An Taisce has come under increasing criticism for its strong line on planning. But its new chairwoman aims to bring fresh issues to its agenda, writes Kathy Sheridan

Dictatorial, inhuman, devoid of feeling, like the British landlords in the days of Ireland under Westminster rule. Those are the less sensational elements of the onslaught on An Taisce by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture and Food last week. Arrogant, elitist and undemocratic are the more restrained accusations hurled at the environment charity at rural meetings.

Three years ago Michael Healy-Rae, the Kerry county councillor, likened it to the Ku Klux Klan, "wanting to make us live like rats on top of each other". Six years ago William Farrell, the Sligo senator, told an auctioneers' conference that An Taisce "has turned into a monster . . . an organisation made up of faceless people who don't even come down to look at a site". It takes a strong stomach to be aligned with an organisation that attracts such bile.

Last weekend, at its a.g.m. in Kilkenny, Stephanie Bourke was the outsider of the three candidates to replace Michael Smith as chairman. At a tempestuous meeting, the 49-year-old heritage specialist based in Skerries, Co Dublin, stood for a "new approach". She came across as "new blood, fresh in, a blank sheet", according to one participant.

Her strategy suggests a softening of the hard line adopted by An Taisce in recent years. "We've been perhaps too associated with the planning issue," she says. "I would be more in favour of bringing people together, bringing them along with us, rather than getting personal or firing things from the sidelines. We are not a knocking organisation. We should be educating, leading the way, fostering discussion and learning."

An Taisce must continue to be a watchdog "but in all aspects of our heritage and environment". She says: "I think there are issues that need to be managed in a different way, so we don't become branded as the knockers and the critics . . . Who are we fighting? Why are we fighting? Our aim is the common good and there can't be two common goods."

Taking the word "taisce" - meaning treasure, hoard or store - as her focus, she describes Ireland as "our treasure, our responsibility to hand it on and decide what we want to hand on". But not everyone agrees on what constitutes the common good. For An Taisce members there can be no sitting on the fence: they are "expected to oppose attempts by local authorities to rezone land currently zoned for amenity purpose, whether residential, commercial or industrial".

In the current climate it's hardly surprising that membership of the 56-year-old group has levelled off at about 5,000 and that those members are predominantly over 40. Bourke is acutely conscious of An Taisce's need for more members and the subscriptions that come with them and agrees that image is "crucial" to achieving this. An Taisce concedes that much of its work is "hard and unfashionable".

The Oireachtas committee's attacks come at a time when some An Taisce activists claim to feel threatened. "It's a McCarthyite atmosphere out there. No, Ku Klux Klan would be closer," says one, reversing Healy-Rae's allegation. "If an individual in a rural area raises concerns about the impact of a development on a heritage site, for example, they will be subject to very serious personal intimidation." One case alleging intimidation, in Co Leitrim, is expected to reach the courts soon.

And An Taisce seems unpopular in rural areas. In the four most confrontational western counties - Sligo, Leitrim, Kerry and Mayo - it has just 50, 40, 130 and 60 members respectively. It's hardly surprising that the organisation has resisted efforts to compel it to disclose its membership lists.

Last year the organisation returned the €35 subscription, plus €10 in interest, to some of its new members, calling them "infiltrators" intent on influencing the organisation's policy on one-off housing in rural areas. These included an auctioneer in Oughterard, Co Galway, who rejected suggestions of links with a property developer; a man who has since been convicted of illegal dumping; and another, it believes, who had links to fish-farming.

Corrosive accusations of an urban if not Dublin 4 bias have persisted for decades. Its image, overwhelmingly, is of representing the people who like to say No. A flick through the newspaper archives shows that some of the most common words in headlines relating to An Taisce are "condemns", "accuses", "objects", "demands", "warns", "rejects", "complains" and "challenges".

