likes of Topaz and others to establish junction services, according to a recent policy document.

invinciblePRSTV

The beauty of coalition Governments, this is clearly Gormley throwing the dog a bone to FFs Rural backbenchers.

Irish and Proud

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Green logic Rural secondary roads are crap so lets build more entrances onto them and make then even crappier. Then rural people will suffer even worse delays than they do now and will leave the countryside so that urban green types take over on their bicycles.

He should be extending the ban to R Roads not relaxing it from N roads. Moron

One off houses should be banned full stop!!!

They are totally unsustainable in terms of transport, services, waste generation etc. If people want to live in the county, they should be living in clusters of smaller houses with more shared resources. That way, rural populations would be more easily served by public transport (rural transport initiative maybe) and utilities etc due to economies of scale.

Alas, I do happen to live in one (not my choice that is) and it just seems to be one maintenance headache after another - a couple of my relations also had such houses and it seemed to be the same old storey. I also resent the way in which I'm left with no public transport as a result of bad planning (these sort of houses should never have been allowed in the first place) - I'm now learning to drive as a result, so I would love to ask Mr Gormley to think about that - I'm sure I'm not the only person having to take to the road as a result of these one off houses.

Regards!

BluntGuy

I don't like to "bash" the Green Party, but these kind of decisions continue to make them look worse and worse.

Of course it's as much the FF councillors' fault for supporting and encouraging completely unsustainable (and dangerous) one-off developments for the sake of gathering up votes.

I agree with Sponge_Bob that we should be extending the ban to key regional routes. In particular, many of the regional roads which have been recently detrunked are of high-standard for the road class, so the last thing we need to is start ruining them.

If people want to live in the county, they should be living in clusters of smaller houses with more shared resources.

100% Agreed.

In addition to the benefits of making it easier to provide infrastructure, it is also better for helping to tackle social issues like rural isolation.

Sponge Bob

The country is simply rotten with empty houses, the ones on side roads and those already built on R and N roads shall suffice for our long term needs. Protecting former N now R roads should continue to be the priority it always was and linearly shrinking 50kph zones on R and N roads should be a priority too.

This gob****ery is just that, gob****ery

Pete_Cavan

Have to agree with Sponge Bob about one off housing. We should be encouraging more development in city/town centres. Many towns in the country have seen businesses move outside the town to new retail or commercial premises and this has resulted in a lot of derelict buildings within the town. This is in danger of getting worse if developments off motorways were approved.

Not 100% sure about this but I think the English planning system is very restrictive when it comes to building houses outside of towns. As far as I know you can only build a new house outside of a town envelope if you are a farmer or use the land productively in some way. I think something similar should be introduced here.

During the boom a lot of farmers sold their land to developers or decided they were developers themselves and threw up houses in crazy locations. The same also applies to industrial/commercial units. The housing stock in this country is quite high at the minute and there are enough half built housing estates that when (if ever!) completed would keep us for a good few years. One off houses in the countryside also has to be controlled.

Now is the time to reform the planning system to encourage more efficient land use. With the current hatred of developers I'm sure there would be no problem getting support for this. It wasn't the developers who ruined the country, it was the planning system that should have stop them.

danbohan

BluntGuy wrote: »

I don't like to "bash" the Green Party, but these kind of decisions continue to make them look worse and worse.

Of course it's as much the FF councillors' fault for supporting and encouraging completely unsustainable (and dangerous) one-off developments for the sake of gathering up votes.

I agree with Sponge_Bob that we should be extending the ban to key regional routes. In particular, many of the regional roads which have been recently detrunked are of high-standard for the road class, so the last thing we need to is start ruining them.



100% Agreed.

In addition to the benefits of making it easier to provide infrastructure, it is also better for helping to tackle social issues like rural isolation.

their are a lot more social issuies in urban locations !, rural housebuilding and lovely one off houses will be restored to normal levels after greens and their dublin 4 supporters are kicked out next election !

