The survival of one of Ireland's smallest gaeltachtai is threatened by potential overdevelopment, concerned locals will tell the Minister of State for the Gaeltacht, Ms Mary Coughlan, at a meeting today.
An area action plan which aims to preserve the Irish language and protect the visual and cultural amenities of Ring is to be voted on in September by Waterford County Council.
Members of a recently-formed lobby group which meets the Minister today claim the plan, drawn up for the council by CAAS (environmental services), opens the door to housing estates in a hitherto unspoilt rural area.
Opinion is sharply divided as other residents say the CAAS plan has got the correct balance between allowing limited development and protecting the local environment. A decision on the plan was due to be taken next month, but the deadline for submissions from the public has been put back to July 27th.
Everyone agrees that demand for housing in Ring has dramatically increased and, with traditional local industries in decline, the Irish language is under pressure. The CAAS plan, based in part on the 1999 Waterford county development plan, proposes to concentrate development in four areas, three of them - Maoil an Choirnigh, Baile na nGall and Helvick - in Ring, and the other in the neighbouring Old Parish, which is also part of the Gaeltacht.
Housing densities of up to eight units per acre are proposed, but on most of the zoned land only three would be allowed. A number of residents fear, however, that even this density will lead to housing estates and the "suburbanisation" of Ring as an extension of Dungarvan.
They claim planning permission recently granted for an 18-house development on a six-acre site at Baile Ui Raghallaigh, overlooking Dungarvan Bay, will set a precedent for similar schemes unless it is overturned by An Bord Pleanala.
Ms Paula Ui Uallachain, one of a number of local residents who objected to the development, is also a member of Gaeltacht i mBaol (Gaeltacht in Danger), a recently established community group which meets Ms Coughlan today. "I've no wish to live here if I can't live my life through Irish and I feel as if part of my life is going to be ripped away from me," she says.
The group stresses it is not against outsiders moving in to Ring - Ms Ui Uallachain herself moved there in the 1970s - but she says the Gaeltacht would not survive large numbers of English-speakers moving in to newly built housing estates.
Supporters of the proposed action plan, however, say three houses per acre will not result in estates. Indeed the CAAS plan specifically states that the rural nature of Ring and Old Parish must be maintained.
Contacted by The Irish Times, however, several people in favour of the action plan declined to put their views on record, saying the debate ran its course when the first draft of the plan was published last year. One of them, Mr Micheal O Faolain, chairman of Comhairle Pobail na Rinne, said local people had been invited to send submissions to the council at a public meeting organised by the comhairle pobail last year.
As a land-owner with an interest in developing his own land, he had not chaired the meeting. The council's senior planner, Mr Denis McCarthy, had attended and everyone had had a chance to make their views known. A Labour councillor, Fiachra O Ceilleachair, who is an elected member of Udar as na Gaeltachta, is highly critical of the action plan and not only on grounds of potential overdevelopment. While housing estates could be built in the areas zoned for development, he says, there are "over-the-top restrictions" on people living outside these areas.
The action plan proposes that residential developments outside the zoned areas should be subject to a "rural, essential, family-housing need policy", restricting eligibility to relations of the land-owner, people who work in the area or people from the area who wish to return home to live on family lands.
Mr O Ceilleachair wants a continuation of single-site, small-scale development subject to the normal planning conditions.
A number of other councillors in the Dungarvan electoral area, however, support the CAAS plan. One of them, Ms Nuala Ryan of Fianna Fail, said three houses per acre was a satisfactory compromise. Initially it had been proposed to restrict development to one house per acre and a number of local people had complained that this was too restrictive. In her view three could not be considered high density.
