THE VINCENT BROWNE INTERVIEW/Michael Smith: The last five years have been marked by revelation after revelation of corruption at the heart and periphery of our political system. And yet as we sleep-walk towards the first general elections since the torrent of these revelations commenced, the issue of political corruption features not at all on the campaign agenda. Politicians seem scared of it and the media are too lazy to bother (perhaps only a BBC or ITV documentary could ignite the issue).
It is not as though those implicated in corruption are now off the political stage. Several candidates from the two main parties have questions to answer and nobody, it seems, is pressing them. It bemuses Michael Smith.
It was Michael Smith, now chairman of An Taisce, and Colm Mac Eochaidh, who is standing for Fine Gael in Dublin South East, who inspired the investigations into planning corruption through that innocuous advertisement they placed on the back page of the Irish Times in 1995 inviting people with information on scandal to write to a Newry firm of solicitors, Donnelly and Neary.
One of those who responded was James Gogarty of JMSE. Other information disclosed to Donnelly and Neary implicated Frank Dunlop, the public-relations consultant, and Dunlop's evidence may well implicate several more people currently seeking election.
Michael Smith is 36. He grew up in Loughlinstown in south County Dublin. He went to Gonzaga school and then to University College, Dublin, where he did law. Afterwards he went to the US and worked as a para-legal doing legal proofing. He then studied law but wasn't called to the Bar for five years - he "didn't like the ceremony".
In 1992, he got involved in a campaign to stop the rezoning of a large swathe of land near his home at Loughlinstown that had been bought by Monarch Properties.
Although the plan for a new town was dropped, the 240 acres were rezoned. He describes the confrontation with Monarch, who were advised by Frank Dunlop, as vicious and he eventually lost after what appeared to have been a curious switching of votes on the part of councillors.
Smith's interest in property was stimulated and he started to look at the property market and noted that fine buildings in the inner city were going for a song, well certainly no more than an aria. He and an associate bought four properties in the Arran Quay area.
He later bought an old house in Co Wicklow which he ran, unsuccessfully, as a guest house for a period. The upshot of all that is that he is quite well off nowadays. He declines to state what his net asset worth is but it is certainly well in excess of "a couple of million", even a couple of million in old money.
This wealth enables him to act as chairman of An Taisce full time. He lives on the top floor of one of his properties on Arran Quay. It is a bit dilapidated and, although he is refurbishing it, he intends to retain some of the dilapidation. "Charming and old world", estate agents would say.
He is charming himself, and although quite young, there is an old world air to him.
VB: Isn't it a pity that there weren't more Loughlinstown-type developments around Dublin in the late 80s and early 90s for had there been there would not be such a housing crisis?
MS: Certainly at the time the figures weren't showing that that was a housing shortage. Official reports were stating to the contrary and in any event, personally, I believe that it is important that there should be green belts around and in our urban areas. I don't believe that we should be building on beauty spots.
VB: That's all very nice but what about the people who can't get housing or can't afford housing now?
MS: I think a proper spatial strategy could have dealt with all of that but we didn't bother.
VB: In statements you have made recently you have suggested that the same kind of scandals in the planning area that we now know occurred in Dublin in the 80s and early 90s are occurring in Kildare, Meath and Wicklow. What evidence have you of this?
MS: Well, I certainly would never take it upon myself to say that there is scandal or corruption. I would just say that the atmosphere in the county councils in Kildare, Meath and Wicklow resembles what happened in the Dublin councils 10 and 15 years ago. I am suggesting that it merits at least scrutiny and the fact that there's an enormous amount of money being made and the fact that the rezonings conform to no development plan certainly deserves our attention. Also it is the case that residents in those areas genuinely seem to be, by a vast majority, opposed to the rezonings going through.
VB: Can you point to any specific rezonings in these areas that look strange?
MS: I'm on the Kildare, Meath, Wicklow planning society and I know the people in the residents' associations in the areas have specific allegations that I think would merit investigation. I am very surprised that it hasn't been picked up by the national newspapers. I know the people, particularly in Kildare and Meath, feel inadequate attention is being paid to what's going on there and particularly the goings-on in the councils.