Amtmann

danbohan wrote: »

their are a lot more social issuies in urban locations !, rural housebuilding and lovely one off houses will be restored to normal levels after greens and their dublin 4 supporters are kicked out next election !

Do you think it is a good idea to have one-off houses built along a substantial portion of our N-roads? Or R-roads for that matter?

Sponge Bob

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

Have to agree with Sponge Bob about one off housing. We should be encouraging more development in city/town centres. Many towns in the country have seen businesses move outside the town to new retail or commercial premises and this has resulted in a lot of derelict buildings within the town. This is in danger of getting worse if developments off motorways were approved.

Well the point I was really making ( not disagreeing with you Pete) is that we have no more than around 10k km of R and secondary N roads but we have 50k km of boreens and side streets. Let the development feck off there looking for road frontage. Is that clear to you danbohan??

National and regional roads serve a general communications purpose and should be off bounds for new entrances. These are not the 1970s and 1980s when country and western lounges and faux south park ranch b and bs ribboned merrily along these roads and wrecked them.

Gormley is in a sulk because he has not a single county councillor in rural Ireland, his fault

danbohan

Furet wrote: »

Do you think it is a good idea to have one-off houses built along a substantial portion of our N-roads? Or R-roads for that matter?

, do you think it was a good idea to build apartment blocks in rural towns where they had no place what so ever and where they are now virtully worthless , ireland has a tradion or rural dwelling , it is not england or europe where there is a tradition of villages. their of course has to be ''good'' planning in relation to acess onto N +R roads but it can be done

Sponge Bob

danbohan wrote: »

of course has to be ''good'' planning in relation to acess onto N +R roads but it can be done

There can, stop building new openings and start retiring existing ones through sharing them and pulling walls and hedges out of sightlines.

Let the one offs bugger off up the L roads from now on.

L1011

danbohan wrote: »

, do you think it was a good idea to build apartment blocks in rural towns where they had no place what so ever and where they are now virtully worthless , ireland has a tradion or rural dwelling , it is not england or europe where there is a tradition of villages. their of course has to be ''good'' planning in relation to acess onto N +R roads but it can be done

**** tradition. One off housing is unsustainable and unsustainable traditions need to die.

Our 'tradition' of rural living involved subsistance farming, remember.

BluntGuy

danbohan wrote: »

their are a lot more social issuies in urban locations !,

And rural isolation is not one of them.

Regardless of the problems facing urban locations, one-off housing is not an acceptable alternative. Clusters of houses would allow most of the benefits of the countryside - space, air, privacy, quiet etc., whilst allowing at least some economy-of-scale with regard to provision of services such as water, power and phonelines etc. As well as helping to tackle to aforementioned to rural isolation.

Urban areas have social issues too, but that is not relevant to the topic at hand.

However, I may be veering slightly off-topic myself. I would no sooner like to see a cluster of houses on a national or regional route, any more than a one-off development. Either type of development must be situated on local routes.

rural housebuilding and lovely one off houses will be restored to normal levels after greens and their dublin 4 supporters are kicked out next election !

The people who champion unsustainable rural development should have no right to destroy our countryside and devalue our road infrastructure in the manner they are doing.

danbohan wrote: »

, do you think it was a good idea to build apartment blocks in rural towns where they had no place what so ever and where they are now virtully worthless , ireland has a tradion or rural dwelling , it is not england or europe where there is a tradition of villages. their of course has to be ''good'' planning in relation to acess onto N +R roads but it can be done

I no more support ugly, out-of-space apartment blocks or unnecessary housing estates in rural towns than I support out-of-place, dangerous one-off housing on national or regional routes.

Ireland has a proud tradition of me fein and selfishness. People think they have a god-given right to live or build whatever they like, wherever they like regardless of the negative implications on the rest of society.

I'm not pro mass-urbanisation. I don't believe mega conurbations are the answer. I am pro common sense though. And common sense dictates to me that is not socially and economically sustainable nor responsible to allow the fixation on one-off bungaloes that are recking our countryside and making it difficult to plan and provide infrastructure to continue.

