Young planning graduates who were encouraged to embark on expensive courses in the expectation of employment with local authorities are now jobless because of Government cutbacks.
On foot of the Bacon reports on house prices in 1999/2000, which highlighted an acute shortage of planners in the public sector, the Department of Regional and Urban Planning at UCD increased its output of graduates from 25 to 50-plus per year.
The number of graduates from another planning course, at the Dublin Institute of Technology, also doubled, to 30 per year. In addition, some 10 to 15 planning graduates from Queen's University in Belfast are returning to the Republic looking for work.
But with an embargo on public sector recruitment imposed by the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, over-stretched local authorities have neither the resources nor the authority to hire graduates as assistant planners - the entry-level grade.
When planners are promoted, the lower-grade positions they occupied are often not filled. As a result, senior planners are left processing planning applications rather than concentrating on preparing development plans and local area action plans.
One recent UCD graduate, who did not wish to be named in case it would jeopardise his job prospects, said this mismatch meant that the environment was "shaped by developers, with planners scrambling around trying to fix the mess. Meanwhile, graduates who would gain valuable experience from assessing applications struggle to find jobs in the private sector, where most consultants are seeking to employ senior planners with a minimum of five years' experience."
He complained that Ms Rachel Kenny, president of the Irish Planning Institute, had advised planning students at UCD earlier this year that they "should undertake voluntary work in local authority planning departments to gain experience". He added: "My classmates and I do not expect jobs to fall into our laps, just to be given the opportunity to work in our chosen profession."