JOINT COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT debate

Rural Housing: Presentations.

Chairman

Today's meeting has been called to deal with planning issues with particular emphasis on housing in rural areas. The joint committee has invited representatives of a number of organisations to meet with it today. Members will have received a draft timetable to which I intend to adhere in order to ensure the efficient and smooth running of today's proceedings. As we have a hefty agenda, it is important to stick to the timetable as set out. Each group will make a presentation for approximately ten minutes and this will be followed by a question and answer session.

I welcome Ms Mary Moylan, Mr. FinianMatthews and Mr. Niall Cussen from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. We will hear from Ms Moylan before taking questions from members. I wish to draw attention to the fact that members of the committee have absolute privilege but the same privilege does not apply to witnesses appearing before it. Members are reminded of a long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that members should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the House, or officials by name in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

Ms Mary Moylan

Government policy on planning for housing in rural areas is set out in the National Spatial Strategy. The rural settlement policy framework contained in the NSS aims to sustain and renew established rural communities, while strengthening the structure of villages and smaller settlements to support local economies, and ensuring that key assets in rural areas are protected and that rural settlement policies are responsive to differing local circumstances. As the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government stated, the policy is to facilitate the housing requirements of people with roots or links in rural areas while at the same time protecting the quality of the rural environment and supporting quality of life in rural areas generally.

The Minister has announced his intention to publish by the end of the year planning guidelines on rural housing. The guidelines will be issued under section 28 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 and planning authorities will be required to have regard to them in exercising their planning functions.

In seeking to meet the objectives of maintaining and promoting active rural communities, the NSS draws a distinction between rural generated housing and urban generated housing. Rural generated housing is housing that is needed within the established rural community by persons working in rural areas or in nearby urban areas. Urban generated housing is housing in rural locations desired by people living and working in urban areas, including second homes. The strategy states that, subject to good planning practice on issues such as site, location and design, rural generated housing needs should be accommodated in the locations where they arise. On urban generated housing, the NSS states that the development driven by cities and towns should in general take place in their built-up areas or by way of well planned extensions to that built-up area. However, the NSS envisages that smaller towns and villages can also cater for this type of development in a sustainable manner for those seeking a rural lifestyle while working in a larger town or city.

The strategy goes on to outline how these policies need to be further refined to respond to the different circumstances in rural areas with different characteristics. In addressing the issue of rural settlement, it is useful to consider recent trends in population growth, housing development and in local authority decisions on planning applications for housing development in rural areas. An overview of population and housing trends as monitored by the CSO over the period from 1991 to 2002 indicates that today approximately 60% of people live in urban areas with a population of 1,500 people or more. Around one in four houses built in the past ten years has been in rural areas and the majority of houses built in Ireland over the past ten years has been in urban areas where the majority of national population increase has taken place.

If one looks at these trends in more detail, the CSO figures show that in the period 1991 to 2002, 290,000 houses were built in Ireland. Some 26% of these, or almost 76,000, were individual houses served by septic tanks. Counties with a high percentage of individual houses include County Galway at 63%, Monaghan, 54%; Roscommon,52%; Cavan, 52% and Leitrim, 52%. For comparison purposes, the percentage of the overall population of these counties that reside in urban areas as defined by the CSO, that is towns with a population of more than 1,500, was 42% for Galway, 28% for Monaghan, 20% for Roscommon, 17% for Cavan and 7% for Leitrim.

Chairman

Unfortunately, a vote has been called in the House. We will suspend proceedings and we will be back as soon as the vote is over.

Sitting suspended at 10.44 a.m. and resumed at 10.57 a.m.

Chairman

I apologise for interrupting Ms Moylan.

Ms Moylan

The Department is anxious to establish some broad trends in the area of rural planning. We contacted a sample of planning authorities and asked them to provide information on the number of decisions in 2002 on rural housing applications and the percentage of these decisions that were granted and refused. The information received for 2002 from the authorities sampled can be summarised as follows. On average 75% of applications for single rural houses were granted. The highest grant rates are in the westernmost planning authorities with grant rates falling somewhat as we move eastwards towards the more urbanised areas. Most planning authorities in the western half of the country grant around four out of five applications. Where permission is refused, the reasons for refusal generally relate to land use issues such as traffic safety, public health or protection of the natural and cultural heritage.

The figures indicate that most of the applications for rural houses in the planning authorities sampled are being granted. The statistics referred to are at county level and may not fully pick up particular areas of development pressure or areas where planning issues are more complex and where, correspondingly, the number of permissions granted may be lower. The Department is exploring measures to provide more regular annual updates of these figures for all rural planning authorities, including more accurate mapping of the extent of rural housing developments. Progress in this area will be very useful for local authorities in terms of preparation of development plans.

From our regular contact with planning authorities, it appears the difficulty in getting permission to build houses in rural areas can arise through insufficient information being provided when the initial application for permission is lodged. Success in gaining permission is generally more assured where an application is put together with the benefit of comprehensive pre-planning consultation with the planning authority and integration of the planning authorities and other relevant requirements in regard to access, siting, design and so on. Promoting best practice in the area of pre-planning consultations will be a strong focus of the forthcoming planning guidelines on rural housing.

The context in which decisions are made by various planning authorities varies enormously. Some planning authorities are dealing with very substantial levels of pressure for development near the principal cities and towns. Other planning authorities have to deal with the very real issue of rural depopulation. Individual sites also vary considerably in terms of situation, landscape, access, relationship to conservation areas and so on.

Working within the overall policy framework adopted by the Government in the NSS the forthcoming planning guidelines on rural housing will aim to provide a more transparent approach for planning authorities to follow. The guidelines will support the implementation of the strategy by the planning authorities and provide a policy framework responsive to local conditions.

The two main aims of the guidelines are: to assist local authorities on practical and technical issues in their implementation of the broad rural settlement policy framework in the NSS through the preparation of their development plans and operation of the development control system; and to deliver greater public awareness around the issues involved in rural settlement policies and greater consensus around practical issues involved in rural planning policies.

The key messages of the guidelines will focus on developing consensus and guiding development. I shall deal with these individually.

On developing consensus, rural housing policies must be based on a comprehensive understanding of all relevant issues, which is then fed into the decision-making process. Such analysis might be aimed, for example, at comprehensively mapping, at a county and sub-county level, those areas where development pressures are lower and population levels are either stable or in decline. Areas where overspill or ribbon development extends out from key cities and towns are becoming an issue. When such facts are assembled it will be easier to forge consensus around rural settlement policies with the key interest groups. They will be grounded in detailed local information that strikes a balance between the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The guidelines will set out a variety of suggestions on the types of information and analysis that are desirable and the processes of public consultation that can be used to develop consensus.

In terms of guiding development, lack of consistency is an issue that frequently arises for rural housing applications and decisions. A key function for the planning system is to clearly guide the persons intending to develop houses in rural areas on the most appropriate sites for houses.

It is also important for the continued vitality of the rural economy that smaller rural towns and villages continue to offer attractive and affordable locations for new housing development. The guidelines will outline a number of measures to assist this.

Different issues arise in areas close to cities and towns. The NSS emphasises that the manner in which the development of rural areas close to cities and towns is planned is important to ensure that they can grow in a well organised way. This is done in tandem with the cost effective provision of infrastructure such as transport and water services.

Piecemeal and haphazard development of rural areas close to urban centres can cause many problems as they grow. For example, in newly developing areas, where higher density development might be desirable, there can be great difficulties in integrating such development with houses developed earlier. The resultant compromises on density and layout may mean that more land is needed for the development of the town than would otherwise be the case. This will encourage urban sprawl. These issues need to be managed carefully.

At present a prospective applicant for a new housing proposal in a rural area needs to be aware of and take account of a wide range of best practice measures published by a variety of agencies. Assembling the relevant information can be difficult. There is potential for inconsistencies of approach between planning authorities.

To assist planning authorities and applicants it is intended in the guidelines to assemble a compendium of best practice on how to ensure that development in rural areas is of a high quality in terms of location, construction and design and maintenance. It may also include issues such as access, waste disposal, the natural and cultural heritage.

The publication of the NSS was a key first step in setting out a comprehensive and strategic national spatial policy including rural settlement. Its implementation must be followed through within the local planning system. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government will publish the rural housing guidelines by the end of the year. They will elaborate on that policy to promote best practice, certainty and consistency as the NSS is implemented at local level.

Deputy McCormack

I thank Ms Moylan for her presentation on the guidelines. Unfortunately, I am no wiser now about them. The first paragraph states: "the NSS aims to sustain and renew established rural communities, while strengthening the structure of villages and smaller settlements." That could be interpreted in various ways. The same applies to the rest of the presentation. Planners could interpret it any way they like. When people from rural areas apply for planning permission they experience difficulties in interpreting the county development plan and the NSS guidelines. Neither are specific. Planners experience the same difficulties.

I want Ms Moylan to clarify some figures. For example, she stated: "Counties with a high percentage of individual houses include County Galway at 63%." I represent the county and I do not know where she got that percentage. Can Ms Moylan tell me how she compiled this data? Does that figure include Galway city? Or are they represented separately? Galway city and county are the one. I doubt that the percentage represents rural houses. Does the figure for rural houses include houses built in rural towns? Or are they deemed to be one-off houses? As a representative of the area I know how many people reside in the county and 63% of them do not live in rural houses. I know that 63% of the permissions granted are not one-off houses.

On page 3 it is stated that "75% of applications for single rural houses were granted" by the planning authorities. Perhaps that is the end figure but many of them are second and third applications. As pointed out by Ms Moylan, some of the fault lies with a planner presenting the planning applications. There are many incomplete applications or insufficient information is given on the form leading to a refusal and people reapply. Perhaps 75% of applications are eventually granted. One can imagine the frustration of a young couple in a rural area who apply for planning permission and are refused on technical grounds. When inquiries are made by me, other representatives or that couple reasons are given for the refusal. Sometimes these matters can be easily rectified if the planning office allows more time and liaises with the applicant. Planning staff just say it is no bother to reapply with the appropriate amendments. Another application means people must wait another three months at least and pay an additional £2,000. This is in addition to the cost of building a house. All this is frustrating for young couples.

Chairman

We are quite limited in the amount of time we have to debate this matter. Perhaps the Deputy would ask concise questions.

Deputy McCormack

We are discussing this matter today and it is all relevant to local Government.

All committee members present were or are members of local authorities. This will not be the case next year because the dual mandate Bill has been passed. I agree with Deputy Healy-Rae that it will be a big disadvantage. Members of the Oireachtas and legislators will not have the same interest in dealing with local government matters. After the next election, we may have members with very little interest in and experience of local authorities because they will not have sufficient knowledge of them. I have dealt with five or six county development plans and four or five city development plans as a member of a local authority and therefore know exactly what I am talking about. The person, who will replace me in the Dáil, whenever that happens, will be a member of a local authority for the first time and will have no knowledge of planning, county development plans, etc.

Chairman

He may have.

Deputy McCormack

That person will be at a big disadvantage.

Chairman

He may have such knowledge. He may be a member of a local authority at present.

Deputy Gilmore

I join Deputy McCormack in welcoming Ms Moylan and her colleagues. She stated that, in the past ten years, 26% of all dwellings built in the State were once-off rural houses. A figure of 40% has been circulating in the public domain for some time, the source of which is thought to be the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. Will Ms Moylan state if this figure is correct, and relates to a particular year?

There has obviously been an increase in the number of dwellings built in the State in recent years. What proportion of the 58,000 dwellings built last year, about which we hear a lot, were one-off rural dwellings?

I appreciate that the Department has surveyed some local authorities on refusals and grants of permission. Is there a breakdown of the numbers of dwellings built? Is it possible to state how many were urban-generated and how many were rural-generated? Is it possible to state how many were for the sons, daughters or near relatives of the landowners or how many were for holiday homes? If this information is not available in the Department, would it be possible to survey the local authorities in advance of the guidelines being published and produce figures pertaining to those for whom the houses were built? I understand from the Minister that they will be published in draft form by the end of the year for public consultation and discussion. It is a matter of considerable public debate and it is important that the debate is conducted on the basis of fact. It would be helpful to have a breakdown of the numbers of grants and refusals, particularly refusals, so we can know the grounds on which they were made.

Ms Moylan stated guidelines will be published under section 28 of the Planning Act. Is it true that, under this section, no Department guidelines on one-off rural housing have been issued to the planning authorities, other than those in the National Spatial Strategy?

Section 29 allows for policy directives to be given to local authorities in respect of planning applications for one-off rural housing. Will Ms Moylan state if any such directives have been given?

Section 34 deals with the way in which a planning authority grants planning permission. A planning authority, under section 34(2)(iv), must take into account, where relevant, the policy of the Government, the Minister or any other Minister of the Government. Am I correct in believing that there has been no announcement of Government policy on one-off rural housing and no change thereto since the publication of the National Spatial Strategy? Was the National Spatial Strategy not the last statement of Government policy to which a planning authority would be required to have regard in making a decision on a planning application?

Ms Moylan

I thank Deputies McCormack and Gilmore for their questions. The guidelines have not been published yet and the Minister will do so later this year. Therefore, I can speak of them only in general terms but not in respect of the detail. The National Spatial Strategy is a very large document dealing with many issues and therefore it was not possible to go into the detail that will be possible in terms of guidelines pertaining to the policy on rural settlement. It does state that the aim is to sustain and renew established rural communities. In that context, rural-generated housing needs should be accommodated in the locations where they arise, but villages and smaller settlements do offer opportunities to cater for development arising from more urban-generated needs.

Deputy McCormack asked about the figures on Galway. The figure of 63% for individual houses relates to County Galway, excluding the city borough.

Deputy McCormack

The city borough is part of County Galway.

Ms Moylan

My figures are CSO figures and they relate to the county outside the city and to individual houses with septic tanks. By and large, such houses are in rural areas although some may be in villages.

Deputy McCormack

It is not fair to say that 63% of individual housing in County Galway is of a one-off nature when one excludes the population of Galway city.

Chairman

The delegation will clarify it.

Deputy McCormack

I want this corrected in the document because Galway city is part of Galway county. I happen to represent both.

Chairman

It is not as if the delegates are trying to pull the wool over the Deputy's eyes. The statistic has been clarified.

Ms Moylan

On the issue of whether people make second or third applications, we agree with the Deputy that there is a need for greater transparency so people will be aware of the local authority policy. If such transparency existed, people could submit their applications in full knowledge of the local authority requirements and therefore avoid submitting applications that would not be accepted. We will certainly be addressing this significant issue in the guidelines to try to ensure greater transparency on what is acceptable and the required standards. The Department is working on a standard planning application form, which it hopes to issue next year. It will help in dealing with some of these issues.

On Deputy Gilmore's point, CSO figures for the period 1991 to 2002 show that 26% of the houses built in that 11 year period were individual houses served by septic tanks. In the past the Department has used the best available figure concerning houses constructed in 1999. Based on data provided by the ESB on electricity connections in 1999, we stated that roughly one third of houses were one-off houses. The figure of 26% arises over the period 1991 to 2002.

We are not happy with the level of information we have on rural housing, and we are working on obtaining more detailed information which would be of benefit to policy makers and local authorities.

The survey we carried out on local authorities related to planning permissions granted. We did not ask if applications related to rural-generated housing or urban-generated housing. This is the kind of information we intend to collect in the future. I doubt if we could collect it by the end of this year, before the publication of the guidelines, but we will do the best we can.

Under the Planning and Development Act 2000, we have already issued a set of guidelines in respect of the drawing up of regional planning guidelines for the National Spatial Strategy. We have guidelines on quarries in draft form, which will also be under the Act. The guidelines on rural housing will probably be the third set; we are also creating guidelines on development plans. A policy directive has not yet been issued under the 2000 Act.

Deputy Cuffe

Much of the debate about rural housing seems to involve limited research and figures. A recent media discussion on rural housing made reference to a report by An Foras Forbartha issued 30 years ago. I am conscious of the need for research on many of the issues raised recently on the vexed issue of rural housing, such as car commuting, ground water contamination and the need to contain rural communities. Has the Department any plans in train to commission research on the impact of rural housing compared to that of urban housing, as well as the specific impact of one-off rural housing? If not, I hope it will do so. It would benefit the debate greatly to take a long, hard look at issues such as septic tanks and car dependency.

It appears that counties bordering Dublin have had regard to the strategic planning guidelines for the greater Dublin area, but have flagrantly breached them. Is the Department concerned about this, particularly given that the ESRI mid-term review points out that our greenhouse gas emissions are 31% above the levels we had hoped to achieve under the Kyoto Protocol? Twenty-one per cent of these emissions are caused by the transportation sector, and car commuting has a significant role in this regard. What is the Department doing to reach the strategic planning guidelines in the counties adjoining Dublin?

One could say the failure of many local authorities to publish the statutory planning lists in time for third parties to make representations is a matter for those authorities but I hope the Department will take an interest in this. It is a cause of some concern. Does the Department intend to take any action on this matter?

Deputy Healy-Rae

I welcome the officials from the Department. I come from an area where it is extremely difficult for individuals to obtain planning permission. At last week's meeting of Kerry County Council, 12 motions arose under section 140, and there are 16 due to be considered at the next meeting. They pertain to applicants who have received a site in the country from their parents. In some instances, the applicants are married couples or engaged couples and in others they are people who may never get married. Regardless of marital status, it is absolutely impossible to get planning permission to build on sites in south Kerry that have been obtained from parents.

Let us consider three extraordinary cases within a 12 mile radius of my place in Kilgarvan. One new house has been knocked on foot of an order of An Bord Pleanála. A second house is ready to be lived in - one only has to turn the key - but it is ordered to be levelled. The applicant understood, when the motion under section 140 was passed, that he would be entitled to start building his house. He completed the house but the county manager delayed in signing off and an order was issued that the house be knocked. A third substantial building, because it was built two or three feet nearer the road than was stipulated in the planning regulations, has been ordered to be knocked.