MYOB

MYOB wrote: »

**** tradition. One off housing is unsustainable and unsustainable traditions need to die.

Our 'tradition' of rural living involved subsistance farming, remember.

If you look long into the future*, it may well return to subsistence farming.

*when oil supplies dwindle to the point where manual labour is again required to farm.

L1011

Deleted User wrote: »

If you look long into the future*, it may well return to subsistence farming.

*when oil supplies dwindle to the point where manual labour is again required to farm.

And yet none of these one-off houses have enough land for subsistance farming, nor are they generally suitable for living in in an oil-free world...

MYOB

MYOB wrote: »

And yet none of these one-off houses have enough land for subsistance farming, nor are they generally suitable for living in in an oil-free world...

Very true, unfortunately, but at least they'll be ready farmhands available when TSHTF

danbohan

MYOB wrote: »

**** tradition. One off housing is unsustainable and unsustainable traditions need to die.

Our 'tradition' of rural living involved subsistance farming, remember.

people who choose to live in mass urban areas eg dublin should have no input what so ever in what is built or what happens in the countryside , they should be allowed special permits to visit the countryside on certain days of the year on condition that the return to their prison sorry urban hovel by dusk , basically what the problem is is just jealousys that they have live in their 2 up 2 down{do they have indoor toilets nowdays}? while those of us in countryside live in palatial mansions !

BluntGuy

danbohan wrote: »

people who choose to live in mass urban areas eg dublin should have no input what so ever in what is built or what happens in the countryside, they should be allowed special permits to visit the countryside on certain days of the year on condition that the return to their prison sorry urban hovel by dusk , basically what the problem is is just jealousys that they have live in their 2 up 2 down{do they have indoor toilets nowdays}? while those of us in countryside live in palatial mansions !

No the problem is that it is more difficult and more expensive to provide infrastructure and services to one-off homes, and that allowing developments on national and regional roads very often has a negative impact on both traffic and road safety. And that's to say nothing of the potential political problems associated with getting planning permission for said developments (though the similar issues occur with urban planning too), but that's for another forum altogether.

L1011

danbohan wrote: »

people who choose to live in mass urban areas eg dublin should have no input what so ever in what is built or what happens in the countryside , they should be allowed special permits to visit the countryside on certain days of the year on condition that the return to their prison sorry urban hovel by dusk , basically what the problem is is just jealousys that they have live in their 2 up 2 down{do they have indoor toilets nowdays}? while those of us in countryside live in palatial mansions !

Someone has a serious complex about this.

Your one-off house is unsustainable. Its environmentally damaging - your septic tank, the extra travel you need to do for work, school, shops, etc. Its economically damaging for the state as a whole - the costs of providing water, power, telecoms and broadband; school travel if applicable; social care for older residents.

You don't need to live in "mass urban areas" or in a "2 up 2 down hovel"- I live in a 5 bedroom house in a regional town (ish). I have public transport, piped sewage, cable and telephone broadband, shops and services I can walk to....

And I'm FROM a rural area, as it happens. There's nothing to be jealous about being isolated, or a massive burden on the state.

danbohan

BluntGuy wrote: »

No the problem is that it is more difficult and more expensive to provide infrastructure and services to one-off homes, and that allowing developments on national and regional roads very often has a negative impact on both traffic and road safety. And that's to say nothing of the potential political problems associated with getting planning permission for said developments (though the similar issues occur with urban planning too), but that's for another forum altogether.

yes your right . the real problem is as you say getting planning and that is only going get harder , anyway when you take places like leitrim roscommon longford with thousands of empty houses and potencialy declining populations in short to medium term future its hard {even for me } to justify one off housing

danbohan

MYOB wrote: »

Someone has a serious complex about this.

Your one-off house is unsustainable. Its environmentally damaging - your septic tank, the extra travel you need to do for work, school, shops, etc. Its economically damaging for the state as a whole - the costs of providing water, power, telecoms and broadband; school travel if applicable; social care for older residents.

