Mayo councillor calls for planning regulator to be abolished

A MAYO councillor has called for the Office of the Planning Regulator to be abolished as they do not need a regulator to tell them how to run the county in a proper manner.

The Office of the Planning Regulator (OPR) has been criticised on a number of occasions by Mayo councillors after the office rejected changes regarding the rezoning of land made to Local Area Plans in 2023 and 2024.

However in recent weeks, the Minister of Housing, James Browne wrote to councils asking them to identify land that can be zoned for housing.

READ: Western Rail Corridor would have ‘transformative impact’ on Mayo and wider region

Speaking at the monthly meeting of Mayo County Council, Ballinrobe-based councillor Damien Ryan said the Minister is asking councillors to zone land which the OPR had previously rejected.

“What he is asking us to do is put back in the land we were not allowed to put in as a result of direction from the planning regulator,” he said while calling for more power to be given to councillors to decide planning matters.

“If that is what we are asked to do two or three years after making a development plan, really and truly the office of the planning regulator should be abolished. There should be no quota on towns and villages because they will develop as the need arises and we should not be capped with numbers or a particular boundary of land.

“It is important the town does not spiral out but at the same time it has to have the ability to deliever. You cannot just talk about plots of ground because with the best will in the world chunks of that will never become available.

“It is time that office [OPR] is abolished. We are well able to run our own county and we do things in a proper and planned way and don't need a regulator to tell us how to do it,” he said.

Director of Services, Catherine McConnell told the meeting that the local authority is still waiting on new revised housing targets for Mayo which are to be set by the Department of Housing. She added she was confident that any new housing target will be met ‘seamlessly’ as they will be able to open up land already reserved in the Local Area Plans.

“We are confident here in Mayo that because in the way we have approached the zoning of residential land we would be able to activate the strategic reserve in all of our zoned lands which should go a long way in unlocking a lot of that land that is serviced without having to go through the process of altering the plan.

“We may alternate it at a later date because of other things but we should be able to move fairly seamlessly on it. We will look at the lands which are zoned first but we are very open to development on strategic reserve and have proven that on numerous occasions,” she said.