Historic day leads to hope for historic outcome
Council delegation may yet meet with Minister to solve Development Plan impasse
Michael Duffy
THE issue of rural planning is one that has dominated many discussions in Áras an Chontae for this five-year term of Mayo County Council, but the persistence of the elected members was rewarded last Tuesday when they put their views in no uncertain terms to an Oireachtas committee in Dáil Éireann.
Many have felt that the councillors were banging their heads against a brick wall on the issue of not accepting Minister John Gormley’s views on the Mayo County Development Plan, but after a marathon four-hour session in Leinster House, Cathaoirleach of Mayo County Council, Cllr Joe Mellett was optimistic that progress had been made.
“Powerful presentations have been made by members on all sides of the committee but we were delighted with the great support we received. I look forward to further discussion on the issue, perhaps in the Dáil or the Seanad. We hope to meet the Minister. If we do, hopefully the meeting will have a positive outcome. We do not expect to get everything we are looking for; all we are looking for is fair play. I am more positive about the outcome of this process as a result of the attitude the members of the committee showed in their responses in Leinster House. When future generations look back on important days in County Mayo’s history, November 4, 2008 will be etched in their minds as one such day,” said an obviously proud Cllr Mellett, who led the delegation which consisted of Cllr Paddy McGuinness, Cllr Al McDonnell, Cllr Damien Ryan and Cllr Harry Walsh.
The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Environment, Heritage and Local Government took the decision to invite the delegation after the Council aired their grievance at receiving a Section 31 order from Minister Gormley, which ordered them to alter sections of the Mayo County Development Plan which he was not happy with – mainly in relation to the zoning of land for housing in areas which the Minister felt were experiencing ‘strong urban pressure’.
Last week’s meeting was chaired by Chairman of the committee, Fianna Fáil TD, Sean Fleming, from the Laois/Offaly constituency, and the Minister’s department was represented by three officials – Mr Dave Walsh, principal officer, spatial policy; Mr Brian Kenny, assistant principal officer, spatial policy, and Mr Niall Cussen, senior planning adviser.
Mr Walsh addressed the meeting with a lengthy statement which discussed in detail why the Minister invoked his right to issue a Section 31 before the matter was opened up to the floor where members of the committee, and other members of the Dáil and the Seanad with a special interest in the subject, spoke with great gusto on the matter.
Deputy Enda Kenny was unable to attend the committee meeting due to other commitments but the six other Mayo members of the Dáil and Seanad spoke at various stages during the four-hour sitting.
It was 6pm before the officials from the Department were finished being grilled and they then took up seats in the public gallery to listen to Mayo county councillors’ well-researched presentation.
Cllr McGuinness and Cllr Al McDonnell presented at length the reasons why all 31 of Mayo’s councillors are adamant that the changes made to the Mayo County Development Plan are crucial to injecting life into rural Mayo – and why their ability to perform their role as public representatives is being hindered by Minister Gormley.
“This is not a political issue. We have the full and total support of the people we represent. Before any of our elected members signed this declaration, they had consulted with the people they represent and their views are reflected in those 31 signatures. In the past couple of days we have received messages of goodwill by letter, e-mail and phone concerning our efforts in Dublin.
“People are conscious of the fact that we have a serious problem in our county. They are also conscious of the fact that over the past 70 to 80 years rural depopulation has been our greatest scourge. For a variety of reasons over that period we have lost in excess of 30,000 people from our rural areas, through emigration caused by lack of opportunity and more recently through restrictive rural planning policies. We can cite plenty of examples of closed schools, shops and post offices, as well as community and sporting centres,” said Cllr McDonnell.
The councillors came away from the meeting highly encouraged that their arguments had being well aired and struck a chord with Oireachtas members from around the country. They were also encouraged by the fact that the Chairman of the committee felt that a meeting with the Minister to try and find some middle ground was not totally out of the question.
