The area around a Co Louth village faces a five-fold population increase, reports Frank McDonald, Environment Editor.
Two of Louth County Council's long-time planning consultants have disassociated themselves from a developer-driven plan for the village of Dunleer, which threatens to turn it into another dormitory for Dublin.
Mr Philip Geoghegan, an architect and urban design consultant who prepared guidelines for the council on sustainable development in Co Louth, warned that the draft Local Area Plan for Dunleer, would lead to a five-fold increase in its population, which is currently 1,100.
He said the plan would provide for a population expansion to 5,292 over a five-year period - despite its assertion that "it is not the intention that Dunleer should develop solely as a dormitory town based on commuting to Dublin" or elsewhere.
"By any standards this growth is promoted at such a pace and scale to clearly overwhelm the present village structure, with totally inadequate management or design guidance tools available to deliver a balanced community in that period," he said.
Mr Geoghegan said it was "inexplicable" that a far more modest plan for Dunleer, which had been drawn up in consultation with the community, had been replaced by an alternative plan commissioned by five mid-Louth councillors.
Expressing his dismay over the council's "volte face", he said it was at such odds with a planning commitment to coherent, orderly and balanced development that there should be an independent inquiry to establish how this had happened.
Mr Gerry Crilly, former chairman of the community-based Dunleer steering committee, also called for an inquiry, saying there was a "blatant conflict of interest" in councillors voting on a plan which they themselves had commissioned.
The councillors' plan was adopted last May on the casting vote of the chairman, Cllr Tommy Reilly (FF), one of those who had commissioned it.
Another of the five, Cllr Thomas Clare (FF), described it as "a complete sham" and voted against.
Mr Seán Ó Laoire, of Murray Ó Laoire Architects, who drew up the original plan for the village, said they were "saddened that our best endeavours on behalf of Louth County Council and the people of Dunleer have been disregarded".
He said everyone who had "engaged with us during the comprehensive consultation stage deserves to know that their contributions were acknowledged and recorded during the process of the preparation of the plan for Dunleer" in 2001.
In a letter to the council, he said: "I wish to place on record that we believe we did our very best to fulfil our professional remit notwithstanding the views of the elected representatives, who saw fit to commission the current draft plan."
Mr Ó Laoire said that "at all times we understood, naïvely or otherwise, that the elected members, whom we consulted with extensively, were fully conversant with the letter and particularly the spirit of the legislation which framed our remit".
Noting that his firm had also drafted local area plans for Omeath and Carlingford, he said he was also "fundamentally concerned" that the plan now on offer could be seen to conflict directly with the broader planning framework for Co Louth.
"Given the prevailing cynicism in respect of all aspects of planning in the country, I do not feel particularly enthusiastic about compounding that cynicism by passively disregarding what has happened and, by extension, endorsing this plan by my silence."
In other submissions on the latest plan, which the county council is due to consider on April 28th, the Heritage Council expressed "serious concern" that there would not be sufficient sewerage capacity to cater for a huge increase in population. The Heritage Council's planning officer, Mr Paddy Matthews, pointed out that the White River, into which treated effluent is discharged, was already contaminated. As a result, water abstraction from this local source was due to end shortly.
The view of the council, which carried out a heritage appraisal of the plan, was that the proposed growth of Dunleer "is in excess of its environmental capacity and therefore not in line with the proper planning and sustainable development of the area".
An Taisce has also urged Louth County Council to limit the development of Dunleer to what was proposed by the Murray Ó Laoire plan. The present zoning proposals were "excessive", according to its planning officer, Mr John O'Sullivan.