No village or town in Ireland is set in the 1960s, a senior Co Kildare planning official told the second day of a Bord Pleanala appeal hearing into a 416-house development at Ballymore Eustace yesterday. "There must be development or there will be deserted, lifeless places, like what happened in France," Mr Michael Kenny, the county's acting chief executive planning officer, told the hearing. "There will be development in the village of Ballymore Eustace" he said. Mr Kenny was responding to a question from a planning consultant, Mr Michael O'Neill, for the village residents, who queried whether there was any strategic reason for the council to grant planning permission.
The residents fear the development will transform the village into just another satellite town in the Dublin conurbation.
Mr Matt Purcell, for the Association of Ballymore Eustace Controlled Development, objected strongly to a submission from consulting engineers P.H. McCarthy, on behalf of the developers, which, he said, indicated a disturbing degree of "liaison between the developer and Kildare County Council" at a time when it was considering the application in its role as the planning authority.
"I am equally dismayed to discover that part funding of the project is already available from the Department of the Environment and Local Government, bearing in mind that the outcome of this appeal is as yet undecided," he added.
For An Bord Pleanala to grant the appeal, said Mr Purcell, would open the floodgates to developments that were inconsistent with Ballymore Eustace's status under the County Development Plan as a "special village".
Consultant planner Mr Frank Benson, for the developers, argued strongly that it was not the intention of the planning authority, in his "professional interpretation" of the various county development plans, to insist on low density development for the area.
He said the proposed development was predicated on a proper water treatment plant and would cater for a substantial number of people who would possibly work within the Naas-Newbridge-Kildare industrial triangle.
This was in spite of the commuter guidelines laid down by the Dublin Transportation Office, which was concerned with increased car usage within the conurbation.
Ballymore Eustace Anglers Association, in relation to the treatment plant, protested strongly over a submission from council officials on Tuesday that a statutory minimum water flow "must issue from the reservoir" and "that the council have also used this false premise in their calculations".
Neither Abbeydrive nor the county council could guarantee a minimum dilution of sewage effluent from the proposed treatment plant, it was argued.
The anglers also challenged an environmental impact assessment. "The proposed development has the capacity to wipe out the Liffey as a fishery and an amenity," they said.
Outside the hearing, it emerged that Kildare County Council will not have to pay for a new £1.6 million water treatment plant at Ballymore Eustace if An Bord Pleanala overturns its decision to refuse Abbeydrive Developments planning permission for the development.
Department of Environment grants, courtesy of the taxpayer, are to cover 40 per cent of total water plant costs, Abbeydrive's principal, Mr Gerry Deane, told journalists. Abbeydrive would pay the remaining 60 per cent, equivalent to close to £1 million.
In addition, some £849,000 would be paid to Kildare County Council as the planning authority for sundry improvements, and Abbeydrive would bear the cost of any further land acquisitions necessitated by the development, according to Mr Graham Dalal, planning consultant (traffic) for the developers.
This broke down as an estimated £289,000 for road and footpath improvements in the village, along with £500,000 towards the building of a footbridge across the Liffey and £60,000 as the pro-rata cost of improvements to the existing road network. It meant that in all, some £2 million would be on offer to the local authority if An Bord Pleanala gave permission for the development.