“We have had a long meeting. It is useful, from a national perspective, to see how the legislation is working in County Mayo. I do not know whether the Minister’s hands are tied. Nothing in the legislation prevents consultation from taking place. It is probably not specifically provided for, but there is nothing to stop it from happening. That is the way I look at legislation. The joint committee will consider everything that was said at today’s meeting and we will contact the Council again in due course,” added the Chairman at the conclusion of the meeting. A report will now be compiled for the Oireachtas Committee to consider and they then may choose to recommend that the Minister meet with the Council to try and solve the issue as soon as possible.
“We are convinced that we are acting in the best interests of the people of Mayo and we are the people best equipped to find the solutions”
Al McDonnell
I HAVE been a member of Mayo County Council for 31 years and this is the third county development plan in which I have been involved. I confirm that the proper procedure was fully observed at all stages in the adoption process. As a matter of fact, this plan got greater consideration than any plan I have dealt with. We scrutinised it not glibly, but meticulously, line by line. We took on board all the advice, but it would not be in the best interests of our county if we took heed of much of the advice we received.
Earlier, the Chairman asked if the County Manager had advised us. He did, as did many other bodies, both independent of the Council and as employees of the Council. At the end of the day, however, the elected members of Mayo County Council, having listened to and considered all the advice, are charged with the responsibility of making the ultimate adjudication, which is what we did. I hope the Chairman, as a person with a high reputation, respects that as well. I think he does. We listened to all the advice but we are the adjudicators.
Our entire rural, social and economic structures are falling apart. Our vast rural areas will become totally unsustainable if this trend is not reversed quickly. We are grateful, though, to governments of all persuasions for their efforts to redress this problem. We are particularly appreciative of the efforts of the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Deputy Ó Cuív, who has identified large areas of our county that have suffered serious population decline, in excess of 33 per cent since 1926. The decline has exceeded 50 per cent in many district electoral divisions within one person’s lifetime. As members of the committee will be aware, these are known as CLÁR areas and additional funding is provided on an ongoing basis in an effort to address the infrastructural deficit in these declining regions. As a result, our entire county is now provided with the necessary facilities and services to accommodate residential development of traditional densities. Our county is now in a position to accommodate residential development of traditional densities.
The current unnecessary and severe planning restrictions on rural housing are slowly but progressively being strengthened towards a total prohibition of rural development. This extraordinary attack on our very existence was instigated by the Irish Planning Institute with, we are convinced, influence from British counterparts and, more importantly, by senior urban-based Department officials with a serious knowledge deficit of rural life. That is as politely as I can put it. None of these bodies enjoys an electoral mandate of any kind.
I repeat that there is no justification for a fear of a mass exodus of people from urban centres to the CLÁR areas of County Mayo. The numbers of people seeking a home in quieter and safer rural areas will continue to be a small proportion of the settled population. We in Mayo are determined to ensure this important minority of people are accommodated in our current development plan.
In my own office I have seen people I hardly knew shed tears of bitter disappointment and disbelief as a result of a planning decision just received. The dreams, in many cases of a lifetime, unnecessarily shattered, these people were forced on occasions to leave our county. It is criminally wrong to force these people from their natural habitat to unfamiliar and unnatural surroundings in urban centres.
Our plan has the full and enthusiastic support of the 31 elected members who had an active participation in its adoption. This is confirmed by the signatures. We are convinced that we are acting in the best interests of the people of Mayo and we are the people best equipped to find the solutions.
We have put substantial time and effort into this plan and we deem it our duty to do so. We are not prepared to allow a meltdown of the social and economic structures of our county. Should the Minister’s intervention be successful it will ensure the death of rural Mayo. His intervention has resulted in the removal of his own Department’s policies under the sustainable rural housing guidelines published and adopted in 2005. His directive classifies areas which have suffered significant population decline under strong urban pressure. The Department’s theory is that the more people one drives from rural Ireland, the more sustainable it becomes. What an extraordinary conclusion.
We are totally convinced that we act in the best interests of the people of our county. It is time to challenge the flawed theories emanating from Dublin and from across the Irish Sea. We are determined to see our vision fulfilled and we hope we can depend on the committee’s support in this regard in the weeks and months ahead. We appreciate the opportunity to speak to the committee today.