Thank you.

Senator Brennan

I welcome Mr. FinianMatthews, whom we have met throughout the country. It is true to say the National Spatial Strategy, which I welcome, was looked up to by councillors throughout the country as a vital part of forward planning.

I too have concerns about the figures for rural housing and how they have been used and abused by different bodies throughout the country. It is vital that the figures being used be clarified before any final report is made. There is much confusion at present when county councils are preparing county development plans and regional development plans. While local authorities present figures for planning permissions granted for rural houses with septic tanks the same councils and local authorities apply to the Department for vast funding for sewage treatment plants under the waste water treatment schemes.

In our own small village the population is projected to double over the next ten years. Figures have been used in applications for funding for sewerage schemes in catchment areas which show half the number of rural houses which are there at present. That has not been taken into consideration. It is important that those figures be clarified. Some areas with a projected population of 1,000 are served at present by septic tanks. Local authorities are using figures to support a particular view. I contend that the number of houses per square kilometre in rural Ireland, excluding the greater Dublin area, is the smallest in Europe. The density is not at the level given here. This must be clarified.

Members of local authorities are looking for guidance at national level. We have mere guidelines at regional level and we know what guidelines mean. If a consensus is to be reached members of local authorities bear a big responsibility in drawing up a county development plan. The figures for rural development must be clarified.

Ms Moylan

A common theme running through the questions from Deputies Cuffe and Healy-Rae and Senator Brennan relates to background information which we have. The Department accepts that we need greater information about rural housing and the issues associated with it. It is our intention to get that information. We also accept that there are real challenges in relation to people's housing needs. There are now higher environmental requirements and people expect and demand them. People also want a higher quality of life. These are all challenging issues for the Department and for local authorities. In drawing up the guidelines we want to bring greater clarity to these issues so that local authorities can set out their policies more clearly. There should be greater consistency across local authorities so that applicants for planning permission have a better understanding of the requirements and the issues associated with particular types of sites to be addressed. The main purpose of the guidelines is to bring greater clarity to the whole issue. These are difficult issues for councillors, planners and the Department but we must grapple with them.

The strategic planning guidelines for the greater Dublin area are being revised at present to take account of the National Spatial Strategy. The process is under way, consultants have been engaged by the relevant regional authorities and draft guidelines will be published, I think by end of this year. Deputy Cuffe's point on the publication of planning lists has been taken up with the city and county managers.

Deputy Cregan

Will the guidelines appear in draft form?

Ms Moylan

Traditionally the Department issues guidelines in draft form so that people can comment on them.

Deputy Cregan

It is mentioned in the document that planning authorities will be required "to have regard to the guidelines". It is not enough to have regard to the guidelines. We need to bring a level of consistency into the area of planning throughout the country. I accept that different counties have different considerations and different factors influencing planning but we are seriously lacking in consistency. Having regard to guidelines is not enough. They should be strictly adhered to.

Chairman

Ms Moylan, in collecting statistics on rural planning you mentioned that you contacted planning authorities. You should regard yourself as very lucky. In preparation for today's meeting, at the end of September we contacted 27 local authorities looking for the relevant section within their county development plans. We have had no response from ten of the local authorities. If this is how local authorities treat a committee of the Oireachtas you can imagine how they treat planning applicants and the general public.

You mentioned that 75% of applications for one-off houses were granted. Does that include those which are appealed or are you talking solely about decisions made by local authorities.

Ms Moylan

I was referring to local authority decisions.

Chairman

In dealing with planning applications can a person who has not shown an interest in a planning application at its first stage show an interest at a later stage and in what circumstances could that happen? In processing an application, should a planning authority attach greater importance to the strategic planning guidelines or to the county development plan? In many cases the two do not marry.

Ms Moylan

Under the Planning Act 2000, a person wishing to appeal a planning permission must have been involved in the application at local authority level in the first place. There are exceptions but in such cases a person must appeal to An Bord Pleanála and show why they should be allowed to participate. These exceptions usually relate to the fact that the person was not aware of the permission or could not have been aware of it. In order to encourage the principle of subsidiarity the 2000 Act requires people to participate in the application at local authority level.

We see the spatial strategy, the regional planning guidelines and the development plans as a hierarchy of plans. The development plan should be influenced by all of them. The Act requires the development plan to have regard to the National Spatial Strategy and the regional planning guidelines. The normal procedure is that when regional planning guidelines are adopted the development plans are subsequently amended to be sure that they are consistent with the regional planning guidelines. We only have one set of regional planning guidelines so far. These are the guidelines for the greater Dublin area from the Dublin Regional Authority and the Eastern Regional Authority. This is work in progress. When we roll out a second set of regional planning guidelines both local authorities and regional authorities should be in a better position to ensure that the relevant consistency is achieved.

Deputy Cuffe

I note that the strategic planning guidelines for the greater Dublin area will possibly be modified to take account of the National Spatial Strategy. Will local authorities be able to have regard to these strategic planning guidelines and then breach them? Will that still be the case when the National Spatial Strategy has been incorporated into the strategic planning guidelines?

Deputy Allen

What work has the Department done so far on the recently suggested new fast track approach to major development? When can we expect to see a discussion paper on that issue?

Ms Moylan

In reply to Deputy Cuffe's question, the Act requires local authorities to have regard to the regional planning guidelines in drawing up their development plans. The Department has been in correspondence with various local authorities on that process in recent years. The second rolling out of strategic planning guidelines should ensure that we learn from experience and that the guidelines are written clearly and in a way that is easy to translate into development plans. The legal position is that local authorities must have regard to them in drawing up their development plans.

Deputy Allen raised the question of the critical infrastructure Bill. The Minister has said he will bring proposals to Government before Christmas for the establishment of a national infrastructure board, which would provide a one-stop shop method of considering projects of strategic national importance. This would apply to a limited number of projects. If the proposal is agreed by Government the legislation will be drafted as quickly as possible thereafter.

Chairman

You say 75% of planning applications were granted. Does this refer only to local authorities?

Ms Moylan

Yes, 75% of planning applications to local authorities are granted. In future discussions with them we will clarify whether those are final decisions which stand up.

Can we have corrected statistics? These statistics give a completely false impression. The figure of 63% for County Galway, the area with which I am familiar, is ridiculous because 75% of the houses built in the past ten years have been built in urban areas.

Chairman

We thank Ms Moylan for making her presentation and for answering questions.

I welcome Mr. John O'Connor and his colleagues from An Bord Pleanála. We will hear form Mr. O'Connor before he takes questions from members of the joint committee.

I must remind our visitors that members of the joint committee have absolute privilege but the same privilege does not apply to witnesses appearing before the committee. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that members should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

Mr. John O’Connor

The board last appeared before this committee on 22 November 2000 and we are delighted to have received an invitation to come back and account for our stewardship. Since then a number of significant developments have occurred which impact on the operations of the board. Functions in relation to approval of local authority infrastructural projects and the determination of compulsory purchase orders under the 2000 Planning Act were transferred to the board on 1 January 2001. Revised procedures under the 2000 Act in relation to planning applications and appeals, including those relating to third party objectors having to make a submission on the planning application in order to establish a right of appeal to the board, came into effect on 11 March 2002. Provisions in relation to social and affordable housing under the 2000 Act commenced on 1 November 2000 but these have not, as yet, had a significant impact on the work of the board.

Other new functions which the board received under the 2000 Act include determinations of appeals against decisions on strategic development zone planning schemes. The Government launched the National Spatial Strategy in November 2002. The authority to determine appeal fees was devolved to the board and revised fees came into operation in June 2003.

At the last meeting with the committee in 2000, I outlined a number of measures the board was considering to deal with delays and the shortage of planners and some of the constraints it operated under. I now propose to provide up-to-date information on these and other relevant trends and developments in the board since then.

The board increased significantly the number of fee-per-case consultants it engages to report on the smaller or less complex planning appeals. They produced more than 1,700 reports in 2001 and about 1,780 in 2002. In 2003 to date, they have produced about 700 reports. This reflects the clearing of the large backlog. Following a tendering process, the board also engaged professional consultancy firms to provide reports on larger or more complex cases and they produced 62 reports in 2001 and 205 reports in 2002. All such consultants are professionally qualified planners. Additionally, the board has employed a number of professional planners in 2003 on a pilot basis to be headquartered outside the greater Dublin area as part of its drive to recruit more planning staff within the board. There are currently nine vacancies for planners out of an authorised complement of 47 and a competition to fill these is under way. Arising from the above measures, changes to management structures within the board, additional staff, measures to increase efficiency and effectiveness and a reduction in the intake of cases in 2002, I can report significant improvements in the board's performance since the last meeting. Key statistics since 2000 are as follows. In 2001, the intake of cases, all categories, was 5,422, the highest on record, an increase of 2% over 2000. The intake in 2002 fell 16% to 4,562 but recent trends in 2003 suggest that there will be an increase this year of about 5% over the 2002 intake. In 2001, output increased to an all time record of 5,105, up 5.6% on 2000, and a further record was established in 2002 when 5,892 cases were disposed of, an increase of 15% on the 2001 figure. Up to the end of September 2003, the board had disposed of 3,672 cases which remained ahead of the intake.

The number of cases disposed of within the statutory objective period of 18 weeks fell to 29% in 2001 when the backlog was at its worst. However, it increased to 36% in 2002 and stands at 72% in the year to date; 78% for the past three months and 80% for the month of September. We are on a rapidly improving track. The number of cases on hands has fallen by 53% from 2,753 in 2001 to 1,291 at the end of September 2003, a level consistent with achieving the board's statutory 18 week time objective. The average time taken to dispose of cases has fallen from 25 weeks in 2001 to 16.1 weeks in the year to date and 14.7 weeks in the past three months.

This improved performance is reflected in the fact that in recent months appeals on a major strategic development zone and two very large mixed developments involving some 3,500 and 2,500 dwellings were decided within the 18 weeks. The arrangements put in place by the board for the approval of local authority-public private partnership infrastructure projects through the CPO and BIS EIS processes has continued to prove adequate to ensure the board is able to discharge its functions in these cases in an efficient and effective manner within the terms of the existing legislation.

This year, the board will hold about 20 hearings relating to CPOs/EISs for major projects; it has already disposed of 72 cases. Since the board assumed responsibility for determining local authority infrastructural projects in January 2001, we have received 362 such proposals and disposed of 314, leaving 48 on hands. I have handouts for members of the committee illustrating the major road projects and other major local authority projects received by and disposed of by the board since these functions were transferred to it in January 2001. A list of major infrastructural projects currently on hands is available for members.

There are no backlogs in the board in terms of these cases. For example, there are only six major road developments on hands in the board. Two of these relate to proposed new junctions on previously approved motorways. Oral hearings on two of the schemes will be held this month, while the statutory period for lodging objections to the board has just expired in one other case and will not expire in the other three until dates in December, five to six weeks following which the oral hearings will be held.

The existing system provides a one-stop-shop for these road projects and one of the most important factors in the time taken by the board to process these cases is the quality of the information provided with the schemes, including the comprehensiveness of the environmental impact statement. I am happy to report that the quality of the information now provided is generally of a high standard and this greatly assists the board in discharging the cases as quickly as possible.

The board continues to examine ways of improving practice to shorten the timescale for these cases while still discharging to the full its responsibilities under the legislation. In addition to local authority-public private partnership infrastructural projects, the board accords priority to private infrastructural development such as large housing schemes, 30 units or more, power generating and transmission facilities, including wind farm developments, water-waste developments and major employment generating projects. Special measures, including a dedicated team of inspectors to deal with large housing schemes, were put in place to ensure that these cases are dealt with as quickly as possible. Recently, the board introduced further measures within the inspectorate to ensure that all infrastructural appeals are processed in the shortest possible time.

A comparison between trends under the old and new legislation suggests that the requirement to have made a submission to the planning authority resulted in third party appeals declining somewhat as a share of all appeals and an increase in the number of such appeals being invalidated in 2002. However, trends in 2003 indicate that the new legislation is having less of an effect than it had in its initial stage and that the level of third party appeals are returning to where they traditionally stood. This happens as people become more aware of the new requirements. The percentage of local authority decisions appealed has remained fairly constant at about 7% for the past couple of years despite all the changes in the system.

A major review of the board's organisation and structures by outside management consultants was undertaken and their report is due to be presented to the board this week. Under our sustaining progress action plan, the board is committed, in consultation with staff interests, to submitting to the Government proposals for the future organisation and resourcing of the board based on that review.

In April 2002, a report on value for money examination into planning appeals by the Comptroller and Auditor General was presented to Government. The report was generally favourable to the board but made recommendations on particular aspects of the appeals system. I attended a meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts on 12 June 2003 at which the report was considered. The board, and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, set up a joint working group to consider the issues raised such as monitoring the quality of board decisions and reasons the board overturns inspectors' recommendations.

It also referred to the considerable variations between individual planning authorities in the share of decisions being reversed by the board and suggested that identifying and investigating these could ensure consistency of planning authority decision-making. To facilitate this, the board, for the first time, included a table in its 2001 annual report showing the rate of reversal in the case of each local planning authority. To assist in the better analysis of appeal outcomes, the board undertook studies of three prominent categories of appeal, wind farms, telecom masts and one-off rural houses. These studies will be published shortly in the 2002 annual report.

As the committee indicated rural housing is a particular topic it wishes to consider at today's meeting, I propose to outline the findings of that study. It shows that more than 50% of appeals which come to the board are by applicants against refusals by planning authorities. In those cases, the board upheld the decision of the planning authority in 96% of cases; approximately 45% of appeals were against decisions by planning authorities to grant and the board upheld about three quarters of these appeals. The overall effect on decisions of planning authorities in these cases is, the board confirmed 63% of planning authority decisions and reversed 37%. The main reasons for refusal were settlement policy, 35%; public health-pollution, 27%; traffic issues, 24% and visual amenity, 27%. Most decisions were made for more than one reason. In 62% of refusals, the local development plan was specifically mentioned.

To keep this in perspective, it should be noted that only about 4% of local authority decisions to grant permission are appealed by third parties. Earlier, I mentioned the Government adopted the National Spatial Strategy in November 2002. The board intends to carry out a comparative study of decisions made by it in 2003 on one-off rural housing which were subject to the policies under the strategy. As was noted in the VFM report, a systematic procedure for forecasting, review and appraisal of inspectors' casework and general performance has been introduced by the inspectorate management. Each inspector makes a monthly return to the planning officer or relevant deputy planning officer with information on files completed the previous month and a forecast of files to be completed in the coming month with all files being scheduled with a view to meeting the 18 week period. These forecasts and returns include a crude weighting of the relevant files and note any particular difficulties experienced in the discharge of the files. At the end of each three month period there is a summary review of each inspector's productivity and there is a detailed review at the end of each six month period. The effectiveness of this system, in terms of optimising output and quality from the inspectorate is now being reviewed in the light of experience to date.

Chairman

Thank you.

Deputy Allen

I thank Mr. O'Connor for his presentation. On first reading, the statistics are impressive in terms of the time it takes to reach decisions. Of course, in that are included appeals against single house developments, house extensions and so on. Can Mr. O'Connor tell us what is the longest appeal currently on his books? How many appeals are over the statutory period and how many have exceeded a 12-month waiting period?

Mr. O'Connor said reports by inspectors had been overturned by a sub-committee of his board. What is the rationale behind an expert inspectorate's report being overturned by those far less expert on planning matters than those who made the original decision at local authority level? How does one decide which committee considers the appeal? Is that done randomly; is it a matter of pot luck or is there a specific expertise within particular committees to deal with appeal cases?

Deputy Gilmore

I thank Mr. O'Connor for meeting us today. My first question relates to procedure dealt with by Mr. O'Connor in the first page of his presentation on revised procedures in the Act of 2000. It appears as though the board is not considering appeals on minor technical grounds. An example is a case where an appeal was not heard because the appellant presented the receipt he or she had received from the local authority for the payment of the €20 fee rather than the letter acknowledging the receipt. The board did not hear the appeal in that case. A second example is where a community association with a long record in planning matters was not allowed to proceed with their appeal on the grounds that the board did not consider it as having sufficient interest in the site even though it was within the area referred to by the association. Another involved an alleged situation where the site notice was different to the permission. Tiny distinctions are being made for the disallowance of appeals.

I draw Mr. O'Connor's attention to a reference in the documents which the board distributes which I am told is misleading to potential appellants. It sets out a requirement for third party appellants to submit an acknowledgement of receipt of the initial objection to the local authority. I am informed that the term "third party appellant" is not used in the legislation. This is misleading. People with an immediate concern do not consider themselves third party appellants.

Mr. O'Connor draws our attention, in paragraphs 5 and 6, to the speed and efficiency with which the board deals with its new functions for roads and infrastructure projects. I understand that to mean that An Bord Pleanála is doing quite well in terms of dealing with infrastructure projects and that there is no need for the proposed infrastructure development board announced by Government. When was Mr. O'Connor first informed of the Government's intention to establish such a board. Has the board offered any opinion to Government in that regard?

I am sure Mr. O'Connor heard the presentation on behalf of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government from which it is clear we are forced to rely on what is termed "rural myth" regarding one-off rural housing. There has been little research on one-off rural housing. While we have some information from CSO statistics on the volume of such houses, we do not have any information regarding trend in that area. ESB connections are hardly the most reliable method of determining the extent of rural housing. We appear to have little or no information on the purposes for which rural housing is being built. Given the wide remit of An Bord Pleanála to advise on planning matters rather than just deal with appeals, has the board conducted any research into the pattern of rural housing?

Some 50% of appeals made to the board are from applicants who have been refused permission by local authorities. Some 96% of them are refused. Of the appeals, 45% of which are against decisions - I presume these are third party appeals - three-quarters of them are upheld. Is that the normal pattern for appeals? What are the corresponding figures, generally, for appeals before An Bord Pleanála. The chances of an applicant who has been refused permission by the county council having his or her decision overturned by An Bord Pleanála is 1:25. If, however, one is granted permission by the local authority but an appeal is lodged against you one has only a 1:4 chance of succeeding with the application. That does not appear to be the general pattern in regard to appeals by applicants or third parties.