You don't need to live in "mass urban areas" or in a "2 up 2 down hovel"- I live in a 5 bedroom house in a regional town (ish). I have public transport, piped sewage, cable and telephone broadband, shops and services I can walk to....

And I'm FROM a rural area, as it happens. There's nothing to be jealous about being isolated, or a massive burden on the state.

you may be from rural area but you certainly dont seem to know much about building in a rural area , the cost of providing water , esb ,sewerage etc are very high and paid for by the person building the house , you see the clamour now when talk of water meters in urban areas , people building houses in rural areas provide most of the cost of the services they use unlike their urban counterparts who demand it. lastly with modern sewerage systems installed in one houses are very efficent and are probably much more envoirmentally friendly than your sewerage scheme, maybe when your negative equity clears up you can get a field from an uncle and build yourself a nice one off house and start living again .

L1011

danbohan wrote: »

you may be from rural area but you certainly dont seem to know much about building in a rural area , the cost of providing water , esb ,sewerage etc are very high and paid for by the person building the house , you see the clamour now when talk of water meters in urban areas , people building houses in rural areas provide most of the cost of the services they use unlike their urban counterparts who demand it. lastly with modern sewerage systems installed in one houses are very efficent and are probably much more envoirmentally friendly than your sewerage scheme, maybe when your negative equity clears up you can get a field from an uncle and build yourself a nice one off house and start living again .

A fraction of the cost of providing water and power to rural houses are paid by the person building the house. You're absolutely delusional if you think they cover "most of the cost".

On the power front its a minutely higher unit cost, thats all - doesn't come close to covering the infrastructural costs. On the telecoms front it may be a private company you're riding but that still reflects in higher line rental & call charges for everyone who's not a selfish bastard. And its only those on group water schemes that are paying for it - not those who have managed to make a council pay tens of thousands to pipe them up.

And 27000 septic tanks is many times more polluting than one modern waste water treatment plant, no matter how modern the units are.

I don't see how throwing myself in to the back arse of nowhere, isolated from services and other human beings could be seen as "living again", and the house I live in is paid for, thanks.

I'm also never, ever bringing kids up in the level of social isolation one-off rural living causes. If you want your children to be anti-social misfits, by all means...

BluntGuy

danbohan wrote: »

yes your right . the real problem is as you say getting planning and that is only going get harder ,

Evidently not if Gormley and the FF apes get their way.

anyway when you take places like leitrim roscommon longford with thousands of empty houses and potencialy declining populations in short to medium term future its hard {even for me } to justify one off housing

If we were to try and quantify the justication for one-off housing on a scale of 1-10, I'm sure we'd be in negative figures by now.

people building houses in rural areas provide most of the cost of the services they use unlike their urban counterparts who demand it.

Actually your urban counterparts provide much of the cost of YOUR services. If it weren't for the urban areas which generate the majority of the tax revenue and provide the greatest number of customers over which to spread cost, one-off rural services would be completely and utterly unaffordable.

As for the demanding. Don't get me started on the yappers in rural areas who demand such ridiculous things as an hourly bus service to get them directly from their house in some random field to the Middle-Of-Nowhere Central or swimming pools for tiny villages. Urban people may demand certain services, but they have every right to demand a decent bus service and good broadband, because that is the part of the appeal and function of living in a town or city. That excellent services are easier and more affordable to provide and hence available (not that I'm saying urban dwellers don't sometimes make silly demands).

People who elect to build their house halfway up a mountain or dump their horrible McMansion in a scenic area are responsible for pushing up overall costs of services for all of us. You can correct me if I'm wrong but I think 1 in 3 houses built over the last decade was a one-off house. That's ludicrous.

lastly with modern sewerage systems installed in one houses are very efficent and are probably much more envoirmentally friendly than your sewerage scheme

Trust me, they... aren't.

Sponge Bob

BluntGuy wrote: »

Evidently not if Gormley and the FF apes get their way. :(t.

