With no schools for their children to go to, families in the sprawling suburbs of Co Meath are reaping the bitter fruits of unbridled rezoning and bad planning, writes Kathy Sheridan
The story from east Co Meath this week seemed to be about 98 small children hoping to start
school next week, only to find that there is no school.
Look closer, at what local activist AJ Cahill calls the "Meath Gold[diggers'] Coast", and underneath is a neat assemblage of everything that the Cassandras of the boom years warned and railed against.
It is a tale of unbridled re-zoning coupled with a complete absence of planning, followed by the inevitable population explosion. With no previous or even parallel investment in infrastructure, schools,
recreational or community facilities, the fall-out for the children of Laytown, Bettystown and Mornington was painfully predictable.
For east Meath, with its 10-mile coastline, the opening of the M1 a few years ago was life-changing. An 85-minute drive to the airport was reduced to 25 minutes. "So you had a big road, near the sea, less than half an hour from the airport . . .A builders' paradise," says Cahill.
The builders proved more than equal to the task. According to the Central Statistics Office, the population of the Julianstown electoral district, which includes Laytown, Bettystown and Mornington,
has more than doubled since 1996. Predictably, most of these new arrivals were young couples, settling
down to have families and a decent quality of life.
25 years ago, Sharon Tolan's father moved his young family from Kilbarrack to Balbriggan. "It meant that to get to work in Tallaght every morning, my father had to get a train at 6am and a bus from Amiens Street to Lever Brothers, then drive a lorry around the country all day. But he did it for us . . ." However, once the new roads opened up access to Balbriggan, Tolan says, "anybody from the north city who couldn't afford to buy a house there was moving out to Balbriggan, to what has now become a concrete jungle, with postage-stamp gardens, living on top of each other, in order to be able to spend hours a day travelling in and out of the city to work".
So, seven years ago, she and her Balbriggan- born husband made the move further out, to Bettystown. "It was by choice. Wewere able to afford a bigger house in a better area and it meant that I could afford
to give up work to look after the children. It was still a big financial sacrifice but that's what I wanted to do." Back then, as one woman put it, young couples were "sold a dream".
Now Bettystown and environs, in turn, have become a rash of apartment developments and vast housing estates, several with purpose-built creches on site, a seaside village turned sprawling dormer suburb, a vast human assembly line to feed the boom.
This week alone, the Drogheda Independent's planning applications section carries applications or appeals relating to well over 500 new houses in Bettystown, Laytown and Mornington. At least that
many more are either planned or zoned.
"The estates are empty by 6.30am and everyone is trundling into Dublin like lemmings, dropping off children on the way, exhausted," says Cahill. Meanwhile, his wife Emilia points to the row of two-storey
apartment blocks that overlook their back garden and block off the sea view they were promised when they moved in.
The absence of planning is evident everywhere. The nearest playground is in Drogheda. The existing, tiny parochial hall/community centre is like a relic from the 1940s. There are only three playing pitches of which one has been designated for social housing. The bus service between the villages is inadequate. The city rail system, when it gets this far, is regarded as "inter-county", so the return fare is more than double that paid by Balbriggan users down the road. The library in Laytown is closed since May because of ongoing health and safety issues, including break-ins - an example, say locals, of an
entirely predictable increase in crime and vandalism among the young. Some speak already of "ghettoisation".
This week, east Meath shot into public focus only because its hopelessly inadequate primary school capacity finally crashed. Despite a trebling of the population in the past 10 years, the last concrete
schoolroom was built 30 years ago.
"I didn't just find my child at the bottom of the garden," says Sharon Tolan, mother of five-yearold
Ross, due to start school next week. "I registered him at the school four years ago - which is what
most parents do. You almost have to register them before conception now. Who is responsible for this and why are they not admitting it?"
Despite written assurances from the primary school patron, Msgr Hanley, in April, it transpired that there was no physical space for 100 junior infants due to start school at Scoil Oilibhéir Naofa, the
"new" junior school (actually, a tiny old disused building plus a temporary structure) sanctioned last year for pupils from infants to second-class. This was designed to take the pressure off the old school, Scoil an Spioraid Naoimh (now designated for third- to sixth-class children) in the same grounds.
SO WHY, DESPITE recognition in the local area council plan six years ago that a new school was needed, is Scoil Oilibhéir Naofa still a concept rather than a building? One version of the story, as told
on the weblog of Labour councillor Dominic Hannigan, is that in 2000 Meath County Council voted to zone a site for a school beside the parochial hall in Laytown, across the road from Scoil an Spioraid Naoimh.
The landowners (in this version, the Lyons family from Laytown, represented by Jimmy Lyons) would then have to agree to the designation and either sell or transfer ownership of the land to the school authorities. They did neither. Five years later, the council decided to offer a "carrot" to the family in the form of 25 further acres alongside the school site, to be rezoned for housing. In effect, councillors were offering to zone land for 300 houses to get a school site. According to this version, the owners had put in a submission for 35 rezoned acres. The council held at 25.