Al McDonnell is a Mayo Fianna Fáil councillor for the last 31 years. The above is an abridged version of his address
“The Minister believes the direction is reasonable, practical and was necessary for the sustainable development of the county in the future”
David Walsh
I THANK the Chairman and members of the committee for giving us the opportunity to outline the background and circumstances that gave rise to the issuance of the direction on the recent Mayo County Development Plan.
The Minister regards the reserved functions of elected members in respect of preparing and adopting development plans under planning legislation to be a core role in securing a sustainable and rational plan for their area. The planning Act also establishes a clear role for the Minister as a statutory consultee within the overall process of preparing development plans. With the publication by the Government of the national spatial strategy in 2002, as an overall planning framework, and the regional planning guidelines in 2004, Ministers have provided guidance and advice to local authorities on development plans. This advice has generally been accepted by planning authorities in ensuring their plans accord with national legislation and policy objectives.
Mayo County Council published its draft county development plan for 2008 to 2014 in April 2007. As part of the draft plan’s public consultation process, the Department wrote to the Council in June 2007 expressing concern that the amount of land zoned for residential development was approximately six times the level that would be needed to service forecasted population growth over that period.
The draft plan provided for a population increase of almost 80,000, through zonings scattered county wide. For example, in Claremorris, where a population increase of approximately 1,100 was projected to the year 2013, the plan indicated that some 27 hectares of land would be needed to meet this demand. However, a total of 157 hectares of land was zoned, capable of increasing the town’s population by more than 10,000 people, almost ten times the need. This pattern was repeated in many of the smaller towns and villages throughout the county.
Notwithstanding the very high level of zoning, in the main inherited from previous plans, the Department’s main concern was that such scattered, high-level zonings would detract from the national and regional policy objectives to focus development in Mayo on the national spatial strategy designated hub towns of Ballina and Castlebar, as economic engines for Mayo and the western region as a whole.
As recommended in the 2005 sustainable rural housing guidelines, the draft plan identified locations throughout the county. These were categorised under four main types: rural areas under strong urban influence, ie rural areas located near large towns which are under development pressure because of their proximity; stronger rural areas, which are stable rural areas with access to towns and villages where there is relatively low demand for new development; structurally weak areas, ie areas that have suffered population decline and which are economically weak; and areas with clustered settlement patterns, such as areas with few towns and villages but which have housing clusters.
It is clear some parts of Mayo are experiencing population decline while other parts are growing. Many factors contribute to rural population trends including economic trends, especially changing patterns of farming, accessibility, commuting patterns and infrastructure provision, as well as rural planning policies. The figures indicate the Council operated a highly flexible rural planning regime in recent years in those areas suffering population decline and which lack core economic infrastructure.
In the past ten years, almost half of all planning applications in Mayo have been for one-off rural houses and the vast majority of those, some 85 per cent, were granted. In 2007, of approximately 3,300 planning applications submitted in the county, almost 1,400 were for one-off houses in the countryside and just less than 1,200 of these were granted. Between 1996 and 2007, Mayo County Council granted planning permission for a total of 14,505 new single dwellings in rural areas. These statistics do not point to excessively restrictive rural planning policies.
The Council adopted the plan on 8 May, and the finalised plan failed to deal with the Minister’s serious concerns. The Minister had delayed issuing the direction before the plan was finalised, as it was hoped that the Council, having received a further submission from the Minister on 28 February, would take the necessary steps to address these issues. However, when all other avenues were exhausted, the Minister felt that he had no choice but to use his powers of direction.
The direction is not imposing a totally new plan on the Council. The Minister instructed the Council to implement its own evidence-based policies for rural housing – policies which the Council originally drew up and saw fit to publish in the draft plan. It is still not clear why the members withdrew their original policy, which had been supported by the Department, in favour of a less evidence-based and less clear approach.
The Minister believes the direction is reasonable, practical and was necessary for the sustainable development of the county in the future.
David Walsh is Principal Officer on Spatial Policy with the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government. The above is an abridged version of his address