Mr. O’Connor

Deputy Allen asked about the longest appeal on our books. A number of appeals have been before us for a long time. They would, in the main, be as a result of, say, an applicant pulling out of or slowing down the process. I presume the Deputy is not asking about cases that might be held up by court cases and so on. Such cases are completely out of our hands. We may have sought information that was not submitted with the original application. In that regard, it would be meaningless to try to set out what is the longest appeal on our books.

I am drawing the conclusions from what Mr. O'Connor is saying.

Mr. O’Connor

Deputy Gilmore raised a couple of other points including research on one-off rural housing. I completely agree with him. A couple of years ago at the launch of our annual report I said that a lot of talk about the matter was anecdotal but that there was very little intelligent research about one-off housing. One would like to see a longer-term survey of what was granted permission and whether the terms on which permission was granted were carried out and delivered on etc. Matters such as how many of the houses were holiday houses and other similar matters would bear research.

This would not really be our job as we do not have the resources to carry out research. We have done the bit of research which I presented on creating certain types of one-off rural housing development but that is only within the appeal process and based on what we can divine from our documents. Wider research of what is happening on the ground is something we would welcome.

The pattern of one-off housing in regard to the poor success rate of first parties is somewhat different from the usual pattern. The normal success rate of first parties is around 20% but here it is 4%. The success rate of third parties, historically, is around 40%. Here they have a success rate of 75%.

Deputy Cuffe

It seems that concerns are continuing on from the Department of the Environment and Local Government to An Bord Pleanála in regard to research on rural housing. It seems to be a bit like the fellow that is blindfolded identifying a camel from a distance. Certainly, the kind of figures we are using, whether concerning ESB connections or septic tanks, do not seem to grasp the heart of the problem. The best illustration I have seen in recent times is a map produced by the CSO showing commuting distances. It seemed to indicate a vast increase in the amount of one-off housing at fairly large distances from towns. It is a matter of concern if those people are commuting long distances. I agree with the need for better statistics.

Based on what the chairman of the board has shown us, I agree that the board has a good track record on decision-making within a short timeframe. I share the concern of my colleague, Deputy Gilmore, that An Bord Pleanála might be relegated to dealing with the less than critical infrastructure while a new agency would deal with critical infrastructure.

Has Mr. O'Connor noticed any changes arising from the adoption of the National Spatial Strategy in terms of the decisions the board makes, or is it too early to say? What is the role of the National Roads Authority? I note that 24% of the many decisions on one-off housing made by the board related to traffic issues. Has the authority taken any appeals to An Bord Pleanála or does it take an active interest in the safety issues arising from rural housing? On the matter of the overturning by the board of inspectors' decisions, something which does not happen too often, will the board publish its reasons for overturning decisions? Would the board be amenable to publishing them?

Deputy Healy-Rae

I would like to welcome the members of An Bord Pleanála. I have listened attentively to Mr. O'Connor. I do not agree that if the board changes an inspector's decision it is done mainly in order to grant permission. My experience - I have seen signed decisions of high-ranking officials in An Bord Pleanála giving reasons planning permission should be granted - is that a letter of refusal has been sent out in a number of instances despite the recommendation of a top official of the board.

I cannot agree with Mr. O'Connor who stated that the inspectors' decisions are changed in order to grant permissions. To the average rural applicant, it looks bad that a strong recommendation for granting permission from a top official of the board who has personally inspected a site is overturned at the top and followed by a letter of refusal. I cannot accept that. Deputy Allen pressed this issue and so do I.

Is it correct that some members of An Taisce are also members of An Bord Pleanála?

Chairman

Is that the Deputy's final question?

Deputy Healy-Rae

No. Recently in Killarney the Taoiseach stood before cameras and said that more planning permissions for single rural housing would be granted. Did Mr. O'Connor see that on television or did he hear what the Taoiseach said? If he did not, did anybody tell him about it? During the same week, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Cullen, said that the Department would grant more planning permissions to applicants for single rural housing. We thought then we could get on our bicycles and that things were flying for us. I look forward to getting answers from Mr. O'Connor on these matters.

Deputy Callanan

I know I cannot ask a question about a specific planning permission. The background to my two questions is the landslide in Derrybrien. The planning permission there was granted by An Bord Pleanála which overturned the decision of Galway County Council. How independent are environmental impact studies? Does An Bord Pleanála carry out the studies or are they sent in by the company seeking planning permission? Does the board make any structural assessment of areas like Derrybrien? There is a huge problem in such areas at present. Is any structural assessment carried out by an Bord Pleanála or by the company seeking planning permission?

Mr. O’Connor

Deputy Cuffe asked whether it was too early to assess the impact of the National Spatial Strategy on rural housing. To an extent it is. As I said in my presentation, we will try to carry out a survey of appeals next year to see what change it has made. Anybody who reads our files will see that we take the National Spatial Strategy into account when making our decisions. Prior to the National Spatial Strategy, the 1997 national policy was where one could divine whether something would be as expressed in the 1997 sustainable development strategy. This was amended by the National Spatial Strategy in so far as rural housing is concerned. Government policy is that the board has regard to the National Spatial Strategy. We must also have regard to the local development plan. That the board is not a policy maker may also cover Deputy Healy-Rae's point. The board interprets policy and applies it to individual applications. Under the Act, the board must have regard to national policy and the local development plan. The board has the job of interpreting the policies and applying them to individual cases, having regard to the various submissions made.

The National Spatial Strategy is having an effect on some cases. One must bear in mind that the local development plans have not caught up with the National Spatial Strategy yet. There would be a sort of discontinuum but normally one should have the national policy followed by the development plan, the regional plan and the local plan. There should be a clear cascade of policy. We are in a transitional phase and this is not established at present, which is not a help. I also expect that the guidelines the Minister has promised will be helpful in teasing out a more consistent approach on the issue.

Deputy Cuffe also mentioned traffic issues for one-off housing. There may be an assumption that the traffic issues related entirely to national routes. That is not the case. It is true of some cases but many cases would involve houses on more minor roads where there would be a traffic hazard issue because, for example, of an exit on a bend or where there were not the necessary sight lines. We are aware of the National Roads Authority policy on development along national routes and have regard to that as appropriate.

Deputy Cuffe

The issue is whether the NRA has taken appeals to An Bord Pleanála.

Mr. O’Connor

I do not recall any appeals by the NRA but it does observe on appeals. Deputy Cuffe asked about the reasons for overturning inspectors' reports and this matter was also raised by Deputy Healy-Rae. Under the 2000 Act the board is required to give a reason where it overturns an inspector's recommendation. Anyone who looks at the file, sees the inspector's report, looks at the decision and sees the board direction should be able to identify fairly readily the reason the board disagreed with the inspector. It is important to bear in mind, in case somebody gets the idea that the board overturns inspectors' reports routinely that it does so only in 10% of cases. The board gives very careful consideration to the case before it overturns an inspector's recommendation. If the Legislature decided that decisions be delegated to inspectors that could be done in the planning legislation, as is the case in some other jurisdictions. In Ireland, for our own reasons, we have decided on the system of an independent board availing of an inspector's advice and recommendations and then making the decision. That is the legislation and has been the situation since 1977 when An Bord Pleanála was established.

Deputy Healy-Rae asked whether members of An Taisce are members of An Bord Pleanála. They are not, nor is any inspector a member of An Taisce or any other similar organisation the objective of which would be to influence planning policy. I hope that is of some reassurance to the Deputy. The board has a strict code of conduct and perhaps we will send a copy of it to the Deputy.

The Deputy also asked me about the Taoiseach's statement on rural housing. I did see the statement. The board must have regard to policy as written down by the Government. We regard the National Spatial Strategy as the Government's stated position with regard to rural housing. We look forward to the new guidelines and when they are published we will have regard to them also.

Deputy Callanan asked me about environmental impact statements but I will ask our deputy chairman, Mr. Hunt, to answer that question.

Mr. Brian Hunt

Where development is of a type that is to be subject to environmental impact assessment as part of the process of receiving planning permission, it is required that an EIS be prepared and submitted with the planning application. That EIS is to be prepared by the proposer of the development, the developer. In most large schemes, which is where the EIS really originated, it is the promoter who is fully aware of all of the impacts of the development being proposed. For example, if we think back to the setting up of some major chemical plants or something similar, it is only the applicants who have the full knowledge. The process of environmental impact assessments came as a result of the development of large projects and it is a requirement in seeking permission for these projects that an EIS is submitted. The EIS is prepared by the promoter. Then, as part of the consent process, it is a requirement that an assessment of the EIS is carried out by the competent authority, in this case the planning authority. In the first instance this is the local authority and, if on appeal, by An Bord Pleanála. The inspector's report and consideration of it is part of the overall assessment process before the EIS, the report and all of those considerations go into making what is broadly described as an environmental impact assessment of the project.

Deputy Callanan

Are any structural reports prepared? If a project is on the side of a mountain are there structural reports to ensure it will not fall on top of people?

Mr. Hunt

There may or may not be. I will not answer about a particular one. I am aware of several.

Deputy Callanan

In general, is there a report?

Mr. Hunt

There may or may not be. It depends on the site and on what is found in the general consideration of the site. If difficulties are identified in the early scoping of an EIS, it may be necessary to carry out structural investigation or, often, detailed investigation in the area of hydrogeology etc.

Senator Brennan

Mr. O'Connor said that An Bord Pleanála must have regard to Government and national policy and county development plans. Is it also true to say that An Bord Pleanála can make a decision without any regard to the county development plan? I see a tie up in the number of appeals going to An Bord Pleanála as a result of this criteria. If a person sees a way of getting permission and being part of the successful 50% of applicants on rural houses, they will appeal a refusal. Anybody would appeal, especially if the national development and the National Spatial Strategy regional plans are part of the consideration. An Bord Pleanála may have regard to all of them but can it still base its decision on its own criteria?

Another question relates to the matter of staffing levels in An Bord Pleanála. We know that as part of the national roads policy design offices have been set up throughout the country. Major projects are coming to fruition now but many projects have been stalled because there are no staff at local level to bring the projects forward. Any proposal the Government has for an infrastructure board must be welcomed if it releases personnel to deal with decisions currently before An Bord Pleanála.

Reference was made to An Taisce. Would it help if the Irish Rural Dwellers Association was a prescribed body, under planning laws at local level, for making planning permission submissions? Would this bring equality in the presentation of the case at higher level? Perhaps some of those people could also be appointed to An Bord Pleanála.

Deputy J. Brady

I welcome the members of An Bord Pleanála, in particular Mr. Brian Hunt who worked in County Meath for many years. Meath County Council misses him as a singular planner.

However, I do not agree with all the decisions of the board. I cannot understand how when young couples are refused planning permission by a county council and appeal to An Bord Pleanála that very few of them are upheld but when young couples are granted planning permission and An Taisce appeals the local authority decision 90% of them are upheld. Mr. O'Connor said that no members of An Taisce are members of An Bord Pleanála. Is there a relationship between An Taisce and An Bord Pleanála? Judging by the figures An Taisce indicated to us some months ago, I feel there must be.

An Bord Pleanála does not seem to have much sympathy for young rural couples who are trying to build homes in the areas in which they were born and bred. They want to keep local schools, teams, football clubs and shops alive but the board turns down many of the appeals of these young couples. Recently, it was brought to my notice, as Chairman of the Joint Committee on Agriculture and Food, that An Taisce appealed a small development in a village in a very rural part of County Cavan which saw sweet damn all development over the past 50 years. That decision was upheld by An Bord Pleanála. It is very annoying to see the like of this happening.

I live in a rural area in north Meath close to the Cavan border. Mr. Hunt would know the area well. Our area has villages dying for the want of development and schools, shops and post offices are closing down. It is sad that the likes of An Taisce can appeal decisions made by the local authority in the best interests of the local area and in the interest of keeping the area alive and that An Bord Pleanála then upholds the appeal.

A new puraflo system has come on stream over recent years. Does the board not feel that this system is of great benefit for young couples building new homes?

Deputy Cregan

I have an example along the same lines as Deputy Brady. I will not go into the facts of a particular case. I am familiar with a case where an appeal was lodged by an objector against an application for a small development in a village but An Bord Pleanála said the objector had no grounds for objection. Then, however, it went on to find another issue, a technicality, which allowed it to uphold the appeal. That is difficult to understand. Where a local authority grants planning permission it is a person's prerogative to lodge an appeal to An Bord Pleanála. If the objection is not considered worthy and is not accepted, why does the board then go with a fine-tooth comb and pick out technicalities in order to ensure the appeal can be upheld? I find that difficult to understand and ask Mr. O'Connor for his comment on it.

Mr. O’Connor

Senator Brennan made a point about the status of the development plan. It is in the Act that the board must have regard to the development plan. It makes the decision in the interest of the proper planning and sustainability of development in the area, having regard to the provisions of the development plan. It cannot disregard that plan. The legislation makes it mandatory.

Not very often. Neither of these circumstances is very common. In the case of the adjoining property owner, he or she has to make an application for leave to appeal to the board and that is done within a month. The board makes a decision on that within a month. The number of such cases is small and the number that are successful is even smaller still; only about 10% of the applications are successful. The other type of case is not very common, that is, prescribed bodies seeking to establish a right of appeal because of neglect of notification by the planning authority. The number of those granted could be counted on the fingers of two hands.

Chairman

I ask the members to keep the final questions brief.

Deputy Gilmore

Why is the pattern of An Bord Pleanála's decisions so different for rural housing? It has been stated to the committee that 20% of first party appeals succeed but only 4% of first party appeals in the case of one-off rural housing. As against that, 40% of third party appeals generally succeed but 75% of third party appeals in the case of rural housing succeed.

Deputy Allen

Chairman

I thank the delegation and members for their contribution.

I welcome Mr. John Graby and Mr. Toal Ó Muiré, director and president respectively of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland. Mr. Graby will make a presentation followed by questions from the members of the joint committee.

I wish to draw attention to the fact that members of this committee have absolute privilege but the same privilege does not apply to witnesses appearing before the committee. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that members should not comment, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. I invite the delegation to make its presentation.

Mr. Toal Ó Muiré

Our submission is on the subject of the rural housing issue. We may make some general comments on other aspects afterwards. The RIAl is the representative body for Irish architects with more than 2,200 members in private practice and in public service. Many of our public service members work in local authorities. We have made a number of statements and submissions on the topic of rural housing in the past couple of years. We organised a seminar in Galway last February jointly with the Irish Planning Institute to debate and review the issue. We support both the efforts of our members in private practice who make planning applications on behalf of private clients and also the work of our public service members to implement Government and development plan objectives. We regard this as coming within the wider compass of Action on Architecture 2002-2005 which is Government policy.

Rural housing raises thorny questions and the answers are not as simple as is sometimes suggested by people who adopt extreme positions, supporting or condemning current patterns of house construction. There are a number of principles which we hope can help and inform a useful debate and progress, and these are the basis of this submission. We see three areas of concern regarding rural housing: housing location, housing design and farming land ownership. I will speak about the three aspects in turn.

The RIAl housing policy was published in early 2002 and it begins by addressing environmental concerns and objectives for reinforcing existing towns and villages as sustainable settlements. That has since been reinforced in the National Spatial Strategy. We have enclosed in our submission a brief paper by an RIAl member whose architectural firm based in Munster has worked on the design of private houses. The RIAl is concerned that the National Spatial Strategy is being cited as a charter for uncurtailed rural house-building, which it is not. I have had sight of the submission made by the Department this morning and it expresses it better than I can. The recently reported statement by the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, that people should be able to live in their native area, should mean in the RIAl's view that they should live within easy reach of the local parish school, shop and church. We always promote the measure that small children should be able to walk safely to these facilities if possible. The natural right we all had to build where we wanted, and particularly in the case of rural housing, clearly ended with the 1963 Act. The new objective for sustainability incorporating the 2000 Planning Act was a further nail in the coffin of the right to do as one wished with one's land.

I recently attended a seminar addressed by Professor John FitzGerald of the ESRI who gave the extraordinary statistic that at least one quarter of our 50,000 housing output per annum for the past number of years consists of second homes. He commented that this is placing undesirable demands on scarce infrastructure, particularly along the western seaboard and it is bidding up the cost of rural housing generally in a manner which is completely out of keeping with our needs.

Architects regard good housing design as fundamental to housing quality. Design clearly has a location component. A badly sited house, whether in the location sense just discussed relative to school and shop or in the sense of visual intrusion or traffic safety, is a betrayal of what good planning practice says is a home fit to pass on to our children. Bad siting may be mitigated by architectural design but in practice examples of this type of mitigation in new houses are very rare. In reality conditions of planning permission requiring landscaping, for example, to reduce the visual impact of a house are rarely enforced. There is too little architectural input to design in most villages and small towns. Design guides such as that for County Louth which is enclosed with our submission are a help, but they are not a complete substitute for house design by an architect engaged to look at a specific house site. Some home builders and householders are interested in getting the best advice and the best design, while others, especially young couples eager for their first home at an affordable price, will be tempted to minimise all costs and inputs, including those of design. They may come for this reason to adopt a suburban house design suited to their financial needs, irrespective of other constraints or objectives.

On the issue of farming land ownership, the right to own land is an historically and emotionally charged issue. Unless constrained by the planning system experience shows that the actual physical and geographical pattern of house building will be more influenced by the local pattern of land ownership rather than by either household need or public objectives for consolidating villages and towns. Heritage or conservation grants in 1999 when the 2000 Act was published as a Bill have never been met. As it is so difficult to spend the money within 12 months and even more difficult to spend the money when the Department often waits three or four months into a budget year before telling local authorities what their allocations are, the money is then not spent and the subsequent year's allocation is accordingly reduced. We would like to see more grants, multi-annual funding in the area of conservation grants and we would like to see the career structure for conservation officers greatly improved so that the system will attract the people it needs to function properly.

