Local authorities need only "have regard to" planning guidelines, writes Tim O'Brien
Regional planning guidelines announced by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Roche, yesterday are designed to focus local authority and government investment in roads, water services, public transport and even education on designated areas.
Thousands of planning decisions should now be made on the basis of where individual developments stand within the local area plan, the regional plan and the National Spatial Strategy.
Speaking in Ennis, Co Clare, Mr Roche gave examples of the kind of investment response available to local authorities that plan well.
He instanced the €90 million investment in the Mallow-Cork Midleton commuter rail system which, he said, "will open up a new 20,000-house development corridor", which was part of the Cork Area Strategic Plan.
He announced funding for water services for the Ennis Shannon Gateway, and spoke of a €200 million private sector investment in Sligo town.
But hinged on all this development was a corresponding end to maverick rezoning of lands outside the designated areas. This is where the State's regional planning guidelines have fallen down.
In 1999 the first Strategic Planning Guidelines for the Greater Dublin Area were formulated by local authorities in Dublin, Meath, Wicklow and Kildare. The same year councils - in some cases the same councillors - who had contributed to those guidelines, infringed them in their own county development plans.
Even when the guidelines became mandatory after the Planning and Development Act, 2000, an attempt to ensure the Meath County Development Plan complied resulted in a High Court ruling that local authorities must only "have regard to" guidelines.
This situation remains and has allowed councillors in Laois to consider major rezoning in breach of regional guidelines.
It was perhaps embarrassing for Mr Roche that this happened even as he was in Co Clare speaking of his confidence "that the Government will find a willing and able partner in the regional local authority structure in delivering more balanced regional development".
In the light of large-scale rezoning, it is difficult to see why the Minister is so confident.
As long as planning authorities are required only to "have regard to" regional guidelines, maverick rezoning will continue.