Q&A: The Minister for the Environment, Mr Martin Cullen, responds to The Irish Times series, Commuter Counties, in an extensive interview with Frank McDonald, Environment Editor

Do you not accept that the extent of land rezoning in Meath, Kildare Wicklow defies the Greater Dublin Area Strategic Planning Guidelines (SPGs)?

Cullen: I don't, and I'll tell you why I don't. I'm at a point where I'm trying to move things forward. I think you have to accept that we need more houses and there is a need for a bit of flexibility. It's not as black and white as it might be, that's my view on it. Heretofore, there was no role for this Department and all the decisions on planning issues took place at a local level. That's no longer sustainable.

If I get good regional planning guidelines, I then have leverage on the local authorities, to put pressure on them to adhere to the guidelines.

But surely the High Court judgment last September showed that Meath County Council merely "had regard to" the SPGs and then went ahead to rezone lots of land in response to local pressures?

Cullen: You could say that in an absolute sense, but my Department had a look at the Meath plan and changes were made, including the omission of a major residential zoning at Kilbride. We have started a process where the local authorities are actually coming into my Department and sitting down with us to discuss their plans. Some we agree with and some we won't agree with.

It's a learning process as much as anything else. I certainly don't believe that you have an absolute centrist position on this, a single view that emerges and that's it.

But the SPGs represent public policy, to which all seven local authorities in the GDA as well as your Department subscribed, and the High Court found they were being flouted.

Cullen: Well, on a specific point of law, as you put it that way, yes, but if I'm going to develop planning guidelines and get housing out there, it's not going to be decided on that basis. There's a massive problem in housing. We have delivered a tremendous volume of housing and by European standards it's good quality.

But notwithstanding some of the elements of commuting, some people are starting to create different societies in different parts of the country which, for the principal person involved, look towards Dublin at the moment because that's where the economic hub is, where they're earning their living to sustain it. But quality of life issues are beginning to emerge, to do with educational facilities, sports facilities and so on. Certainly, up to now, that wouldn't have been front-loaded.

But what's coming through from other Ministers is a real recognition of the spatial strategy because it is almost discussed weekly at Cabinet now. Anybody doing anything, in fairness the Taoiseach would ask "Does that fit in with the spatial strategy?"

You won't see the results of that next week, it's going to take a number of years to filter out through the system.

Do you not think the triangular gateway of Athlone, Mullingar and Tullamore will be undermined by the haphazard rezoning of land outside all of the villages in Co Westmeath?

Cullen: I don't think that's perfect either and I'm not going to pretend that it is. But I do think that while in its initial creation the look is towards Dublin, obviously the hope is that this will turn around as we go forward and implement the spatial strategy. The triangle is probably the most difficult gateway to establish, because it has no natural centre of gravity.

Not alone do you need to get the key elements happening in the three towns that are primarily involved but also other things happening around it. It's not an absolute science.

But in the case of Delvin, two large parcels of land outside the village have been zoned for housing, one of them owned by a councillor and the other by a councillor's agent? How can you stand over that?

Cullen: Well, I'm not going to get directly involved in individual cases like that.

But isn't it to cater for Dublin housing?

Cullen: It is, a lot of it is. But what I'm trying to say is that if we develop seriously within the spatial strategy, those households will begin to turn away from Dublin.

But surely, if Mullingar and Athlone are the designated centres for growth, it doesn't make sense to be rezoning all this land around every village in Co Westmeath?

Cullen: You're right, and the regional planning guidelines under the spatial strategy will have to cope with that. We need to get a coherence out of those guidelines, because they're also inter-regional. Take Drogheda, for instance.

It will have to negotiate with Dublin on the one side and the Border-Midlands region on the other, but at least they're coming into the Department to ask our view.

But look at Gorey, where even the local area plan concedes that up to 70 per cent of its new residents are commuting to Dublin. Surely the rezoning of land by a small committee to cater for a population of 20,000 or 30,000 is in complete defiance of public policy?

Cullen: Yes it is, in its very narrow purist sense. But it's not in the context of catering for what has happened in Ireland in the last few years - this massive bubble of young people came through and where the hell were we going to put them.

But did we not have a plan to cater for the growth of Dublin within the GDA?

Cullen: Well, people themselves are making choices. Some do accept living in higher- density apartments in Dublin, but there are others making a much longer-term choice and there's an element of gamble in it. "I want my house down the country a bit, I want my kids to go to school where I feel they're safe, I'll have my garden back and front." They're making that decision on the basis that the husband, wife or both are commuting to Dublin to work.

The gamble is that as we develop further on, this will change and there will be opportunities in areas outside the GDA.

But that's an argument that the market rules and is zoned for housing against the advice of planners and in defiance of public policy nationally.

Cullen: I do not want, and I am absolutely clear on this because I've invested so much time and resources in it, to continue on a basis where you get these planning permissions granted which have no centre to them. They're not in compliance with the spatial strategy or economic and social development . . .

That's been our problem. I wish we had some kind of strategies even 15 years ago. The only way I can really control this, without sitting at the centre and saying I have all the answers, is by getting agreement on a broader front. That's what I've been doing over the past nine months, going around the country speaking to the local authorities and their organisations. And what I've been saying is that no local authority can really plan on its own any more. It just won't work. They can't just have an introverted view of the world.