Deputy Allen

I thank Mr. Ó Muiré for his contribution. On his reservation regarding the implementation of Part V of the Planning and Development Act and the failure by the Department to monitor its implementation by local authorities, is he concerned about the success or failure of Part V in delivering the targets?

Deputy Gilmore

I have two questions. I wish to pick up on the remark made by Mr. Ó Muiré about the paper delivered by Professor JohnFitzGerald this morning where he said that 25% of housing output in the past few years was for second homes. Presumably most second homes are rural second homes, or am I stretching credibility to say that? Is the proportion of rural houses being built as holiday homes greater than 25%? Could Mr. Ó Muiré guess from his experience what that proportion might be? We do not have hard and fast information on this.

On the question of guidelines, if it is the case that the circumstances in which an application for rural housing is made differs considerably from one part of the country to another, both in terms of need and in terms of location and other considerations, is it desirable that there should be nationally delivered guidelines, particularly given his experience to date with the varying interpretations by local authorities of the guidelines? If the Department issues guidelines on one-off rural housing, from what Mr. Ó Muiré says from his experience with guidelines and regulations, they will be interpreted one way by an individual planner in County Leitrim and interpreted differently by an individual planner in County Kildare.

Deputy Kelleher

It has been brought to my attention in recent times that local area planners are becoming involved in the intricate detailed design of a house. I assumed that the function of the local area planner was to agree the principle of the planning; the broad design of the house and those employed by the applicant would design the interiors of the house and the basic outlook of the house. Are planners going beyond their remit, in the view of the RIAI?

Deputy Cuffe

I welcome the delegation. Does the delegation have a figure for the percentage of rural housing that is designed by members of the institute? In other words, how involved is the architectural profession in the design of rural housing?

My second question is a more general one. Does the delegation believe that the increase in rural housing is arising because there is not enough encouragement to build in urban sites such as in towns and villages? Has the delegation any suggestions as to what measures should be taken to encourage well designed dwellings in villages and towns? Does it regard the town renewal plans or integrated area plans as being successful? A view was put forward recently that local authorities are not doing enough in terms of provision of roads and streets in towns to open up back land areas.

Mr. Ó Muiré

In answer to Deputy Allen's question about the failure or otherwise of Part V, our concern about Part V has to do with the lack of information about it. For architects like myself who carry out projects for housing developers it means that we feel our clients are looking over their shoulders at each other to wonder if someone is besting them in terms of their arrangements with the local authority. That is very unhelpful in terms of a climate of negotiation. Our view is that more published information would help on that side.

Our colleagues in the public sector are concerned about the quality of what is being offered by private developers under Part V, particularly in terms of finished units to local authorities. That is an area where monitoring by the Department is being strengthened but we believe it is very important for that to happen. Too often it seems that proposals to do with Part V are dealt with by the housing officers of the local authority and that sometimes they do not take advice from their architect colleagues on the design of the units and neither are the architect colleagues involved in inspecting the units under construction in order to ensure an adequate quality of construction is achieved. Part V is very new and we are strongly in favour of the principles of housing strategy and the principles of affordable housing. We would like to see more quality control and more information published and we think that would help Part V enormously.

In answer to Deputy Gilmore's question on the proportion of dwellings in rural areas that are used as second homes, I have no information. I will refer the question asked by Deputy Cuffe about percentage of housing designed by architects to my colleague, John Graby who will answer when I have concluded.

I wish to distinguish a number of points covered in the question regarding guidelines. The current guidelines on dispersal of dwellings are still in many respects the 1982 yellow book and the objection to ribbon development, and so on. We are aware that the Department is reviewing its policies generally and that work has begun on a new yellow book that we certainly favour very strongly.

On the guidelines for invalidation of planning applications that we were talking about, they are to do with a slightly different issue. There is a view taken by many local authorities, such as the representatives from An Bord Pleanála stated about planning appeals, that applications must be technically correct in every respect in order to be valid and this is well established at appeal level. We do not accept that is the case in terms of planning applications. Otherwise it would be impossible for most people to have their planning applications accepted. For example, people do not always show the clearance from the building to the boundary. It would be a shame if that was an obvious or unnecessary piece of information on the planning application to have it invalidated and all the drawings returned to the applicant and the whole process set back by several months, just because of such a technicality. We believe that if the Department were to say to the local authorities and explain the legal position as we see it, that the purpose is to streamline the process, to have enough information before the planning authority to deal with the application, that maybe we could even get by without amending the regulations as long as that was clear. There are two different types of guidelines involved there.

On Deputy Kelleher's question and the involvement of local authority planners in house design, that is a very old issue between architects and planners and, in fairness to planners, between architects in private practice and their local authority colleagues who look over their work when it is submitted. An example of where it would be very logical for a planner to get involved in the intricate details of house design would be a house, which for good agricultural and family reasons was to be built in an area which has a scheduled view or an area of environmental sensitivity. That would justify a planner taking a very detailed interest in the quality of design of the house. However, this would only relate to its environmental impact and not to things that are internal to the house itself.

I now come to Deputy Cuffe's question about encouraging development in town sites. We think that the first thing that is needed here is planning. We need the village and town plans that are called for in the 2000 Act and even in the 1963 Act. The resources in many local authorities simply do not exist to do that. Some of the town and village plans are prepared with the same sort of broad brush coloured diagrams, which may be appropriate in large urban areas but certainly are not appropriate to small villages, where they need really a three-dimensional framework plan and perhaps a willingness to compulsorily purchase sites which are needed for the development of the town or village but are being held off the market for whatever reasons.

So, we think having proper village and town plans comes first. If there are good plans like that, which are put on public display and are based on consultation with local people, very often the incentives that have been put in place in the past will not be needed. If people know what the local authority wants and they support it that is the biggest incentive to get the right kind of development in the right kinds of places.

Mr. John Graby

On Deputy Cuffe's question about the number of architects involved in the design of one-off houses, this is very limited. There are probably no more than 5% to 10% maximum. This represents a considerable increase even in the past five years. However, there is a wider involvement than that. Our members in local authorities work in advice clinics workshops and produce guidelines. There is a perception that design can be a luxury. Certainly young couples starting off on limited budgets will cut back on everything.

There is a need for advice clinics and guidelines, even accepting Deputy Gilmore's comments about the difficulty of implementing them at local level. We mentioned the guidelines in Louth and new guidelines are coming out in County Cork. In a very straightforward way these set out basic principles that could improve housing throughout the country. As can be seen in the Louth guidelines a great deal can be done to benefit rural housing and the environment through landscaping, siting and basic materials. It is not rocket science. We could build better houses, which could be more sustainable and could fit into the countryside better. If the objective is to live in a rural environment, we should be creating houses and communities that maintain that environment as a rural environment and do not look like a suburb that was dropped down yesterday from Dundrum.

We are not involved enough and would like to be involved more. We accept that there are economic considerations and local authorities have a role. They need resources for advice clinics and guidelines. For example, in west Cork local authority architects give advice to applicants. Systems like that are needed if we are to spread quality across the country and, as the president has said, to leave people with houses that we can pass on to our children and feel proud of them.

Senator Brennan

Local authorities are not authorised to validate planning applications and must operate under the regulations and the relevant legislation. Mr. Graby said sufficient information should be made available. What would happen if four weeks after an application were made it was discovered there was not sufficient information given that the councils are obliged to make their decisions within a certain time. Mr. Graby mentioned the information that is not required on planning applications. Many houses are now purchased from drawings and the finished article might be quite different from what was on the planning application.

Most of the institute's submission on one-off rural housing suggests there should be none. It could be argued that architects and builders are only interested in building in the cities, towns and villages. The delegation also mentioned clusters of houses, which seems to be contrary to its argument about one-off rural housing.

Mr. Graby

On the issues of architects only wanting to work on large projects, we have a significant number of members who work outside Dublin in small communities. It is good that those skills are moving out. We have as much interest as anybody in seeing good design in single houses. Most of our practices would be one and two-person practices - they are not all large corporate organisations.

Mr. Ó Muiré

Deputy Gilmore

I had a substantial breakfast and am happy to continue.

Chairman

We shall proceed. I welcome Mr. Iain Douglas, Mr. John Spain, and Ms Rachel Kenny from the Irish Planning Institute. We will first hear from Mr. Douglas before taking questions from members of the committee. I wish to draw attention to the fact that members of the committee have absolute privilege but the same privilege does not apply to witnesses appearing before it. Members are reminded of a long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that members should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the House, or officials by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

Mr. Iain Douglas

I am president of the Irish Planning Institute this year. The institute represents planning throughout Ireland. It is the largest planning institute in the country with about 450 corporate members with the majority practising in local authorities. We represent staff from both urban and rural planning authorities.

The institute has been interested in rural housing for about 40 years, since 1963. Rural housing has always been with us and what is of concern to most people interested in planning, and the development of the country, is the scale and intensity of rural housing that has occurred in recent years and, more important, the implications for the future if this trend continues at its current rate. I draw the committee's attention to our policy paper on rural housing, which we have circulated.

The policy paper was drawn up in response to the current controversies and current issues. It stems from a series of conferences we held with a wide-ranging number of bodies, which are interested in rural housing. These included the IFA, the Irish Rural Dwellers Association and Teagasc as well as architects. The policy paper represents an attempt to look at the development of rural housing in a measured, calm and rational way. As practitioners, we are very much aware that the debate has become very polarised in the past five or six years. This is masking the real debate that must take place on how we see our country developing in the future.

The policy paper highlights the fact that contrary to public perception, there is no ban on one-off housing in any of the development plans. Most development plans will take a measured response to controlling the extent of one-off housing in rural areas. As the Department has pointed out, there is a substantial increase in one-off housing. Although our statistics are slightly different from the Department's, over the next generation - 20 to 30 years - if this continues at the current rate we can expect 350,000 to 400,000 new houses in the countryside. Nobody is considering the long-term implications of this except the Department, which has taken an overview through the National Spatial Strategy. There is a need for more development of the issues from the National Spatial Strategy following on from that. Nobody has really addressed the question of the implications of that number of houses in the countryside.

One of the major issues that needs to be addressed, particularly by elected representatives, is ownership of the development plan. Most counties have prepared or are in the process of preparing the new development plans under the 2000 Act. The development plan is usually adopted and the first thing that happens is that elected representatives inform the manager of exceptions they want made. Among planners there is no real sense of elected representatives taking ownership of the development plan, which is a serious failing. At the end of the day the development plan is a document formulated by the public representatives; it is their plan. They should at least be upfront and, having made the policy, should stick with it. These exceptions lead to inconsistencies in decision-making, which is one of the major problems the public perceives.

The institute's position is that rural housing is necessary and desirable where it contributes to rural regeneration and helps address population decline. There are different types of rural housing. There is rural housing that accommodates people living in the rural area, which is not an issue for planners. We are concerned about urban generated housing. This is also highlighted in the National Spatial Strategy. The institute endorses the approach taken by the National Spatial Strategy.

This committee can help address one of the driving forces behind the increase in rural housing. I refer to land values and development values. A sub-committee is examining the constitutional issues around this matter. The dovetailing of the two committees could be of benefit to this issue. As a rule people want a job and a house. This is now beyond the range of many people as is well known.

The planning authorities should take a much more pro-active role in dealing with the rural housing issue. This could come down to a question of resources, but it could also come down to a question of attitude. Small towns and villages are dying. I have heard people saying that post offices and schools are closing all over the place. In support of the National Spatial Strategy, if those small villages were developed with serviced housing sites of a size that would meet people's demand for a quarter-acre site in the countryside, the institute believes this would take a lot of pressure off the one-off housing issue.

If housing is to be allowed in the countryside, it should be of a high standard and appropriately sited. I seriously question whether this would be an issue if development in the past had not occurred as ribbon development. The capacity of the landscape to absorb extra housing is there. However, the siting and design of the housing in that landscape is a major issue. We support the preparation of housing design guidelines in development plans. There is a feeling among practitioners, and certainly elected representatives, that this would be desirable.

The paper also hints at a resourcing issue in that most county development plans must be followed up by local area plans. At that stage the public have much more of an input into their own locality. This goes back to the whole ethos of the spatial strategy and the planning Acts. People need to be supportive of their own locality. This is recognised by the institute and local area plans represent the mechanism for doing that.

The institute is very concerned that this issue has totally polarised debate to the neglect of the smaller towns and villages. In these areas development can be accommodated much more economically with much better use of resources. The purpose of forward planning is the maximisation of the use of resources.

The institute recognises there is almost an east-west divide in that the controversy of single houses in the countryside is very much western orientated. Along almost all the western seaboard, this is the only issue in planning at present. If there is such a laissez-faire attitude in those areas it begs the question whether the landscape and amenities, on which the whole country depends, are being compromised. The NSS in its approach to the BMW region has tried to address this issue.

That is a broad outline. Members can read the paper themselves. We will answer questions with reference to the paper where necessary.

Deputy Gilmore

I do not know whether Mr. Douglas was present when the assistant secretary of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government gave her presentation. It emerged clearly that we have very little hard information. She gave us a figure for the total number of one-off houses based on CSO statistics. However, we do not have a breakdown of the reasons why these one-off houses were built.

As Mr. Douglas said, there is a polarised debate and on the one hand one is led to believe from advocates on one side that one-off rural houses are all for the sons and daughters of farmers who want to build on their parents' land. On the other hand, the argument is that the one-off rural houses are great big mansions for people who could otherwise live in a town or city, or they are holiday homes. We do not have any hard information. While I appreciate they are overstretched I wonder how difficult it would be for the planning department of local authorities to compile a picture of the planning permissions that were granted over a period of a couple of years showing for what purposes and for whom they were built?

Mr. Douglas referred to towns and villages. There is a significant amount of one-off or ribbon housing on the approaches to certain villages. In these villages there may be a large number of empty and derelict houses. In one such village I counted eight derelict buildings. Given the existence of the Derelict Sites Act, is there information about the extent of dereliction or under-use of buildings in towns and villages?

Mr. Douglas referred to the issue of land values. The prices of sites very often drive people out of towns and villages. How does the IPI propose to address this issue?

Deputy Cuffe

Is the institute concerned at the small number of local plans that have been rolled out? The hierarchy of plans goes from the National Spatial Strategy to county development plans to local plans. Is the slow rollout of local area plans making it more difficult to build in our towns and villages? To put it the other way around: would it make it easier if these local plans were available? It seems that insufficient resources are going into that area.

This morning we heard that perhaps as many as one third of new homes are one-off houses in rural areas and perhaps as many as 25% of the housing completions were holiday homes. This begs the question as to where is the overlap. How many houses in rural areas are holiday homes? Does the IPI accept that holiday homes or second homes are driving up the prices for people from the area? In other words, do we need strong planning guidelines to ensure that holiday homes or second homes do not take over an area and in doing so drive up the prices?

Given that Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000 does not apply to one-off houses, is this acting as a disincentive against building in towns and villages? In a town or village there might be a cluster of four or five houses or an apartment block. Does this indicate a knock-on effect from Part V resulting in people preferring to take the one-off housing route?

Mr. Douglas

The compilation of data is a very simple exercise in one respect. It is quite easy to extract the number of single house applications in any planning authority. The difficulty comes with the use of those. By and large not all planning authorities determine the use and whether it is a permanent home or a holiday home. Considerable resources would be required to survey each house built even in the past two years considering the high rate of construction. It can be done; it is a question of resources.

Deputy Gilmore

Could the IPI get the information from the electoral register? If I have a holiday home, presumably nobody will be registered to vote in it.

Mr. Douglas

There are techniques. One technique used before was to compare winter and summer electricity bills. One of the issues that needs to be examined is the accuracy of the statistics. There was a debate about the accuracy of the statistics with the Department this morning.

The issue of dereliction in towns and villages has also been mentioned. I suggest that it is caused by the fact that people want to build single houses outside towns or villages. This creates a doughnut effect. There may be modern housing, for example in ribbons, around a small town or village but the centre of the town or village may be stagnant or in a state of dereliction. It is a serious question. Some towns are subject to tax incentives, for example in the form of urban renewal schemes, which are having some effect. This does not filter down to small villages, however.

I invite my colleague, Ms Rachel Kenny, to speak about the question of land values.

Ms Rachel Kenny

The Irish Planning Institute has presented a paper to the joint committee on the property issue. The paper identified two main mechanisms to address the land value issue. The first of these involves the imposition of quite a high level of taxation - 70% or 80% - when land is zoned. It is proposed that the receipts from this tax will be sent back into the local authority system to improve its finances. The strengthening of CPO procedures forms the second tier of our strategy. The planning authorities should be able to purchase lands more readily. If high taxes are fed back into the system, as I have suggested, the authorities will have the money to purchase lands.

This system, which may involve the development of the lands by the authorities alone or in partnership with private developers, will result in the release of lands in a logical manner from the centre of the town or village in question. It will also involve the release of lands at a more reasonable price. The IPI feels that land is being held because individuals are waiting for its market value to increase. A considerable amount of land is being zoned for residential development on the understanding that between 30% and 50% of it will be released within the span of a particular development plan. We feel that this is not appropriate. I have outlined the two main mechanisms suggested by the IPI in the paper, which is available.

Mr. John Spain

Deputy Cuffe asked about holiday homes. The IPI's paper suggests a number of policy instruments that may help to address this issue. The renewal and refurbishment of old cottages, farm buildings and other derelict buildings littered across the country should be encouraged, perhaps through an appropriate rural renewal tax incentive scheme. We should try to use such buildings for holiday accommodation. We should also encourage the provision of well-designed holiday accommodation in village settlements. This is already being done in villages in west Cork, in particular.

