The chairman of An Taisce, Mr Michael Smith, and Kildare county councillor Mr Tony McEvoy have failed in their attempt to have the High Court overturn Meath County Council's development plan for the county.
Mr Justice Quirke said in his reserved judgment yesterday that the court had been asked to determine two issues. Did the county council fail in its obligation to "have regard to" strategic planning guidelines? And did the county plan contain errors of such magnitude as to render its adoption unreasonable and irrational in law?
The judge said that the objective of the guidelines was to put in place a broad planning framework for the Greater Dublin Area in order to provide an overall strategic context for the development plans of each local authority within the area. This had been deemed necessary by reason of an "unprecedented rate of growth", which was reflected in the level of development and building activity and in the demand for developable land within the area.
The guidelines had made a distinction between existing built-up areas of Dublin and the remaining hinterland area (Meath, Wicklow and Kildare), comprising extensive areas of countryside and a range of towns or "development centres" of various sizes which, in the long term, would develop as self-sufficient towns.
They provided for the population of the hinterland area to increase by nearly 36 per cent to 400,000 by the year 2011. This represented an increase of over 63,000 in the total number of households in the area.
They proposed that future development in the hinterland be directed towards Drogheda, Navan, Balbriggan, Naas/Newbridge/Kilcullen and Wicklow. Secondary development centres would be Athy, Arklow and Kildare/Monasterevin. The basis for the growth of these development centres was that they would not become primarily dormitory towns for the metropolitan area. The guidelines for Meath allocated the majority share of population growth for the county to Navan, as the central area of the county.
Mr Justice Quirke said that minutes of special planning meetings of Meath County Council recorded that the guidelines had been referred to at all meetings, but it had been openly suggested that most land-zoning decisions made at these meetings appeared to have been influenced more by pressure and lobbying by interested parties, such as local landowners, than by regional or other planning considerations. Close analysis of the minutes fortified that suggestion.
He was satisfied that officials and elected members of Meath County Council had been informed fully and repeatedly of the existence and nature of the guidelines and of their significance in the context of the adoption of the Meath plan. As to the accuracy of the information they were given, he would express no view.
"The evidence strongly suggests that, in a number of respects, the Meath plan does not comply with the guidelines and, indeed, that in some of its provisions it has substantially departed from the guidelines' policies and objectives," he said.