They will have to plan on the basis of trans-border, trans-county, and the best structure to deal with it is the regional structure that exists.

But what if the regional planning guidelines now being prepared all end up as toothless as the SPGs, with county councils blithely rezoning land in areas never intended for development? What happens then?

Cullen: Well, what happens then is that we would have a disaster and that's what I don't want.

But don't you think we're already facing that?

Cullen: I think we have had huge problems, there's no doubt about that. I don't disagree. There's much that has happened that we would prefer to happen in a different way. But then again, society creates its own pressures and makes its own decisions.

I think there is a balance between both perspectives. You have a market operation and people have freedom to make their choices, and you have proper control of public policy because you've got to deliver all the public services, not alone in terms of this Department but others -Education, Health, Justice, Transport etc.

But why should the public purse have to pay for the provision of services in areas that were never intended for development, such as Gorey? You have the power to "call in" those plans and say they are totally unacceptable. Would you not do that?

Cullen: I intend, and I'll be clear on it, to exercise those powers, because that's what they're there for, particularly under the new Planning Act. But I don't want to do it in a way that sees me at the centre almost trying to dictate policy all over the country or specific zonings.

What I want to do is set out an overall policy. We've had some discussions with various local authorities around the country who have come to us and said: "We're thinking of going this way or that, what's your point of view?"

We've given very strong views both for and against and have tried to measure what they are doing in an overall context. The Gorey plan is obviously here and we're going to look at it and see what has to be said, though I think you would accept that it's not an exact science.

But if something is done in a way that completely distorts the whole thing, it not alone undermines public policy but also our ability to deliver the type of demand-led services that are needed to support any kind of cohesive society. So I welcome what you're saying because it gives vent to some of the things that I'm actually trying to deal with.

The Irish Times doesn't have the power to stop it - only you can, if you want to.

Cullen: But you've got to create the awareness, the public debate to engage not just a specific group of people but all of us as to what we're actually trying to do. It's a slow process and frustrating for me because I like to get decisions, I like them to be clear and then they're implemented. That's my style. On this issue, I do accept that there are nuances, but they're only nuances, they're not thunderlingly different.

But isn't there a stark contrast between the approach you've taken to regional waste- management plans, where councillors are to lose their powers because you have decided that they are not going to get in the way of implemen- ting them, and this free-for-all on the planning front, where councillors are zoning land for development like cowboys?

Cullen: Well, I certainly wouldn't want to give the impression that I'm somehow less committed on the planning side. I suppose it was a question of which issue loomed largest on my horizon first and clearly waste-management is a big issue.

But I want "buy-in" to the spatial strategy from everybody and the best way to get that is for people to feel they have a definitive role in it, a real say, and some control within their own region. That's what's happening with the strategic regional planning guidelines that are being put in place. But I want to make this absolutely

clear: I won't hesitate to act if what is a reasonable, fair, overall strategy for the country is to be ignored because I'd be failing, the Government would be failing and, worst of all, we'd be failing the people themselves.

I think it's fair for me to say: "You know what rules are, you know what the parameters are, you know what the objectives are, you have all the strategies, we don't need any more".

But what if they don't?

Cullen: Well then, I'll have to act - and I will act. Because there's no point in me having waste-management strategies, Noel Dempsey having education strategies, Michael McDowell having Garda strategies and John O'Donoghue having sports strategies, because it would all be disconnected and totally incoherent.

What about changing the phrase "have regard to" strategic planning guidelines to "comply with"?

Cullen: It's a question of language, but the language wasn't the point. "Having regard to" was clearly designed to make people feel within the regions that they still had the overall control, that I wasn't a dictator or the Department was saying, "This is the view from the centre, you have no choices beyond that and that's it."

But aren't you doing precisely that on the waste front? Aren't you saying "We know best"?

Cullen: I am, because it was clearly obvious that some local authorities were not prepared to bite the bullet on the waste issue, it had been around the houses for years until we said: "We're beyond a debate on this issue, now we're going to have to implement the plans". I've set a very short time frame on the regional planning guidelines on this and I've given fair warning. There's clarity in people's minds.

The upside is that we're now getting an awful lot of response back into the Department which my own officials from their long experience tell me really never happened before.

But would it be your interpretation of the NSS, that other than in the designated gateways and hubs, it's a question of facilitating growth only for local needs?

Cullen: Well, that's not absolutely true either. I can think of a number of towns that have a dynamic of their own - Clonmel, for example - that aren't hubs.

What is important with the gateways and hubs, and this is very clear in health and education, that we simply can't put state-of-the-art facilities all over the place. What the NSS does is to say that key facilities, such as the regional hospital or regional education centre, will go in there and they're not going to be available in every county town. But these towns will have capacity to grow in different ways.

Do you have sympathy for people getting into their cars at 6 a.m. to commute to work in Dublin?

Cullen: I do, but unfortunately it is a feature of modern living everywhere. Ireland has an opportunity to do some things differently and learn from other countries. But there is a point where people themselves make choices and I don't believe in being the dictator in the centre in all things.

I accept overall that it's not perfect and think we will change it as we go forward. I don't know that we have all the answers yet, and I'm not pretending that we do, but I do think by engagement that we'll get it.