The IPI agrees that the Part V requirement for the provision of an element of social and affordable housing in developments in towns and villages does not incentivise urban housing. It is another factor that tilts the balance in favour of one-off housing, from the individual perspective. It will lead to a greater polarisation, as social and affordable housing will be concentrated in towns and villages and not in rural areas. We need some clever thinking in that regard. We do not have the answer to that, but we need to examine it.

Ms Kenny

I would like to elaborate on this matter, which follows on from Deputy Cuffe's remarks about local area plans. Smaller towns and villages are identified as "graigues" in County Meath and as different types of settlement in other areas. I refer, in effect, to small villages with some form of nucleus, such as a crossroads with a post office, shop, school and church. Such settlements are not zoned at present and I do not know if there would be any benefit in zoning them. It is obvious that they would be zoned if a local area plan was drawn up. There should be some kind of village plan containing indicative ideas about the level of development appropriate for the area and the desirable way forward. There needs to be a mechanism for the planning authority to provide social and affordable housing within an area. They offer an opportunity. It would be desirable to see planning authorities being more proactive in finding serviced sites for people in a particular locality. The "graigues" in a parish offer an opportunity to those who do not own land but who want to remain in their parish. It could be the case, however, that a single landowner owns such a large percentage of the land that it makes it difficult to accommodate such people. The suggestion I have outlined would address such problems and would allow an area to develop in a more sustainable manner. It would help those existing services.

Deputy Kelleher

I welcome the delegation to this meeting. Many factors, such as low interest rates, the strong economy and demographic bulges and trends have contributed to increased house prices in recent years. Members of local authorities and the Irish Planning Institute have to take their fair share of blame for the failure to address the changes in Irish society, such as the increase in demand for houses, by planning for them in advance. We were very slow to react and to provide accommodation and land for development. It was just recently, following the publication of the Bacon report, that it was decided to increase housing densities. It used to be the case that most towns and villages took the shape of a large green area surrounded by a ring of houses. Development land was not being used. This seemed to be the case in all local authority areas. One would have to say that the land banks that were available were not being used.

I would like to speak about county development plans. I note that county councillors have been described as lobbyists for individual applicants. It is obvious that they make representations. Let us be under no illusions - planners bring forward county development plans to be rubber-stamped by county councillors. Most people accept that the input of local authority members is quite minimal. My experience of being on a local authority is that planners would prefer if we had no input at all. County development plans may be the democratic way of zoning lands, but the plans that are agreed are those that are drawn up by professional planners and county managers.

Given that there are huge problems as a result of housing shortages, it seems that the Irish Planning Institute is very slow to react and very slow to plan for changes in Irish society. We have been waiting for local area plans for many years. There seems to be a constant delay. The shortage of development land is leading to increases in house prices. This will lead to huge difficulties in the future if it is not addressed.

I would like to speak about densities. Planners will have to provide for amenities, parks and lands for schools and other social services when drawing up plans for developments. We have been slow to make such provisions. The Department of Education and Science or the health boards have to purchase land at exorbitant prices in order to put in place services that should have been provided in the initial stages of the development. I realise that I am probably being negative about the IPI, which has done some very positive things. We have a responsibility to bring an end to the alarming continuing escalation in house prices after ten years.

Deputy J. Brady

I also welcome the delegation, particularly Ms Kenny, who was a planner in County Meath for many years.

Chairman

The Deputy knows them all.

Deputy J. Brady

They all seem to be coming into us today. Ms Kenny has returned as our senior executive planner. I welcome her and her two colleagues to the meeting. I have spent 30 years on a county council as a lobbyist. If the people elect me to act as a lobbyist, I will continue to lobby. I am sure Ms Kenny and other planners in County Meath will confirm that I did not lobby on behalf of any large development in the county in the past 30 years. I lobby on behalf of young couples in an effort to keep areas alive. Ms Kenny will have heard me speaking at a recent meeting about the closure of a local shop. One cannot buy a newspaper or a pint of milk in many villages in rural Ireland. We would like to see development in such places. I know that planners such as Ms Kenny and her colleagues in County Meath are conscious of this problem.

Ms Kenny was not present when the county development plan was discussed some years ago. The east of County Meath is over-developed, whereas northern areas, such as the place where I come from, are under-developed. The county should have two development plans, but it is impossible to have two plans for one county. When we discussed the development plan, we were told by planners and the then county manager that commonsense would prevail in north Meath. That has been the case to a certain extent, but it is not true of some planners who interpret the plan in a different manner to that intended by councillors when it was agreed. The circumstances in County Meath are awkward. It is difficult for planners, but it is more difficult for us. I respect the decisions of planners regardless of what is included in a county development plan. I would like them to use commonsense in some cases, however. In particular, commonsense should prevail in respect of young couples who can get a site for nothing. We know that all rural people cannot be shoved into large towns. People who were born, bred and reared in rural areas should be allowed to continue to live in such areas if they choose to do so.

I will conclude as I know the Chair is under pressure. I reiterate that commonsense should prevail in many cases.

Chairman

Perhaps Ms Kenny might like to deal with the Deputy's comments personally.

Ms Kenny

Mr. Spain

Developers have to provide an element of infrastructure or landscaping on an urban site too. It applies equally to those in rural and urban areas.

Ms Kenny

I would like to speak about the levies associated with rural and urban areas. It is obvious that those in rural areas will benefit from the services provided in the towns near them. Such people need to make a contribution to the facilities in towns because it is obvious that shops, schools, businesses, etc., are located there. They must support the towns and villages. The stronger the town or village, the stronger the economy of the county.

I would like to discuss the costs associated with the provision of one's septic tank or the landscaping of one's one-off house. Figures from a recent survey, which I think was carried out by the ESRI, indicated that an urban house costs 30% more, on average, than a rural one-off house even though it is 50% smaller. It is much cheaper to build a one-off house than it is to purchase an urban house. There is already a huge discrepancy between rural and urban houses. One will find that rural houses provide more value for money, because they are cheaper for those who own them. The level of development contribution levy depends on the county in question.

Senator Brennan

The figure mentioned by Ms Kenny might be right, but a house is cheaper in a rural area because people can build it themselves. I am sure this factor will be taken into consideration by the local authorities.

Mr. Douglas

This question raises the spectre of the lack of hard information and the lack of research. The most recent cost-benefit analysis of single houses, compared to urban houses, was conducted in 1978 by An Foras Forbartha. Such research needs to be carried out once more. I am aware that the ESRI performed a broad spectrum analysis, but the area of cost-benefit needs to be examined as a matter of urgency.

Deputy Gilmore

During the polarised debate on planning that took place in the recent past, it was alleged that the planning profession here is overly influenced by planning theories and practices from the UK. How does the delegation respond to that?

Mr. Douglas

It is total rubbish.

Ms Kenny

Yes.

Mr. Douglas

The planning institutes at University College Dublin, Queen's University Belfast and the Dublin Institute of Technology were established in Ireland, are recognised by our profession and teach Irish planning. That is my answer to the Deputy's question.

Chairman

FEASTA believes dispersed rural housing is more unsustainable than housing in small compact settlements for a number of reasons. Any one of these should cause concern and prompt a reconsideration of planning and fiscal policies. Unfortunately, no definitive study has been carried out in this area, but there have been a number of important reports. The EPA produced one, the Environment in Focus, in 2002 though I will not quote it in its entirety. The report points to the contamination of groundwater and drinking water supplies. Of the group schemes in place, 58% do not meet the standard for chloroforms in drinking water while 38% of ground water samples showed bacteriological contamination.

The conclusion of the EPA is that development in rural areas may lead to the degradation of the landscape, habitat fragmentation and overall will impact on biodiversity. The case has been made that many negative environmental impacts can be remedied by better siting and house design, chemical treatment of drinking water and the further treatment of septic tank outflows coupled with frequent inspection and de-sludging None of these measures is in place at present. Accepting these points, which we do not, the cost of those remedies would be prohibitive for most rural dwellers. It would be unacceptable to taxpayers were costs to be met by local or central public budgets.

The extra servicing costs of rural housing are already coming under scrutiny in this time of economic stringency. Dr. Diarmuid O'Grada delivered a preliminary report, Equity in the National Plan System, at the RIAI conference on rural housing. He revealed that services are generally more costly to provide in rural areas. More important, these costs are not generally passed on but are borne by urban dwellers as a form of subsidy. The ESB connection charge for a rural house is €1,135 versus €511 for an urban house. While part of this cost is passed to consumers, not all of it is. Metre readers are paid more to read a rural dwelling metre than an urban dwelling metre. I cite the ESB because it is in a more competitive sector than other agencies providing services. The cost of postal services in rural areas is twice what it is in urban areas. When one looks at the statistics, the rural round is four times more expensive than the round in an urban setting. This is causing problems for An Post. Most of the benefit of the school transport service is gained by rural dwellers. It costs €100 million per annum or €722 per pupil. A rural family with two or three children gains a great deal from this free service.

These are only some of the services brought to the doorsteps of dispersed home owners whose marginal costs are borne by general taxation. A full list would include telecommunications services, emergency health services, fire brigade services, social services, meals on wheels and, I am sure, many others. Other reports sound a general warning about Ireland's growing dependence on private transport and oil use. The report which has been cited most often is Transport Investment and Economic Development by DavidBanister and Joseph Berechman who are leaders in this field. They say Ireland is the most car dependent country in the world. We each drive more than 24,000 km per year compared to the US average of 19,000. Those findings are supported by FEASTA's research from its 2002 conference on Ireland's transition to renewable energy. I have arranged for a copy of the conference's proceedings and the book which resulted to be provided to every member of the joint committee.

Gerard O'Neill supports the findings of Mr. Banister and Mr. Berechman on Ireland's disproportionate dependency on oil. Transport is a major consumer of oil. A 1% increase in Ireland's GDP led to a 1.8% increase in oil consumption whereas in the rest of the EU a 1% increase led to only a 0.6% increase in oil consumption. Those figures are based on BP's statistical review and EUROSTAT data. We may wish to ignore the greenhouse gas emissions associated with high oil usage and the long-term impact on climate as they are very difficult to feel. However, the matter has been taken out of our hands as we have committed to Kyoto. In 2005, we will experience the first of the carbon taxes which are likely to increase. There are no plans to exempt rural dwellers from these taxes nor are there likely to be. The purpose of carbon taxes is to discourage profligate energy use and spatial patterns which predispose to car use.

The most serious scenario our conference revealed - and which the book provided supports through papers from leading experts in Europe and elsewhere - is that dependence on oil coincides with an impending peaking of non-renewable oil and gas production. The leading article in the book is written by Dr. Colin Campbell whose 40 years experience as a worker for oil companies means he is not green. He does not come from our bailiwick, but from the industry itself. He says conventional oil production will remain at its present level until 2002 if there is a recession. Under various scenarios he examines, the beginning of the end of extra production will occur in 2005, which is extraordinarily close. Gas will last a little longer. Oil is of primary importance to transport and this scenario of oil dependence, coupled with a seller's market in 2010, means that the price will increase in multiples rather than in pence. The problem will be particularly serious for remote rural dwellers who will not have the option of switching to public transport. It has often been said that those who live in compact settlements continue to use their cars. While this is true, if the scenario outlined occurs, they will have the option of using public transport. It will be effective and efficient to provide public or shared transport for them.

There has been a great deal of discussion of the merits or otherwise of dispersed communities relative to compact settlements. The argument is made that educational achievement is higher among families in rural areas, there is less deviant behaviour, quality of life is better and community cohesion is superior. Cultural determinants are cited to support the supposed preference for spatial isolation and its superior social performance. I could go into this in detail, but instead I refer committee members to a number of maps which Government agencies have compiled over the years. These maps relate to the operation of the Congested Districts Board from the 1870s to the turn of the 20th century. Its role was later taken over by the Land Commission. We have also provided copies of the National Spatial Strategy map which shows weak areas in which a relaxed attitude to one-off rural housing is recommended. Also included is a map of culturally distinct Irish speaking areas most of which are in the same places as those on the spatial strategy map.

It can be seen that the areas on each map coincide very closely. Many of the dispersed settlements in those areas were created by the Congested Districts Board and the Land Commission quite deliberately. Previously, settlement was more clustered while farm and land holdings were much more fractured. In many cases, the Congested Districts Board and the Land Commission scattered settlements. In the documentation the word "scattered" is used. This was done after the famine and following the land Acts. If one looks at Meath and Westmeath where the Land Commission operated, one will see that the spatial pattern is similar to those weak structural areas. In other words, this is a Land Commission pattern which was imposed in those areas. This is a settlement pattern which was planned and deliberately constructed. It was not necessarily a natural expression of cultural preference.

I turn now to the social and economic performance associated with those patterns. The map showing the CLÁR areas, which are developed by the Department of Social and Family Affairs, again coincides closely with the previous maps. The areas of economic decline and underdevelopment coincide with the areas in which there are dispersed settlement patterns. There is a causative factor. At the very least, there is sufficient evidence to prompt a serious examination by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. It may be the case that further support for dispersed patterns may do the people in those areas a disservice.

The majority of Irish villages and towns were laid out from the beginning of the 18th century to the mid-19th century. They acted as service, trading and industrial centres producing linen in particular. They were very important to the retention and re-circulation of the value of local agricultural produce. Such villages were the product of joint ventures by landlords and tenants, not just landlords. The tenants benefited hugely from this first shift in property rights from the established landlord class to the Catholic tenant class a long time before the introduction of the Land Acts. Historians tell us that the wealth and confidence generated by these villages led to the rebirth of the national movement. There is nothing alien about these particular settlements. Local communities along with the landlord class developed them. They survived as local centres after the decline of the linen and, subsequently, the agriculture industries. They were there when economic conditions improved. These villages captured spending, built wealth and sparked the enterprise that benefited the surrounding rural areas. I see this from the studies. Apparently, the recent census, which I have not had a chance to look at in detail, supports the thesis that villages support, retain and grow their populations better than their hinterlands.

We are concerned that the positive policy recommended by the National Spatial Strategy towards dispersed houses may compound their disadvantages. It will not halt economic decline, but may instead accelerate it. We suggest a proactive approach to the expansion of existing crossroad villages and the planned development of new villages in structurally weak areas. Why, given all this evidence, the various planning arguments and development plans, is there such bias against clustered and compact settlements in rural areas? There is no doubt this bias exists. We suggest the reason is the economic advantage which planning permission for a site and the building of one-off housing offers the landowner and the buyer. The benefit is immediate and personally experienced whereas the benefit of clustered housing is long-term and spread over the community.

Convery et al, in After the Celtic Tiger, have estimated the extra over-value to the rural countryside at around €810 million per annum. One can work it out very quickly. The benefits can be about €50,000 for the same house between a one-off house and an estate house in a rural area. On the other hand, it would be unsustainable to pursue current planning policies and confine all new housing to existing villages and towns. It would add value to the land surrounding existing villages to a greater extent than is even the case at present. The value of sites would be subtracted from the surrounding farmland and given over to very few landowners around those existing villages. Local people are correct to say that if those restrictions were fully successful, family members and local people would find it very difficult to compete with outsiders. At present, they have an advantage in obtaining planning permission over outsiders. The figures indicate there is no doubt about that.

The economic benefit dispersed housing brings to local areas is huge. This influx of funding is recycled over and over again in the local area. It is the best thing that has happened to rural Ireland in the past seven years. We must ask how we can best spread that benefit throughout the community while securing the benefits of compact, clustered settlements. That can only be achieved through economic rather than planning instruments. If one tries to impose planning controls, all one does is establish local authority planners and concerned NGOs such as An Taisce as the focus of the ire of local dwellers. The system is genuinely and correctly seen as unfair. We follow the suggestions of others involved in urban economics who understand the dynamics of the land market. We suggest the community and the nation at large should capture the value that attaches to land for which planning permission or zoning has been obtained. In effect, this should mean the local authority. This should be done through the mechanism of section 48 of the 2000 Act. Development levies should be used to recapture the whole value of planning permission and zoning not just its cost, which is almost impossible. Section 48 is very complicated and difficult to assess. The value is much easier to work out and it should be returned to the local authority.

In structurally weak rural areas, all of the value should be ring-fenced to go back to as local an area as possible. This could even mean a parish. Local people should be given the chance to decide how the money should be spent. They may decide to give it back to the landowners if they genuinely feel that is the most sustainable option and in the interest of the common good. This could be done through a participatory budget, the system developed in Sao Paolo, Brazil. I suggest the county development board structure is the suitable instrument to achieve this. The relevant Departments are represented on them as are local development groups and communities, but they have no money. Why not provide the money in question to the county development boards to be spent as agreed by all the parties involved? The levy should be levied annually in respect of zoned land, as there must be some incentive to develop or sell it. If it remains as a transaction tax that is only triggered on development, landowners will keep their land off the market in the hope that there will be some political change or until price increases accelerate.

We need more than area plans for small villages. We need design frameworks that get right down to the level of detail involving individual buildings. We need ways to lay out new streets, squares, public buildings, services and parks which are similar to the ways in which landlords and their head tenants laid out successful villages and towns in the past. That is the least weak population areas in rural Ireland deserve. There should be mechanisms whereby local authorities or those in partnership with them develop streets and squares without necessarily purchasing the land. That would allow the landowner to benefit and to recoup the cost through the development levy or some other mechanism.

Chairman

I thank you for that submission which has given the committee plenty of food for thought. We will now take questions from committee members.

Deputy McCormack

I thank Ms Ó Siochrú for that extensive and interesting presentation. I wish I had as much time to reply as she had to deliver it. Of course, I do not. If I had a half an hour, I could provide a thesis that would contradict everything the submission had to say about rural development. It is fine to present that.

Chairman

The Deputy might take that as his homework for the weekend.

Deputy McCormack

I will do it in my own time.