Right, can we go back to the issue of protecting N and R road from gobdaws who want to wreck them. eg Gormley and FF

Mr Gormley will be in the firing line from 1 July when the water framework directive is activated and the EPA starts shutting down rural septic tanks and the councils install water meters universally. This is a political sop before that particular storm that will start..... any day now in fact

Sponge Bob

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Right, can we go back to the issue of protecting N and R road from gobdaws who want to wreck them. eg Gormley and FF

Mr Gormley will be in the firing line from 1 July when the water framework directive is activated and the EPA starts shutting down rural septic tanks and the councils install water meters universally. This is a political sop before that particular storm that will start..... any day now in fact

Yes i suppose that's the real issue, one-offs and sewerage disposal.
The rules are so tight now that the majority of new applications are being refused regardless of their location. Anyway I see nothing wring in building alongside a "main" road, providing you use an existing side road for access, i.e. no new opening to the main road.


As for shutting down existing septic tanks, that's really going to stir up the you know what! (literally)

Stonewolf

danbohan wrote: »

, do you think it was a good idea to build apartment blocks in rural towns where they had no place what so ever and where they are now virtully worthless , ireland has a tradion or rural dwelling , it is not england or europe where there is a tradition of villages. their of course has to be ''good'' planning in relation to acess onto N +R roads but it can be done

I'm going to nip this in the bud right now. Ireland just like everywhere else has a tradition of nuclear settlement. This "tradition" argument is nonsense related to the fact that as a population we are still very close to our agrarian past unlike most developed countries which have a long history of industrialisation and the urbanisation that comes with it.

If you want to live in the country, fine, do so, but don't trot out some rediculous semi-justification for building a single house and all the required support structures beside another single house with all the required support structures along a road the quality of which is increasingly degraded by an excess of one off developments.

Country development should be in clusters, this doesn't mean it has to be in town but it does mean that if you want to build a house you either build it in a cluster and use the shared resources of that cluster or you get planning permission for a cluster and build all the support structures required to support the future filling in of that clusters allotments. That way a half dozen or so houses can share a single access point onto/off a road, they can share sewage (using a small treatment plant), they can have one water, communications and power trunk feeding their connections requiring less works when installing or when something goes wrong. They can walk between their houses without braving the road, they can even do small community projects like erecting a small wind generator, throwing up a few solar cells or even combine heating systems. This is the spirit of traditional Irish settlement, not mansions on the mountain top.

JupiterKid

Stonewolf wrote: »

I'm going to nip this in the bud right now. Ireland just like everywhere else has a tradition of nuclear settlement. This "tradition" argument is nonsense related to the fact that as a population we are still very close to our agrarian past unlike most developed countries which have a long history of industrialisation and the urbanisation that comes with it.

If you want to live in the country, fine, do so, but don't trot out some rediculous semi-justification for building a single house and all the required support structures beside another single house with all the required support structures along a road the quality of which is increasingly degraded by an excess of one off developments.

Country development should be in clusters, this doesn't mean it has to be in town but it does mean that if you want to build a house you either build it in a cluster and use the shared resources of that cluster or you get planning permission for a cluster and build all the support structures required to support the future filling in of that clusters allotments. That way a half dozen or so houses can share a single access point onto/off a road, they can share sewage (using a small treatment plant), they can have one water, communications and power trunk feeding their connections requiring less works when installing or when something goes wrong. They can walk between their houses without braving the road, they can even do small community projects like erecting a small wind generator, throwing up a few solar cells or even combine heating systems. This is the spirit of traditional Irish settlement, not mansions on the mountain top.

Completely agree with that post.

One-off rural houses are all about total mindless greed and selfishness as they don't internalise the huge external costs involved in their functioning. At least urban dwellings do.

I sincerely hope the new EU water directive will effectively sound the death knell for new one-off rural house building.
Ireland needs to mature and move on - McMansions in the scenic countryside with leaking, polluting septic tanks are the sign of a deeply immature and shallow society.