When the plan was adopted last November, there was one crucial stipulation: that not one house could be built on the 25 acres until the school site was transferred.
With the now seriously valuable zoning in place, the owners put the site up for sale in early summer. It sold for €27 million. It was only when the new owner, Tom Durkin, met with the council to hand over the school site that another twist in the tale was revealed. A portion of the 12 acres zoned for educational purposes (a campus intended to include a new secondary school) had been retained by the Lyons family. The council, says Hannigan, "were a bit bemused, to say the least". In short, Durkin was unable to deliver the school site in its entirety since a significant part of it was missing. Nor was he able to start building houses. His offer of an alternative four-acre site is not the preferred site of the planners.
Jimmy Lyons is also bemused, however. He points out that within the 2000 East Meath Development Plan, the Bettystown Area Action Plan earmarked a school site on the property of another landowner and that the first approach made to him about a site was in late 2004 or early 2005, when Msgr Hanley called to ask if he could give one to the school.
"I am only one of five in the family, so I said we would discuss it and make a submission to the East Meath Plan," says Lyons.
The final submission made by the family stated that for a further 13 and a half acres of residential rezoning (to be built in a phased way), in addition to the 23 already given in the draft plan, they would give four acres free of charge for the primary school site, make eight acres available for the secondary school and another 10 acres free of charge for recreation fields immediately upon rezoning. The residential element would also be contingent on provision of a 20-acre green area. In other words, the family would be handing over 42 acres of land in some form or another in exchange for 36 and a half acres of residential rezoning.
One source suggests that another landowner nearby had 28 acres rezoned in exchange for only 10.
Without any negotiation, the council rejected the Lyons submission. Meanwhile, the council itself sold seven acres of its own land (beside the original school site, ironically) to a builder, for a figure believed to be around €4 million.
The council's final plan for the Lyons family designated 23 acres for residential rezoning, 25 acres for a community facility and 20 acres of green area.
As for the location of the school site, Jimmy Lyons says that he stood in a 14-acre field around March 2005 with Msgr Hanley, Maurice Daly (principal of Laytown School), councillor Tom Kelly and aMeath County Council planner, and it was agreed that this was the "perfect site" for the 12-acre school campus. The 12-acre plot, however, was never marked out precisely. Lyons insists that he did
not knowingly hold on to any land when the plot was sold to Tom Durkin in May.
"It's only four weeks ago since I had heard it rumoured that this small triangle-y bit of land - I'd say less than an acre - was an issue. I went over to the planners and said I would be talking to Tom Durkin about swapping the land. And that's what I expect to happen," Lyons says.
Clearly negotiations are at a delicate point. But as one of the fifth generation of a local family, with a four-year-old child due to start in the local school next week, he is as anxious about the outcome, he says, as anyone in the community. "I am a minor shareholder of the land that was sold. I've given a huge amount of time and effort to getting this school up and running. I live here. I want the best for the
community and I know that if the plans for community and playing facilities are realised, it will be some community."
JIMMY LYONS IS not without his defenders locally.
"The councillors would just love the media to blame that one guy. But they're the ones who didn't dot the Is and cross their Ts when they were signing off on the rezoning. They had the power and didn't use it. It wasn't Jimmy Lyons who held up the East Meath Development Plan for five years," says local resident Peter O'Hara, a parents' representative on the school board of management. "He wasn't going to hand over a lump of land to the parish priest without knowing if he would be getting something back. What about all the other landowners around here who cashed in and gave nothing? None of them was asked to pony up a football pitch or a school in exchange for rezoning."
In the steamy election cockpit that is East Meath, knives are drawn. It is notable that all parties - including a Fianna Fáil general election candidate Thomas Byrne - have been vocal in their demands for changes to the planning laws, with much mention of such anti-builder measures as compulsory purchase and de-zoning proceedings.
Yesterday, Dominic Hannigan said he is confident that ongoing talks between the owners will lead to a resolution and a site for a permanent school "within a few months - though it will take at least a year to build a permanent school".
So the temporary accommodation problem remains. Meanwhile, various proposals have been unveiled to ensure that the 100 children get to school next week. These include siting extra Portakabins on
the grounds of the existing school; busing the infants several miles away to Mosney, currently the Republic's largest asylumseeker accommodation centre; busing them off to class in a jockeys' weigh-room in Bellewstown; or having a split day which would entail sending children to school for three hours in the morning, afternoon or evening.
Local objections that were thwarting the plan for extra Portakabins seemed to be fading yesterday. Sharon Tolan was sounding a little more upbeat: Ross will probably make it to school - some kind of
school - next week. Whether the outcry over reform of the planning laws continues is a matter for the politicians.