First, one must realise that rural Ireland is made up generally of farms. One has to start with that. The presentation focused on the extra costs of electricity, school transport, fire brigades and private transport by the development of one-off housing in rural areas. One could also stress the benefits of such one-off housing there. Let us take the example of fire brigade; fires are far less frequent in rural areas than built-up areas. Only one unit is at risk there, whereas in a town, up to five or six houses could be burned at one time. I use this example to refute some of the points put forward by the delegation.

If a son or daughter builds a house beside the family farm, that person who comes home every evening from their job in the nearest urban area can assist in the farm work. That advantage can be offset against the advantage of them living in a town where the services are provided but no benefit accrues to the rural area.

Such housing also offers the possibility that children can look after their aged parents rather than have them put in institutional care. The State can save millions of euro as parents with a son or daughter living beside them may never have to go into institutional care. It will certainly postpone the time when such care will be necessary.

One could go through every point that was made and put up a counter-argument. The cost of private transport was also cited. The State, however, gets more revenue from an increased number of cars and fuel being used in rural areas.

Chairman

The Deputy should ask a question.

Deputy McCormack

Those are my questions. What is the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability? Where is it based and how many members does it have? What is its purpose and from whom does it receive finance?

Deputy Gilmore

The implication of this presentation appears to be that this issue should not be addressed by means of the planning process at all but by means of the economic and fiscal measures that are open to the State. Mr. Convery came up with the figure of €810,000 per annum as the economic benefit accruing to rural one-off housing. This surprises me. Will Ms Ó Siochrú elaborate on how he arrived at that figure?

Examples were given to support the argument that higher costs are associated with servicing housing in rural areas because of ESB connections, postal services and so on. The conclusion was that services are generally more costly to provide in rural areas and that these costs are not generally passed on but are borne by urban dwellers who subsidise the rural dweller. Many of these services, however, are already in place - roads, ESB lines, telephone lines and so on. Is the case being made that people living in urban areas are providing a subsidy to rural dwellers for the provision of services through the tax they pay?

Ms Ó Siochrú

Yes, through the taxes that we pay and through the normal charges. The ESB differentiates between rural and urban, but not to the full extent. It has been forced to do so because it has been forced to compete. As the Deputy said, many of the costs are sunk but we are talking mainly about the marginal extra costs that have to do with maintenance and the ongoing provision of services. The Deputy can work this out from the figures I gave. The point is often made that the infrastructure is there and what is the extra cost of adding another house down a laneway that already has three houses. One has to go to the service providers to find out what the costs are.

Deputy Gilmore

Where did the €810,000 come from?

Ms Ó Siochrú

When I asked Mr. Convery about that, he said that he worked it out from looking at the planning applications as a whole for one-off houses. He looked at the size of the houses, what he could discover in terms of the site costs that he then compared with estate houses of a similar size. In general, one-off houses are larger than estate houses so he added value to that.

As an architect and valuer I prefer to rely on my own figures. One can quickly work out where the benefits are in building one's own house in the countryside. For a start one is out of the market system, particularly if one is a local person and can get planning permission where others would not. This is a big advantage and could be worth a minimum of €50,000. Sometimes that saving is converted into a larger house. There are some frighteningly large houses being built in the countryside, some up to 7,000 sq. ft. These extraordinary buildings are called trophy houses. I accept that many of the houses being built in the countryside are modest but there is an accelerating trend of very large houses being built there.

Deputy Cregan

My question is based on the argument of the unsustainability of one-off housing in the countryside. I welcome Ms Ó Siochrú and thank her for her presentation. At the end of her presentation she stated that development confined to towns and villages would also be considered unsustainable. That reduces our options in a big way if we say no to one-off housing and no to development in towns and villages.

I do not buy into the argument of one-off housing being unsustainable. Deputy Gilmore made the point clearly that the roads, school transport, and, in most cases, water schemes are already in place. Applicants have to treat their own sewage. I am not advocating that we continue to pollute our water sources. Sewage can be successfully treated in the vast majority of cases. Where it cannot be treated I would be the first to say we should not allow a development. I am at a loss to see why one would be in favour of development in towns and villages where the services have to be put in place at great cost compared to a rural area where they already exist. In that context how can one argue that one-off housing is unsustainable?

Deputy McCormack referred to the social benefits of rural housing. It is important that we take this into account when discussing the issue of sustainability. He spoke of sons and daughters living near their elderly parents, caring for them and saving the State a huge amount of money.

Soft drugs are readily available in our towns and villages. Thankfully drug pushers have not graduated to knocking on doors in rural Ireland, which is a great benefit to young people in particular. They have a better quality of life in the countryside. Anybody who wants to build a house in the countryside, particularly if he or she has ties to the community and wants to give his or her family a better way of life should be allowed to do so.

I accept that some developments cannot be allowed due to the potential for environmental damage, water pollution and so on. I remain to be convinced on the issue of sustainability where roads, telecommunications and other services are in place.

The point was made that a person can save €50,000 by building a one-off house. Why should we deprive somebody of that saving? People like to own their homes and this culture of home ownership may be greater here than in many other European countries. We should promote it and give people the chance to provide their own homes as well as every help and assistance in doing so.

Deputy Healy-Rae

I support DeputiesGilmore, Cregan and McCormack. Why should we not allow one-off housing in rural areas in a case where a farmer wants to hand down a site to his son? Would this lady prefer that the son should have to pay an astronomical price, perhaps up to €80,000 near a town or village where a site cannot be found? It is now a major problem that no sites are available for building near towns or villages where services are located. No building land is available within a three mile radius of my village of Kilgarvan. One could not buy a quarter of an acre there, because it is not on offer. One cannot add to the village if one does not get land adjacent to it. I support the one-off house for a son or daughter who wants to build.

Deputy McCormack made an excellent point when he said that such houses are usually close to parents who are getting old and weak. When these people are not in a position to care for themselves, having a son or daughter living nearby can save such people from going into nursing homes, district hospitals or some institution. I totally support the one-off house in the countryside.

We now have biocycle systems for dealing with septic tanks and pollution. We no longer depend on the soakage in the ground for a septic tank. Lest people think that we get a biocycle system for pence, we are talking about €5,500 or €6,000 for the cheapest biocycle unit and up to €9,000 for the advanced one. We are not doing any harm to the environment or causing any pollution. I support the building of one-off houses in the countryside. Are we going to allow rural schools and churches, post offices and Garda stations to close? Are we going to allow everything to be closed for the sake of directing people into a village or town that cannot accommodate them because there is no space available for them?

Ms Ó Siochrú

Deputy Healy-Rae has made my point very forcefully, that the only way one can prevent one-off single housing and make affordable housing and sites available for everybody, is if one deals with the economic incentives and ensures that zoned land be released. This is an absolute imperative. It is the only way one can make clustered settlements truly sustainable in an economic and social sense.

At present what the planning system combined with our fiscal system does, is make millionaires out of a few property owners. Even though the present system is highly damaging to the environment and in the long-term not good for those communities at least it spreads the wealth around a bit. We have to develop a new system and that means changing the fiscal environment and charging for the value of a planning permission and of zoning.

There are two ways of looking at the argument in regard to old people. One way is to say that for every old person one keeps on the land by allowing a new house beside them, many other old people have been brought from the countryside into sheltered housing. Statistics are available which bear this out. I think that the cost of one would cancel out the other. I do not support the notion of advocating a boon to one sector of society, namely rural dwellers, which I would not also allow to urban dwellers. If it were to be accepted and agreed that the community would allow and provide for young people to live beside their parents, then I would like the same for my three children in Rathmines. That is not possible within the present system. It would be more possible, however, with fiscal changes, perhaps not for me to have my three children right beside me in Rathmines but it should certainly be possible to have families living together in small clustered settlements. We are not talking about big towns here; we are talking about rural settlements in the very areas that young people are leaving. If it is such a fine place to live, how come young people are leaving? They are leaving because there is nothing for them.

Deputy Cregan

With all due respect, they are leaving because they cannot get planning permission.

Ms Ó Siochrú

No, if the Deputy looks at the planning applications he will see that people with local links, particularly in those structurally weak areas which are away from the coast, have no problem getting planning permission, but that is not enough - there are no jobs for them.

Deputy Healy Rae

I am sorry, but I will not interrupt too many times. That is the most nonsensical statement I heard in the past ten years.

Chairman

There have been a good few of them around here.

Ms Ó Siochrú

Deputy Gilmore

I agree with Deputy Allen. People who appear before the committee are entitled to some courtesy. I appeal to members to reduce the temperature a bit. The only observation I have to make is that it is interesting that it is the economics of one-off housing which has generated more heat here than the planning issues associated with it. Maybe that is telling its own story.

Deputy Cowley

I am glad to have the opportunity to speak at this session. As a member who comes from rural Ireland and is here because of the problems that exist there, I recognise the right of the delegation to come in here and speak. That does not mean I have to agree with what was said, and I do not agree with it. It is obvious that Ms Ó Siochrú comes from Dublin because her document contains every single myth that could be put together to make the spurious argument she is making. It is wrong for her to deny what is happening, bury her head in the sand and base her argument on predictions regarding a massive explosion of people in Dublin and a spread of the urban population into the countryside. The urban population grew by 18.3% in six years according to the census whereas the rural population grew by 3.9%. This indicates a major problem in the countryside because of depopulation. I, in my own way, am involved in an operation called St. Brendan's Village, a social housing initiative that comprises the biggest local employer.

Chairman

We are trying to confine ourselves to the subject.

Deputy Cowley

This is very relevant.

Chairman

We drew up a timetable and we are behind schedule. The Deputy will appreciate that people have trains to catch this evening. It would be appreciated if he would confine his remarks to a question.

Deputy Cowley

The people to whom I refer have no place to live. An application has been submitted and An Taisce has sent a letter of objection to Mayo County Council. We need infrastructure to keep people in the countryside. If we had it we could use the schools that exist. If we do not have the infrastructure or houses, the schools will close down. This would be a waste of resources. All the enterprises that kept people in the region have shut down, thus implying that the people affected and their children have to leave. People who want to stay on the land can no longer do so because there is nothing for them there. They have been driven to the bigger centres. Therefore, Ms Ó Siochrú's comments make no sense at all.

I thank Ms Ó Siochrú for her presentation and for dealing with the questions. I call on the An Taisce members. I welcome Mr. Frank Corcoran, president of An Taisce, Mr. IanLumley and Mr. Peter Hennessy. We will hear Mr. Corcoran's presentation before taking questions from members of the committee.

I draw attention to the fact that members of the committee have absolute privilege but this same privilege does not apply to witnesses appearing before it. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

Mr. Frank Corcoran

I will deal with the main issues and then hand over to Mr. Lumley, who will deal with the administration of the new Act of 2000, and then to the chairman of An Taisce's agricultural committee, Peter Hennessy.

The timing of this committee investigation is appropriate for us to do some sort of stocktaking on the implementation of the planning Act 2000. Although it is very early to do any stocktaking on the national spatial strategy, it is possible to draw some conclusions on it. We have put together a table of some appeals in some counties, which was circulated to members and which I hope will be of some benefit to them in evaluating why An Bord Pleanála refused certain applications. It shows the reasons for the decisions of An Bord Pleanála. The document also refers to An Taisce's prescribed role as a consultee under the planning Acts. We have also listed a number of other consultees under the planning Acts and have tried to carry out a preliminary evaluation of what each body does under its prescribed role as consultee.

An Taisce was founded in 1947 and has about 5,000 members. It is the national trust for Ireland. It has a number of very proactive programmes and has the highest participation rate in the world for the national green schools campaign, in which 35% of schools are involved. We also mobilise about 250,000 people every year for the national spring clean campaign. We also have other environmental programmes in place.

One of the functions of An Taisce, as prescribed under the planning Acts, is to make comments, at the invitation of the Oireachtas, on planning applications and to make referrals to An Bord Pleanála in appropriate cases. We try to do this in a responsible way. In common with all national trusts, we also have an advocacy role.

In exercising the prescribed role we look at the development plan in the first instance. Many of the submissions are made on the basis of a breach of the development plan. We think this is important as it ensures some kind of consistency in the implementation of a development plan and we know that inconsistency in the implementation of such plans annoys rural dwellers. One will see many references to strategic planning guidelines in the Bord Pleanála decisions. These were adopted by Government and not invented by us. The good reason for adopting these was to ensure the scarce resources of the State are utilised to its maximum. The strategic planning guidelines are in place to try to ensure that overspill development from places like Dublin would take place in areas that can be managed by the State and local authorities in terms of the provision of rail infrastructure. The implementation of the guidelines is important. I will refer to this later in terms of what the ESRI had to say about the mid-term review of the national development plan.

With members of the Council of West, I made submissions seeking a spatial strategy before the national spatial strategy was in place. We recognised that there was over-development in the greater Dublin region to the detriment of the west and other parts of Ireland. It is important to achieve more balanced regional development - part of this is the reinstatement of the western rail line - as well as ensuring rural towns and villages are strengthened and not allowed to haemorrhage as has been happening. The closure of post offices and Garda stations is not a good thing. Any policy measures the Oireachtas can adopt to reverse this trend would be welcome. It is important to have the quality of life reinforced in rural areas by having sufficient facilities.

One of the trends we have noticed is that a number of applications have been in breach of the National Spatial Strategy. We believe the implementation of this strategy is important. If we were to allow a laissez-faire approach to planning, particularly in the greater Dublin area, instead of building in designated zones where the State can provide infrastructure, people would build anywhere they could find a site. After all, people want to build homes and will build in non-designated areas if it is the affordable option. Whether this happens is down to the will of the Oireachtas as it has some control on the implementation of the NSS. If the strategy is breached, it will not be to the benefit of rural Ireland. To that extent, the role of An Taisce in referring appropriate cases to An Bord Pleanála is an important one.

The sustainable development strategy, adopted by the rainbow coalition Government in 1997 and readopted by the following administration, has detailed provisions setting out policy guidelines. Some of these, but not all, have been superseded by the National Spatial Strategy. The strategy deals with what the view of sustainable development was. For example, it deals with the issue of one-off houses among other issues. A referendum was held on the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1998 to put sustainable development on a full legal footing. The major political parties advocated the adoption of the treaty and a large majority passed it. As a result, the sustainable development provisions included in the treaty are being enforced by Europe and Ireland cannot back away from them.

The Government has adopted the national biodiversity plan. Some planning applications in rural areas can be a threat to this and when a planner in an internal planning report alludes this to, it will be referred to An Bord Pleanála for adjudication.

The Government has voluntarily adopted the drinking water directive. It is for the benefit of all as its purpose is to ensure a clean drinking water supply. It is in place particularly to protect the integrity of the water supply and wells of existing rural dwellers. In 2002 the European court in Luxembourg convicted Ireland of breaching the directive, citing the proliferation of septic tanks in rural areas and the admission by local authorities that they did not have the resources to properly monitor them. In its report on sustainable development, the Government acknowledged that 42% of group water schemes and 33% of single wells had been contaminated with coliforms. Although this was partly caused by agriculture, it was also caused by septic tanks while in a small number of areas illegal dumping caused this. We have noted the Fischler reforms on agriculture are beginning to tackle those problems of over-stocking. We are left with the problem of septic tanks. This must be monitored in such a way to ensure they do not present a threat to drinking water quality.

The EC has said that Ireland has been in breach of the ground water directive. Ireland had been in breach of this for a long time and knew this was the case. The EC eventually intervened and threatened to withdraw, from 2001, all agricultural grants to Ireland. It is known that 90% of all farm incomes comes as a cheque from Brussels. Half of the EU's budget, some €42 billion, is spent on the CAP. The compliance with European directives is of vital national importance. Where we feel these directives may be impinged upon we believe it should be referred for adjudication to An Bord Pleanála. Ireland has agreed to various landscape directives that are there as a benefit to this country. A number of the decisions of An Bord Pleanála have been on the grounds of a breach of these directives.

I referred earlier to the Treaty of Amsterdam. In the Gothenburg declaration of 2001, we said that we would implement the Treaty of Amsterdam by making a modal shift away from private transport towards public transport. The Government voluntarily agreed to do this. This will be monitored for compliance through the Cardiff process each spring. When An Bord Pleanála refers to Cardiff penalties, it refers to our legal obligations as given to the EU.

Mr. Ian Lumley

The first appendix to our submission is a performance analysis of the Planning and Development Act 2000. It is important that we provide an analysis of the Act and, because of its knowledge of how the planning system operates at local level, it is one of the useful functions An Taisce can bring to bear. The first and overwhelming trend is that the provisions by which local authority development plans should comply with European and national policy are not being met. They are not meeting European treaty objectives on habitats and birds by incorporating appropriate protection of the European designations into their development plans, or of archaeological, architectural and landscape protection under the various other European conventions. More specifically, in the six or so local authority development plans that have been approved or reached advanced review stage in the past year, there is a significant non-compliance with the national spatial strategy. In the case of a number of local authority development plans, provisions have been introduced which significantly undermine the spatial strategy in terms of ensuring that, for instance, one-off housing is subject to adequate assessment under rural or urban generated need.

The key means of implementing the spatial strategy will be the regional planning guidelines, the deliberations for which are in progress between the various local and regional authorities. However, we have statutory guidelines in place, particularly in regard to the Dublin area, and they are demonstrably not working. Local authorities are continuing to amend development plans and make planning decisions that are completely in contravention of such guidelines. The ESRI highlighted a serious issue in its mid-term review in regard to the Dublin area that, by continuing to accommodate the level of car-dependent sprawl, such as placing commuter housing estates in villages which do not have adequate infrastructure, we will undermine the cost-benefit and investment objective of the expensive public transport system which we are putting in place.

On planning administration and the control and monitoring of individual planning decisions, there are serious administrative problems emerging at local authority level across the country, many of which are to do with lack of provision of adequate resources such as for fully compliant registers, integrating map data with decisions and so on. Some local authorities still fail to publish lists on time, which is a legal requirement, which means that third parties are potentially disenfranchised and planning decisions could be potentially invalidated or subjected to legal challenge. Local authorities are still not properly acknowledging submissions made by third parties and prescribed bodies. The quality of evaluation of decisions is poor and in many local authorities there are still no proper planners' reports assessing, for instance, the adequacy of a site for sewage disposal.

