Analysis: Action will have to be taken to bring Laois county councillors into line with their own regional planning guidelines, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
Just as the Minister for the Environment, Mr Roche, was extolling the value of regional planning guidelines yesterday in Ennis, Co Clare, Laois county councillors were pushing through a raft of rezoning proposals which flew in the face of rational planning.
Up for grabs was nearly every village in the county - from Attanagh to Vicarstown - with hundreds of acres of land earmarked for residential development. And all of proposed amendments to the draft county plan were hatched at closed-door committee meetings in recent weeks.
This time it wasn't the normally pro-development Fianna Fáil councillors who took the initiative, but their Fine Gael colleagues, supported by Progressive Democrat and Sinn Féin councillors. Fianna Fáil actually opposed what it called "blanket rezonings".
The targeted villages read like a roll-call - Arles, Attanagh, Ballacolla, Ballinakill, Ballybrittas, Ballyfin, Ballylynan, Ballyroan, Borris-in-Ossory, Camross, Castletown, Clonaslee, Clough, Durrow, Emo, Errill, Killenard, Rosenallis, Shanahoe, Stradbally and Timahoe.
Cllr Michael Moloney (FF) said afterwards he feared the rezonings would conjure up a "Rochfortbridge scenario" - a reference to the Co Westmeath village that's now engulfed by suburban housing, built largely for people commuting to Dublin.
"Each village in Co Laois should have been taken on a one-by-one basis and plans drawn up in consultation with the local communities," he said. "It's just nonsense for the Fine Gael group and others to argue that developers will provide sewerage and other facilities".
There is no provision in the Midlands Regional Planning Guidelines, adopted last April, for large-scale residential development around the villages of Co Laois. Its focus is on building up the urban structure of the region in accordance with a "hierarchy" of towns.
The guidelines give precedence to the "triangular gateway" of Althlone-Mullingar-Tullamore, identified in the Government's National Spatial Strategy, while not forgetting Longford and Portlaoise. Next in line are the region's smaller towns; villages are way down the list.
The "key objective" of the guidelines is to develop a "cohesive settlement strategy" that would "prioritise the linked gateway and principal towns as the primary foci for development", consolidate the smaller towns and "support" the existing network of villages.
If development is to start from the bottom of this hierarchy, a situation never envisaged by the guidelines, it is obvious the places that really need to be built up will lose out and the settlement pattern will become even more haphazard. An Taisce, among others, has argued in favour of building up villages as a viable alternative to indiscriminate one-off housing in the countryside. But this would mean preparing detailed local plans, rather than simply zoning land in the way it has been done in Laois.
The director of the Heritage Council, Mr Michael Starrett, said villages in the Irish landscape were very special and needed careful consideration.
Blanket zonings "cut across all of the good practice of drawing up village design statements", as had been done in Co Sligo.
In his speech yesterday, the Minister said the preparation of regional planning guidelines "demanded an ability to take a broader and longer-term view, something that we have not always been so good at in the past". Or, he might have added, in the present either.
Mr Roche has power under the 2000 Planning Act to revoke the village rezonings in Laois if they are confirmed by the county council after the public has had its say on its draft county plan. If the guidelines are to mean anything, he will have to do so.