Members of Kerry County Council were yesterday accused by their manager of misusing the planning system and of assisting in "the sale of their heritage to the highest bidder".
Before the council's September meeting were 13 Section 4 motions, or bids by members to overrule refusals by the council's planning department.
The unprecedented growth in Section 4 motions was not in the public interest, the county manager, Mr Martin Nolan, said. They were an attempt to rewrite the law.
Many of the manager's remarks were set out in a report to councillors, a response to the high number of Section 4s being put to the council. But Mr Michael Healy-Rae rejected Mr Nolan's report as "slanderous, insulting and degrading". "It's not you who are running this council at all, it's An Taisce," he told Mr Nolan.
At a sometimes heated meeting councillors were told pressure for development in the scenic south of the county was twice as high as elsewhere and was exerting enormous pressure on the landscape.
"Pressure for development will reduce population decline, which has been the trend. This is good news for south Kerry," Mr Nolan said. However, much of the pressure for planning permission there was for second homes "where the finest landscape and heritage of Kerry is being sold to the highest bidder".
He said people could come and live in Kerry but not at the expense of the environment or the local people.
"We must not sell out our views, our landscape, our unspoilt mountain sides, our coastline, just because people in Dublin/Cork, or from abroad in many cases, want to own a beautiful piece of Kerry."
People could come to live in Kerry, "but we must ensure that outside market forces do not push the price of sites outside the reach of local people. This has already happened," he added.
The manager conceded that Kerry had a higher rate of refusal than other western counties. At 19.6 per cent so far this year the Kerry rate was over three percentage points above the national rate. Of a projected 4,000 applications for planning permission this year, around 800 would be refused, most in the south of the county. Some councillors were wasting planners' time by trying to interfere with the proper decision-making process, and advising applicants to look for Section 4s, without first going to An Bord Pleanala where permission has been turned down by the council, Mr Nolan said.
"In four of the Section 4 motions today, we have four sites, side by side, along the road. This is speculative development and totally contrary to our ribbon development policy."
Mr Michael Cahill (FF) said there was something "drastically wrong" with the planning policy in the county, as reflected by the large number of Section 4 motions councillors were being forced to put before the meetings. People who were simply trying to build family homes were being turned down for permission, he said.
In the eight years before this council there had been about six Section 4s. This year alone there would be four or five times that, Mr Cahill predicted.
A number of councillors, including Mr Jimmy Deenihan TD, said they wished to be dissociated from any personal attack on the manager.
Mr Deenihan proposed a one-day seminar to deal with planning. A special meeting on Section 4s is scheduled for Thursday.