There is a lack of transparency in the planning system because, while it is an accepted part of the Irish system, political representatives make representations on planning applications. This should be more transparent in the planning system because of the degree to which it may influence planning decisions.

Part IV of the Act makes specific provision for architectural heritage, with which there is major non-compliance, which the RIAI has identified as well as a lack of resources, a uniform national listing system and the derogation of listing to individual local authorities is proving problematic. The ESRI report has also identified a major continuing shortfall in meeting the provisions in Part V of the Act in regard to housing supply and the provision of social and affordable housing. An emerging contributing factor is that local authorities which have high ratios of one-off housing, such as County Galway at 67%, is that most houses are not contributing to the social housing levy contained in the section.

In launching his report for 2000, the former Ombudsman stated that the planning system was in a state of collapse, that local authorities did not have the resources to enforce planning permission conditions on their own decisions or monitor unauthorised development. We have massive problems, often inter-related, of large scale unauthorised quarries and dumps due to a lack of enforcement. In urban areas there are major problems with housing estates not being completed which is particularly difficult for residents. In rural areas, conditions on the specification and maintenance of septic tanks and sewage disposal systems are not being enforced, nor are landscaping, design or siting conditions, all of which is having a chain reaction.

The provision in the Act for strategic development zones has not yet been tested. The first one has just been approved in Lucan. The main test is whether it will be possible to ensure that the housing which has been approved is phased in parallel with service provision, for example for public transport, which is a key component of that SDZ. Part X of the Act provides for environmental impact statements and the committee may not be aware that a major legal action has been initiated by the European Commission against Ireland on a range of compliance breaches, including the imposition of the €20 fee levy, the splitting of decisions between local authorities and the EPA, the manner in which that is done and because major planning applications with environmental impact statements are not being properly assessed, either by local authorities or An Bord Pleanála. This massive legal action could have serious consequences for major developments.

The amenity provisions of the Act are not being complied with. We have only had three special amenity area orders, all in Dublin; in Howth, Liffey Valley and Bull Island. The new provisions to comply with the European landscape convention for landscape conservation areas are not being put in place by local authorities nor are tree preservation order provisions being adequately used.

The planning system has been streamlined since the 2000 Act, with An Bord Pleanála now considering major infrastructure projects, including road development. As we examine the implications for a critical infrastructure Bill, this reveals significantly that the ESRI did not raise the concern that major infrastructural projects were being delayed by the planning system or public consultation. Their main concerns were in regard to management and contract delivery. It is revealing to examine two of the major infrastructural projects that An Bord Pleanála dealt with in the past year. The problem with the Waterford bypass was the failure of the local authority to supply legally compliant information under the European directive. That is why the hearing had to be adjourned. Similarly, the reason it took so long for An Bord Pleanála to make a decision on the gas terminal in Mayo was inadequate information.

Chairman

We indicated earlier that we hoped the presentation would last about ten minutes, followed by a question and answer session; and yet almost 20 minutes have now elapsed.

Mr. Lumley

Attached to the presentation is an evaluation of the performance of prescribed bodies, including An Taisce. There is a particular concern in regard to the NRA because it is not taking appeals, exercising its prescribed function or protecting the public safety and operational integrity of national primary and secondary roads and it is allowing ribbon development, which is dangerous for the people living on those roads as well as the road users. We have documented a number of cases that illustrate this.

We dealt with that matter some months ago with Mr. Corcoran.

Deputy Gilmore

I thank the representatives for their presentation. Their analysis of the planning Act and their assessment of how it is working out have been of great value to us. We have been dealing with the issue of one-off housing in the countryside. Due to the reputation of An Taisce everyone can tell one what An Taisce is against but few can say what it is for. Perhaps the delegation could help the committee in that regard. The delegation has given us a list of planning permissions appealed by An Taisce in counties Kildare, Mayo and Leitrim. Perhaps they could indicate to the committee what developments in those three counties over that period of time An Taisce supported. We have a summary from a number of local authorities of the circumstances in which these local authorities would consider granting planning permission for one-off houses in the countryside. Will the representatives tell the committee, perhaps with some examples, of permissions to which An Taisce has not objected? Every member of the committee knows of cases in which An Taisce has lodged objections.

Mr. Hennessy gave one of the most interesting contributions to the debate that I have heard for some time, dealing with the impact on agricultural activity of what is essentially urban living, albeit in the countryside. As spokesperson in this area for my party, I have certainly come across cases in which, for example, somebody who has built a house in the countryside does not like the smell of silage and they wonder whether the Environmental Protection Agency can do anything about it. I would like to hear more about this because it is an important aspect of the debate. There is an assumption that the more houses are built in rural Ireland the more sustainable rural Ireland becomes. I wonder to what extent people have taken into consideration the impact of housing on rural activities. I was interested to hear the point about the price of agricultural land. If farmers are being priced out of buying land for farming because the land is attracting a bigger price due to its development potential, it is important that we consider this. I had not heard that aspect of the debate before now and I would like to hear more about it.

Mr. Hennessy

It is often said that one-off housing only affects areas around towns but, historically, towns have grown up in areas where the best land is located because of proximity to the local food supplies and so on. There is no doubt that commercial farmers operating in areas of good land relatively close to towns have mixed feelings about this matter. They can sell sites, but they do not know who they are bringing into the area. Even the IFA's submission on the National Spatial Strategy made this point. The sub-urbanisation of the countryside will affect the viability of farming.

Mr. Corcoran

Deputy Allen asked about our connection with reality and whether we know what people think in local areas. Our annual gathering this year was in County Kilkenny and we had a two-day conference. The first day we spoke about the implications of CAP reform because the relevant legislation was going through that month. We had speakers from the European Commission and from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. Actual examples were given to farmers of what they could do to draw down the funds under CAP reform and to demonstrate that it was not the end of the world for them. The speaker had been researching these programmes over a period of 30 years and I asked him to speak at the conference. We had another talk about the effects on landscape.

Another speaker was the leader of a farming organisation who spoke about its policy on decoupling. It happened that the policy of that organisation - the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association - was very close to our own and its submission had been similar to ours. We are directly involved in these issues and our local associations are close to what happens in their own areas. We do make positive inputs to planning, for instance through the right of third parties to participate in the planning process, which is very important. One example is a major scheme in Blessington for over 700 houses and commercial development. The county council was minded to grant permission and the road was going through many archaeological sites. At a meeting in the town I told people who were inclined to favour the development, that it would destroy the archaeological remains, which could be a great asset to the town if one looked after them well and there was no need to destroy them. I also suggested that because the development was going to swamp all the voluntary effort of the town we should survey every group and stakeholder in the town asking them what they wanted. The elderly wanted an outdoor bowls green and they got that from the developer, the schoolchildren wanted a 25 metre pool, which could be block booked, not a kidney-shaped pool, in the leisure centre. That is now in the planning permission. The cultural group wanted a theatre and we got agreement for the developer to build a 180 seat theatre. That application is going ahead at the moment. The teenagers wanted a pitch-and-putt course.

To compare planning to genocide is an inappropriate comparison.

Deputy Cuffe withdrew.

Deputy Harkin

Deputy Healy-Rae alluded to the sense of desolation that people feel in those circumstances. I welcome the members of An Taisce to the committee.

What role does the chairman of An Taisce play in the selection of the chairman of An Bord Pleanála? We hear that there is no connection between the two organisations. Will An Taisce clarify this? Given that one third of the population lives in open countryside, what percentage of one-off housing needs would it recommend to be built in order to sustain our increasing population?

In the document on the rural built environment, An Taisce claims that one-off housing is unsustainable. We spoke earlier of where people pay for rural water schemes. In County Sligo, many people are paying €1,200 for the upgrading of their rural water schemes, with an additional cost of €250 per year. Electricity is already part of the existing infrastructure. According to the EPA, when septic tanks are properly constructed - I do recognise this in an issue to be dealt with - they are as efficient a mechanism of disposing of sewage as any other. What is important in rural areas is the whole sense of community and social infrastructure. We have our existing schools, sports clubs, and so on. How can An Taisce claim that building one-off houses in rural areas represents unsustainable development from either a social or economic view?

Why is An Taisce so negative in its use of language? The word "arrogant" was used earlier, but it should be "negative". In its documentation, An Taisce states that there is a foisting of 15 new houses upon our countryside. Why not use the normal term "building" instead of "foisting". It refers to one-off houses as a blight on the horizon. It speaks of the building of these houses as a particular problem rather than taking a neutral stance with the term "particular issue".

In the document, it also states that the figures are increasing precipitously. There are doubts about the figures that have been quoted. However, all of us will accept that the figures from the CSO on the last census are accurate. From 1996 to 2002, the increase of those living in urban areas is 10%; those living in towns of 1,000 to 1,500 is 10.6% and 500 to 1,000 is 8.1%. We have been told that small villages are disappearing and Mr. Corcoran informed us they are being abandoned. However, according to the census figures, from 1996 to 2002 the increase of persons living in settlements of 50 houses to 499 houses was 18.3%. Interestingly enough, the increase of persons living in settlements of less than 500, which might be considered rural or one-off, is 3.9%. I suggest to An Taisce that if there are discrepancies in figures, which there are, the figures we can all agree on are the census figures from the CSO.

I downloaded two Internet documents today, both produced by An Taisce. One is the policy on the rural built environment wherein it is stated that more than 50% of housing is built in the greater Dublin area. As An Taisce is well aware, there is much controversy about that figure, yet if one looks at An Taisce's submission on the National Spatial Strategy, which I also downloaded, one will see it gives the correct figure, saying that about one third of housing is built in the greater Dublin area. While there may be confusion about figures from one source or another, I am surprised that the confusion still exists on An Taisce's own website.

Mr. Hennessy spoke about the number of sites available. I would be very pleased if he would invite me to the next auction for a site for a one-off house. All I can tell him is that he will not find it in Sligo or Leitrim - certainly not a site with planning permission. If it were to be sold, I would not like to be attempting to get planning permission for it.

Mr. Hennessy also told us that An Taisce's submission on CAP reform was very similar to that of the ICSA. My comment on that is that if one were to make a submission on rural housing I doubt if it would be similar to that made by the ICSA.

Mr. Lumley spoke about lack of transparency. Though his comments today were what I might call considered, this is not the first time he has made very snide comments about public representatives and their role when making representations for people seeking planning permission. He calls for more transparency in this area. As far as I am aware, the planning file is open to anybody. Perhaps Mr. Lumley wants closed circuit television when public representatives, planners and those seeking planning permission are speaking together. As Mr. Lumley speaks about transparency, perhaps he might be able to supply me, and this committee, with a list of the members of An Taisce. It is after all a public body and it receives public funding. While I have no problem with the level of transparency that I present in so far as the planning process is concerned, I wonder if An Taisce can say the same.

Senator Dooley

While I did not hear all of the presentation, I watched most of it from my office. Involving the farming agenda is a cynical move on the part of An Taisce. It is not something I have noticed An Taisce doing in the past. While An Taisce has not actually said that it has the general support of farmers in its approach, that is the notion put forward. I want to know what An Taisce thinks is wrong with the right of a farmer to sell a site on his or her land if that allows him or her to educate family members or get them through a particular difficult financial crisis.

Following on from what Deputy Harkin said, I too have in the past heard Mr. Lumley make very disparaging comments about elected representatives and the work they do in seeking to represent the people who have elected them and in participating in the democratic process. I wonder if Mr. Lumley accepts the democratic process and the right of a constituent to seek their representatives' assistance and advice in dealing with matters to do with any organisation, whether it is the local planning authority or any organ of the State.

Deputy Cowley

We know it is contaminated. Mr. Corcoran is missing the point.

Mr. Corcoran

The European court in Luxembourg has acknowledged the fact that drinking water has been contaminated. It is a function of a prescribed body to make submissions——

Deputy Cowley

I never said it was not contaminated.

Chairman

The Deputy must allow Mr.Corcoran to finish. If he wants to come back with a question he will be allowed do so.

Mr. Corcoran

On the EPA manual, there was a great deal of controversy in County Mayo in particular about submissions by another prescribed body, the North-Western Fisheries Board, to do with water quality and the protection of fisheries. As a result of that, a report was commissioned from M. C. O'Sullivan on the viability of certain septic tank systems and other ways of treating water. The report said that the Pureflow system does not always work when used erratically. When it is used for holiday homes, for example, it does not work. The ESRI figures show that 60% of new applications granted in Country Leitrim were second homes and holiday homes while in Donegal the figure was 50%. Those figures were issued by the ESRI in the past week or so.

Deputy Healy-Rae asked if An Taisce is in favour of retention of local services. It has always been a point of submissions made by An Taisce that services in rural Ireland, such as post offices, should be protected and reinforced by allowing more population into those areas.

It is not An Taisce that stops a particular planning application. It is An Bord Pleanála that has that power. The committee members all know this. The role of An Taisce is to refer appropriate cases to An Bord Pleanála. That is its sole function. We refer about four cases out of every one thousand. We do not refer 996 out of every one thousand. Nobody can say to me however that every one of each thousand cases is perfect. We have heard this morning that there are particular problems with some applications. These are the ones we refer. An Bord Pleanála has said to this and other committees previously, when asked why so many of the submissions or referrals by An Taisce were upheld by it, that An Taisce tends to refer to it only the more extreme examples of applications in breach of Government policy or legal requirements relating to drinking water, public health and so on. Everyone knows that it is to An Bord Pleanála that the power to make these decisions has been given by the Oireachtas. The Oireachtas did not give An Taisce the power to make decisions on planning applications, nor does An Taisce do so.

Deputy Harkin

I suggest An Taisce puts a health warning on its statements if it is going to quote very divergent figures regarding the percentage of houses in the greater Dublin area. It is not just a minor difference. Between 33% and 50% is a huge difference. I did ask one other question and a one word answer will do. Given that we have been so comprehensively lectured on transparency and accountability would An Taisce allow us to see a list of all its members?

On average it is 3,500 nationally, but in a majority of those cases they would be very routine letters that are simply submissions that could not be described as objections. They are merely raising a concern that the relevant European directive, or development plan considerations, should be complied with. For example, in submissions in the greater Dublin area, our submission would simply be that the consideration of the application should have regard to the relevant development plan and strategic planning guidelines.

In respect of County Mayo, where there is a problem with groundwater protection and sewage disposal, we raise concerns about groundwater protection requiring proper evaluation of sewage disposal. Most of our submissions are just raising concerns and putting the onus on the local authority to evaluate those concerns. That is, in any case, the function of a prescribed body, just as the NRA in its submissions raises concerns about impacts on the national roads.

Deputy Gilmore

An Taisce is the only non-statutory body that is a prescribed body for the purposes of the planning Act. As you know, there have been demands emerging from others that they should also be added as prescribed bodies. Given the fact that most people when making a planning appeal, including local community associations, have to state their interest in the land, should the number of prescribed bodies be increased and should it include local bodies where they exist, or should the idea of having prescribed bodies be done away with altogether so that everybody is operating on the same pitch?

Mr. Corcoran

On the question of whether all prescribed bodies should be scrapped, that would not be in the public interest as it is important that submissions be made to the NRA. The NRA should be more proactive but it is important that the NRA's views on planning applications affecting safety on roads should be sought, also with other bodies, such as the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, which has a legal responsibility for the implementation of our landscape commitments under European law. Remember, these are very important because of the level of European subvention in rural incomes.

An Taisce has to take a public interest stance on all these matters. An Bord Pleanála does not intervene in cases, so all of its decisions which have overturned planning decisions, on the grounds that had they gone ahead they would have been a threat to public health or safety, would not have happened. They would not have been able to do that had not a prescribed body with a public interest role taken an appeal. Individuals can also take appeals if they are affected by planning applications but they tend to be on the basis of their own property interest, whereas the idea of the prescribed body, and this is a matter for the Oireachtas as they made the legislation, is that there should be a public interest stance taken, or comment made, on certain planning applications, which is the rationale behind that.

Chairman

That concludes our discussion with An Taisce. We thank Mr. Corcoran, Mr.Hennessy and Mr. Lumley for their presentation and for dealing with the questions that were thrown at them.

My apologies to the Irish Rural Dwellers Association for keeping them on the sidelines for so long.

I welcome Mr. Jim Connolly, Dr. SeamusCaulfield and Mr. Peter Hennessy from the Irish Rural Dwellers Association. Mr. Connolly will speak first before we take questions. Before you commence your presentation I draw your attention to the fact that members of this committee have absolute privilege but the same privilege does not apply to witnesses appearing before the committee. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that members should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses, or an official or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

Mr. Jim Connolly

It has been a long day, but even with a reduced audience we are glad of the opportunity——

Chairman

What is that phrase about good wine?

Mr. Connolly

You will have to be the judge of that. Unfortunately there are not too many members of the committee here to judge it.

We are coming from a completely different standpoint, as I am not a paid official but a member of a voluntary organisation that is non-political. This presentation is with acknowledgement to the memory of Martin Luther King, which is something that will become clear in a moment.

An Irish citizen wishing to build a house for his family in a rural area in a certain county, which we shall call county X, located a site that suited his purpose. He wrote to the planning authorities seeking a pre-planning meeting. That night he had a dream in which he saw in exact detail a letter he was going to receive from the county manager. The dream letter went as follows:

"Dear sir or madam, I welcome your decision to build your home in our county. This county in common with most counties in Ireland has a proud tradition of vibrant community life going back thousands of years. The council are anxious that new households will continue to establish themselves in our townlands to counteract loss of population due to the decline of farming and other factors. There is no ban or bias against houses in the open countryside in this county and the planning department will assist you in every way to ensure, if at all possible, that your desire to rear your family in the place of your choice can become a reality. The council has statutory obligations regarding health and safety issues and other factors relating to the common good, but, that said, I assure you that in striking a balance all your constitutional rights, as well as the importance of rural community life, will get due respect and fair treatment. In that context, every planning application for a rural house goes before a special proofing committee composed of elected members and relevant officials where it is assessed against the rural proofing guidelines set out in the Government's White Paper on rural development. This local authority honours its obligations to comply with Government policy.