These headlines garnered at An Taisce's expense have accused it of everything from halting the Kildare bypass for the sake of a rare snail to opposing a golf course on behalf of natterjacks. And An Taisce's dismissal of the proposed boardwalk on the Dublin quays as gimmicky, or what it described as the visual tackiness of the PVC windows held dear by so many people, is hardly the stuff to strengthen its popular appeal.

The organisation sees itself as the last bulwark against greedy developers and politicians whose only technical knowledge or vision is the vote-gathering kind. It believes that one-off housing has become a hotter issue in recent years simply because local authorities have begun at last to implement principles related to traffic, pollution and the protection of our heritage and that this has brought them into conflict with vested interests.

But An Taisce's policy towards rural one-off housing also hardened substantially in 2000, when it proposed to tackle abuse of the rule that lets landowners build houses for members of their families; much of the property is swiftly put on the market, it says.

Less well known are An Taisce's obligations as a prescribed body under planning law. Planning authorities must ask it to comment on sensitive applications - not only houses but also projects such as Spencer Dock in Dublin, the Burren interpretative centre and the Corrib gas field. It deals with three times as many applications as it did 10 years ago, its local associations and national planning staff commenting on about 3,000 a year.

Last year it appealed 134 decisions by local authorities to grant permission to one-off dwellings, of about 18,000 that got the go-ahead. Twelve each were lodged in Kerry, Leitrim and Mayo, the vast majority on the basis of public health and safety. Some 90 per cent of them were upheld by An Bord Pleanála. In Co Kildare, which accounted for 28 per cent of the total, all were upheld.

Éamon Ó Cuív, one of An Taisce's staunchest critics and the then minister of state at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, conceded a year ago that it had not objected to valid family applications and claims in his constituency in Galway. Nonetheless, Johnny Brady, a Fianna Fáil TD for Co Meath, insists it is people "aligned" to An Taisce who have objected in his area. "How are we supposed to respond to that?" asks one bewildered member. An Taisce members know they have an image problem.

Far from being the project of tweedy west-Brits with Georgian piles, the organisation was the brainchild of such prominent Gaeilgeoirí as Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh and Seán MacBride, and Eamon de Valera was a member. The north Co Donegal branch goes back over 30 years, as does that in Co Kerry, which An Taisce describes as having a high farming membership.

That a third of the charity's members are from Dublin will hardly assuage the sceptics, however. It counters that only one of the 52 members of its council lives in Dublin 4, although it acknowledges there is such a thing as a Dublin 4 mindset.

Its president, Frank Corcoran, a lecturer in planning at Dublin Institute of Technology, commutes by bus from a modern housing estate in Blessington, Co Wicklow. The new vice-chairman, James Nix, a postgraduate transport researcher at Dublin Institute of Technology, is from a smallholding in Co Clare. Ian Lumley, An Taisce's heritage officer, lives in north central Dublin. Its recently appointed head of public affairs, John Bowler, lives in a lock-keeper's cottage between Cabra and Finglas, in north Dublin. Steven Devaney, who chairs the group's sensitive built-environment committee, holds a law degree, lives in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, and is believed to own properties for rent.

An Taisce is not just about thwarting young couples' dreams, as councillors are quick to allege. It holds in trust for the people 16 properties, including the old Howth courthouse in north Co Dublin, Kanturk Castle in Co Cork and Booterstown Marsh nature reserve in south Co Dublin. It administers the Blue Flag awards scheme for beaches, the White Flag campaign for leisure centres, the Green Schools project, the National Spring Clean initiative and the Young Reporters for the Environment project, as well as monitoring what we discard on the streets for Irish Business Against Litter.

In recent years it has noticeably shifted its ethos from that of the amateur to that of the professional, with staff and activists who can unravel the intricacy of EU directives. Michael Smith has left an indelible stamp in the shape of a new internal structure in a newly professional era. The appointment of John Bowler, the former Greenpeace campaigner, will see its pitch broadened to include Sellafield, with the hope of winning back old friends.

It could do with as many as it can get to get over its current difficulties. For all their flaws, these people hold thankless positions without vested interests and with the most transparent of motives. Can all their detractors say the same?