VB: How did you get involved with an Taisce?
MS: I got involved in the early 1990s. A lot of third-rate apartments were being built in the city centre. I and an associate, Ian Lumley, got involved with an Taisce to oppose these developments. For a period of five years we appealed planning permissions of apartment blocks. At one stage we appealed seven or eight Zoe schemes all around the city, and we tried to do a contract with Zoe whereby we would withdraw our appeals in exchange for them improving the quality of their schemes and providing for local employment, which was a big issue at the time.
We did contracts with a number of developers and that would be characteristic of An Taisce's approach - we would try to seek, particularly in Dublin city where it is desirable, that it should be developed, a meeting of minds with the developer. For example, we never got any credit for the fact that we did a contract with the developer of the Jervis Centre which required them to use high-quality materials and to keep down the height over what we believe they would otherwise have got away with with Bord Pleanála.
VB: In coming to these contracts with developers, who did you think you were acting for?
MS: I suppose we were trying to the best of our abilities within the law to register the public interest and it's such a potential win, win.
VB: Was there not an arrogance on your part to purport to represent the public interest? You were and are unelected, you represent, if anything an elite viewpoint on development. Why should anyone pay attention to you or enter into contracts with you?
MS: Well, the organisation is open to all. I wouldn't consider it elitist. I would encourage anybody to join the organisation. There are 5,000 members, an internally democratic council of 52 members from all across the country. I would say that the environment, those people who purport to represent the environmental interests are trying to represent, to a considerable extent, the interests of future generations in the long term rather than just the short term, and some concessions should be made to such groups as ours if they're serious and if they're purporting to pursue the public interest unless they have some environmental orientation, some leeway should be given to them, even if their membership isn't large. Not alone I'm saying that, groups like the UN say that governments should be affording weight disproportionate to their membership to environmental groups.
I suppose at some level it does concern me. I wish that we had a bigger mandate and I wish that An Taisce had a bigger membership and I think that our agenda is so central that it impinges upon something that an increasing number of people purport to believe to be the goal of society, which is improving the quality of life.
VB: In general what do you think of the development of Dublin architecturally in the last decade?
MS: I think that it started off a very poor quality development, not just architecturally. Zoe built a very high percentage of poor-quality apartments on the quays up from the Four Courts but I would say laterally that there actually is quite a number of high-quality schemes and I would say that Dublin Corporation deserves quite a lot of credit.
I hope the likes of An Taisce, and maybe other conservation groups, engendered an atmosphere where the developers realise that (a) if they put in for a poor-quality scheme that they would have to face an appeal and (b) ultimately they realise there is a premium value associated with higher quality development.
VB: You made a big issue recently on the building of single houses in rural Ireland. What is the objection to that?
MS: I suppose we have a million houses in Ireland at the moment and we are going to be building 500,000 new ones over the next 10 years. No country that's as rich as we are ever had the opportunity to afford its built environment to such standards of sustainability and excellence, and it has to be considered that it makes no sense to be building a great many of those 500,000 houses in the country. It's not particular houses that we're really objecting to, it's primarily that building on that scale in the countryside is to the detriment of a coherent spatial strategy which should for the most part be about better density and development in terms of villages and cities because that makes more sense in terms of reinforcing communities and it also allows you to provide for better facilities, community facilities and public greens, etc.
Furthermore, the cost per unit to construct a one-off house, all things being equal, is much greater than the cost of building to higher density, the cost of servicing one-off house, things like electricity or postal services. Environmentally, 38 per cent of our ground water is polluted with e-coli and a substantial amount of that comes from leaking septic tanks associated with one-off housing. It also can be visually unattractive.
VB: What is the most important environmental issue at present?
MS: Our incredible arrogance is in our breaching of the limits to our greenhouse gas emissions that have been set by Kyoto. We were allowed to increase by 13 per cent our greenhouse gas emissions over the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that we were producing in 1990 by the year 2010 and already in the year 2002, we are 30 per cent up on those 1990 levels and that's worse than any country in the world except Spain, and what is undoubtedly the most important environmental issue facing the world at the moment.