On water pollution, the council accepts that an engineering solution is possible for waste water treatment on all sites provided EPA guidelines are adhered to. The council also respects the EPA guidelines that the most appropriate and cost effective method of waste water treatment is the conventional septic tank and percolation properly installed and maintained on a suitable site. We will not insist on the installation of expensive high-tech and high energy consuming septic tanks unless reports by qualified experts show that the lower cost waste water treatment is not appropriate on your site. Subjective judgments on waste water treatment by planners not having professional qualifications in civil engineering or other relevant qualifications, are not allowed by this council. You will not be refused on the septic tank issue. This council also puts serious constraints on the subjective opinions of its planners in respect of house design details such as windows, dormers, roofs, garages, landscaping etc, which it recognises as rightfully belonging to the taxpayers wishing to build their dream home. Planners will guide and advise on fundamental issues such as building regulations, the common good and health and safety, but all their guidance will be supported by written reports from professionally qualified people.

The council does not tolerate inconsistencies and injustices in planning decisions resulting from the subjective opinions of individual planners. On the necessity to preserve our cultural heritage, the council has a responsibility to show regard for the traditional Irish dispersed village settlement pattern, unique in Europe. In this context, it has no difficulty in allowing houses to be built so long as they are sited sensitively in the landscape. The council accepts that a living landscape requires presence of life, both human and animal and that it would be failing in its responsibilities if its planning policies contributed to the creation of depopulated rural deserts as has happened in many European countries.

Irrespective of country of origin, a welcome is extended. The council does not enforce a locals only rule, occupancy clause, or place restrictions such as land sterilisation which it believes are unconstitutional. In the unfortunate event of a refusal of planning permission on the selected site, the council undertakes to discuss housing requirements with the applicant, sparing no difficulty to find a solution.

The council welcomes the belated arrival of the industrial revolution, in the form of the Celtic tiger, to Ireland and the opportunities thus created in the country. The council supports the energy and enterprise of the present generation of workers and applauds their determination to invest in creating new housing stock of the county in a way never before possible. Their energy and commitment will guarantee security and shelter for their own children as well as a high quality housing stock for future generations. No individual will be forced out of this county because of planning.

This hypothetical letter is signed by Mr. Joseph Bloggs, county manager.

Our citizen woke up in the morning and his dream turned into a nightmare. This same nightmare is experienced by thousands of people seeking permission to build in counties across Ireland. I will not delay the committee with further anecdotal evidence because, as elected representatives, members of the committee are already fully aware of these matters.

On the formation of the IRDA, I ask the committee to consider what the country has come to when considerable numbers of mature people felt it necessary to form a united front to take on the planning regime. Our motivation is simply the love of our country, its people and culture.

The IRDA was launched only 18 months ago and now has more than 1,000 paid up members from Malin Head to Cahirciveen and is growing daily. We have attended many public meetings on planning around the country and believe that we reflect the feelings of ordinary taxpayers accurately. In this presentation, we are discussing rural housing only.

People have lost all respect for our planning system, including An Bord Pleanála. An Taisce, which used to be highly respected, has become a despised organisation with policies on rural housing utterly rejected by rural communities. It does itself no justice by lodging incorrect serial objections, or by constantly attacking rural society in the media with biased misleading and false objections on vital matters such as housing statistics, water pollution, sustainability and the high price the country supposedly has to pay to subsidise rural communities.

It is abetted by the environmental editor of The Irish Times, who lashes out at rural communities from his lofty perch in Temple Bar and praises himself endlessly at conferences for his invention of the phrase "bungalow blitz". This ignorant description of the housing types of thousands of ordinary people, together with attacks by officers of An Taisce on politicians and Government Ministers on television, has done much to unite rural dwellers and make them more determined to fight for justice in planning.

It is a sad day for democracy when citizens lose all respect for institutions of the State, such as the planning authorities and for State supported organisations with statutory roles, such as An Taisce. In a democracy, no institution can continue indefinitely without the respect of the people. There are many examples illustrating the truth of this from recent social history that should make legislators pay heed.

The IRDA has shown that the drive to urbanise Irish society comes from the influence on our planning regime by UK planning philosophies. This was clearly outlined at the IRDA conference in Cahirciveen by the senior lecturer and his colleague at the School of Environmental Planning, Queens University. Many Irish students got their qualifications in England. Of the 29 planning schools there, only four offer any courses in rural planning and this reflects the fact that England as a society is 90% urbanised. In Dublin University, the master's degree in planning is accredited by the Royal Town Planning Institute of London. This course offered no rural planning until recently.

The Royal Town Planning Institute of London has established an Irish Policy Panel in Ireland to influence rural planning. They published a discussion paper in 2002. In addition to the large number of members of the Royal Town Planning Institute working in local authorities across Ireland, there has been an influx of planners from other countries, including 25 from South Africa. They were attracted here by high wages. None of these non-national planners are obliged to do any course whatsoever in Irish history or heritage.

The chairman of An Bord Pleanála, Mr. John O'Connor, reported in their annual report for 2001, that the majority of the 50 planners taken on to cope with the extra workload were UK based. In addition, they farm out groups of appeals on a tender basis to professional planners. Planners from outside of this State can bid for this work.

In Cahiciveen a month ago, the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Deputy Ó Cuív stated:

We are a unique people and an ancient race with long established traditions and settlement patterns. Why should we be forced to live by imported models, designed to suit people who live in different countries with totally different cultures.

In fact, we are forced to live by these imported models.

There are other issues such as constitutional rights and natural justice that may come up later but I will conclude with a few general observations. I wonder how we can make enormous contributions to the outside world in many areas such as literature, music, art, sport, technology and so on but lack the confidence to support our cultural heritage and allow ourselves to be swayed by every passing opinion, however shallow, from outside these shores. I ask why we are the only country in Europe, if not the world, which allows third party objections to houses in rural Ireland from every Tom, Dick and Harry regardless of where they live. These objectors can take a case to An Bord Pleanála and win. I ask why we treat this present generation, who are creating the wealth of the country, as if they were a sub species abusing their citizenship when they dare to apply to build a home. Ireland is the most underpopulated country in Europe with by far the lowest housing density. Why do we accept the view that there is an acceptable level of refusals from planning authorities? Each refusal for a permanent home is not alone a personal tragedy for some family but is a serious attack on their constitutional rights as Irish citizens.

There is the argument that planning policy should be left to experts rather than elected councillors. A councillor at our Cahirciveen conference stated that a senior planning official told his county council that planning should be taken out of their hands completely because they know nothing about it. It is worth remembering that all elected representatives are expert at one thing that others are not; they are expert at getting elected. As they are elected they have a mandate to develop policy and ensure that it is implemented. Democracy hinges on the principle that one has to be elected to govern. The day that right is handed over to experts in any field, democracy is dead. There is no doubt that democracy is flawed, as our various tribunals have shown. It is only because we have a democracy that we can apply the checks and balances to bring it back into line. Speaking in this company I can do no better than to echo the words of Thomas Jefferson. When he argued against the divine right of royalty to rule over the people, he asked the question, if the people are not fit to rule themselves then who is?

Chairman

I thank Mr. Connolly for his most interesting presentation. It is unfortunate that we ran on as long as we did and that members had to take trains home.

Deputy Gilmore

I welcome the representatives of the Irish Rural Dwellers Association and the contribution they have made to this debate in recent times. I grew up in rural Ireland but now represent an urban constituency so I have a perspective on both sides of this argument.

The information we were given by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government was that 26% of the houses built in Ireland in the past ten years were individual houses served by septic tanks, which would largely be in rural areas. The total number of houses was 75,845. Why has the overall population of rural Ireland only increased by some 5% if that additional number of dwellings has been built? Why are post offices and local shops closing, given that level of additional buildings, albeit in tandem with a 5% increase in the population of rural Ireland?

Mr. Connolly placed a great deal of emphasis on rural community life but much of the development taking place in rural Ireland is in fact urbanisation. When I was growing up 30 years ago there was a significant difference between life in urban and rural Ireland but this is no longer the case. Lifestyles are the same. Standards of living are broadly the same. When I was growing up we could not get any further than the local village on a bicycle but now people get into their cars and drive to the nearest supermarket. I suggest that this is why local shops have declined. It is urban living albeit in a rural context. I am not saying that this is a bad thing but why do we not call a spade a spade? The development of houses in many parts of rural Ireland is in fact as urban as those in my constituency.

I grew up in Caltra in County Galway, which recently won the county championship. The last time it was in the county final was 1975.

Chairman

Was the Deputy playing?

Deputy Gilmore

No.

Chairman

I thought there was going to be a good finish to it.

Deputy Gilmore

In 1975, seven of the 15 members of the team were farmers; this time around not a single farmer was on the team. Rural Ireland has changed dramatically and the housing being built there is serving what is essentially an urban lifestyle. We are an urban society and that holds true in the heart of rural Ireland just as it does in towns and cities.

Does Mr. Connolly accept that it costs more to service housing in rural areas than it does in urban areas? If he was Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, would he allocate money for road maintenance on a kilometre basis or on a population basis or would he have some combination of both?

I asked the corollary question of An Taisce so I will also ask it of Mr. Connolly. Can he give us some examples of applications for rural housing that he would refuse? An Taisce identified two or three cases.

Mr. Connolly

Deputy Gilmore

There is a degree of overstatement on the idyllic concept of rural community life in support of the argument the delegation is making. I think the argument is overstated. It would be better for the debate if we all accepted that a large proportion of the houses being built in rural Ireland are being built and lived in by people who are in every respect, other than the rural location of the house, living an urban lifestyle.

Dr. Caulfield

I thought I had answered that by pointing out that if 33% of the population are only building 26% of houses, the net flow of population is rural to urban rather than vice versa. The difference between us is that the Deputy is taking an economic definition of urban whereas I am taking a spatial one. Two different paradigms are being used.

As regards a team, it is open to question whether there would be a farmer on it. That does not mean that every member of the team would not die for that rural village and are as much part of it as if they were farmers. While I am four generations removed from farming, I am 100% rural.

The idea that it costs more to service homes in rural areas is an appalling one and keeps coming up. The latest instance where it has been raised was by the ESRI in the mid-term evaluation of the NDP. It talks about taxpayers subsidising rural dwellers by the amount of money that is invested in water supply and sewerage for rural dwellers. Of €3 billion that has been allocated for water and sewerage, €2.5 billion is for urban population and €500 million for rural areas and despite what the ESRI says, not one penny is going for rural sewerage schemes.

Chairman

There is no mention of DART or Luas.

Dr. Caulfield

The ESRI mentioned a specific case that is being subsidised when it is not receiving one penny. If one examines the water and wastewater budgets, one will find that €2.5 billion has been allocated to urban projects and only €500 million to rural areas. Only one sixth of the budget has been allocated to areas where one third of the population lives yet this has been described as subsidising rural dwellers.

The question was asked about where we would refuse planning permission for houses. There are many parts of my home county of Mayo where there are dispersed communities and open tracts of countryside where no one lives. There is an altitude limit for the construction of houses; this would also be true of Kildare. I would not allow one house to be built in vacant areas of Mayo, Galway or Donegal and would respect the current altitude limit in counties such as Kildare and others. There is no question of the IRDA wanting a complete free-for-all.

One fact that has emerged today is the absence of statistics. The only thing worse than the absence of statistics is false statistics that are being continually recycled. I have been appalled to find that in this meeting the same false statistics have been recycled even though the correct statistics have been brought to the attention of some of those who recycled them. There are many statistics in the public domain. However, statistics on when houses cease to be occupied are inaccurate and it has led to extraordinary figures in the ESRI report. The report claims that 40% of housing is being built as holiday homes; the true figure is between a quarter and one third of this. The mistake has been made of not identifying the houses that have ceased to be occupied. I have released a paper on this that shows the figure is exceptionally low and 40% of houses in rural areas are not holiday homes.

There is a need for an accurate record of how many houses are being built. Small villages from 50 to 500 houses, far from melting out into the countryside as has been portrayed for a number of years, have shown the largest growth of 18% while the dispersed population has only shown half the growth of the rest of the country over the past six years. Many accepted truths on this issue are not true. Some people have claimed this is the most car-dependent country in the world. One person has stated that we use cars 40% more than Americans. This is an entire myth and while figures from EUROSTAT prove this, they were trotted out again today.

Mr. Cathal McGowan

Deputy Gilmore is a country man living in Dublin while I am a Dublin man living in the country and can see things from a slightly different perspective. There were 500,000 farmers in Ireland before the Second World War and there are now approximately 100,000. The projections are that there will be 10,000 to 20,000 full-time farmers in Ireland by 2010. There will also be 80,000 or 90,000 part-time farmers and they will, hopefully, be working in towns and cities. It is a good thing that they will work in towns and cities as it is essential that they should be able to live, go to work and drive cars. The countryside cannot be populated by 20,000 full-time farmers.

Members have talked about the money being spent on maintaining country roads. Approximately €21.9 billion is being spent on the infrastructure of Dublin centre on the M50, metro, quality bus corridors, DART and suburban rail services, Luas and the integration of traffic. I am not making up this figure; it was quoted in The Irish Times recently. The cost of maintaining country roads is only buttons by comparison.

It is essential that Ireland maintains a rural population. The rural population will not be employed in agriculture as a living cannot be made from it. In order to make the countryside remain viable, people other than those involved in agriculture have to live there. These will be people that live in towns and cities and will contribute to maintaining the mix that Ireland has had. This mix has made us the kind of people that we are.

No.

Deputy Gilmore

What about a bungalow half a mile away from it?

Dr. Caulfield

The Deputy is from the country, but does he know what a rural dwelling is? It is a house that is in the countryside, in a townland but not a village.

The case the Deputy has taken is a specific example of the Dublin sprawl that is now recognised as having leapt beyond the greater Dublin area. Interestingly, given the Deputy's choice of an economic definition for rural and urban dwelling, Rochfortbridge is an entirely economic creation due to increasing house costs. I see it as urban, not just in terms of the small town of Rochfortbridge, but also as a Dublin suburb. There are problems but they are urban rather than rural.

Deputy Harkin

I tell young couples that come to me for help with planning permission applications, that if they can survive that process they do not need to attend a pre-marriage course. If they can survive this they can survive anything.

Deputy Cowley

I thank the IRDA and all the other groups that made a submission. It is all about democracy and groups stating their points of view. As an elected representative from Mayo, I have the same right to come to this meeting and represent the people that elected me. Of course, every member has the same right and if we did not do that we would not be doing our job.

This issue is about people and survival and that is why the IRDA came about. With all due respect to An Taisce, it often does not see the wood for the trees. I have been involved with the IRDA since the outset. If An Taisce is supported by Government and has certain resources, the IRDA should have the same advantages and funding. While it would be much better if they could stay at home, one third of graduates in Mayo have to go to Dublin to find their first job. St. Brendan's village is the biggest local employer in my area yet there are no places for the people to live, as they cannot get planning.

Chairman

Mr. Connolly, would you have a weekend in Carraigaholt for Deputy Gilmore?

Mr. Connolly

I am seriously worried. I would like to add to what my colleagues have said——

Chairman

It has been a long day and we are wrapping up.

Mr. McGowan

We have had a very short period by comparison to the other groups.

Mr. Connolly

We hear the attack all the time that rural dwellers are being subsidised by urban dwellers. One third of the population lives in rural Ireland and most of us are taxpayers. I confirmed with the Department of Finance that it does not differentiate between the source of funding when it disburses money from the national purse. Therefore, my taxes are going into Luas, the M50 and the upgrading of urban sewerage systems, many of which have not yet been upgraded, judging by the amount of water pollution involving raw sewage. It must be borne in mind that rural taxpayers are contributing to the national purse and are subsidising the urban infrastructure.

There are draft guidelines for implementing rural proofing procedures. As I understand it, when the Government is implementing legislation, those implementing policies such as local authorities are bound to proof it against the guidelines. How many local authorities are proofing any planning applications against these published guidelines? I do not think any are. If they did, they would look at certain things.

Examples of characteristics of rural Ireland are a strong identity of rural communities, especially cultural, linguistic, heritage and sense of community, and the dispersed nature of rural communities. One does not need a weekend in Carrigaholt. One just needs to read these guidelines. I ask that all local authorities be obliged to have a committee in this regard and I would like to see Irish rural dwellers on it. Surely, it would be an implementation of policy. We are not one inch from stated Government policy, repeated by the Taoiseach and the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Cullen. However, an independent, maverick, off-the-rails planning regime is taking us in the opposite direction. That is why the rural dwellers are trying to pull it back on track by getting the Government's own policy implemented. There are other issues and I would be disappointed if we were sent home.

Chairman

We will not send you home but we must bring our discussion to a close. On behalf of the committee, I thank Mr. Connolly for his presentation and apologise for keeping him so late. It was not our intention but that is how it worked out. I thank Mr. Connolly's colleagues for answering the questions that were raised and I am sure we will be in touch at a later stage.

We have listed seven organisations and, if it is agreeable to members, we will decide at our next meeting how we should proceed with the information we have been given.

Deputy Gilmore

We should have a session on it because issues arose in the presentations. The committee should prepare a report and make recommendations to the House. There are obvious immediate actions which need to be taken and research needs to be carried out before guidelines are published.

The joint committee adjourned at 6.14 p.m.sine die.

JOINT COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT debate - Thursday, 6 Nov 2003

Rural Housing: Presentations.

Mr. Finian Matthews

Mr. Matthews

Mr. Brian Hunt

Mr. Hunt

Mr. Hunt

JOINT COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT debate -
Thursday, 6 Nov 2003