The Government's laissez-faire approach to environmental protection, highlighted by the new liberal regime on one-off housing in the countryside, is bound to fall foul of European legislation, according to An Taisce.
Ireland is already before the European Court over its failure to implement EU directives, and a spokesman says it would find itself being prosecuted for the fruits of policies that run counter to the EU's environmental agenda.
"How can the Government's new rural housing guidelines be squared with sustainable land use and transport, greenhouse gas reduction, habitat protection and waste and water management - all now covered by EU directives?" he asks.
The frenetic pace of development, which last year saw Ireland outstripping any other EU member state in housing production, and the various restrictions imposed by the 2000 Planning Act, have put enormous pressure on An Taisce's slim resources. It has had no success in persuading An Bord Pleanála that golf resorts may not be right for heritage properties.
Its most important work in recent years, according to the spokesman, has been to save the relatively unspoiled shoreline of Lough Allen from "scatter-gun proposals" for holiday homes.
Development in the area has been fuelled by tax incentives under the Upper Shannon Rural Renewal Scheme, introduced in 1998 and extended until 2006. It covers all of Leitrim and Longford and parts of Cavan, Sligo and Roscommon.
But six years on there is still no strategic planning framework other than the individual county plans. "We took the view that schemes outside service centres were unsustainable and An Bord Pleanála mostly agreed with us".
In Mayo, An Taisce succeeded in having a number of permissions for one-off houses overturned by the appeals board.
In other counties, such as Donegal and Kerry, the situation is so out of control that it can't be stopped. In Kerry, An Taisce would need to find 2,000 a month to appeal schemes being pushed through by councillors against planning advice.
"It's not just the money, but all the other work we'd have to do in going through files, inspecting sites and so on. And at the same time we are busily and uncontroversially continuing our work in other areas such as the Green Schools programme.
"The fact is that levels of environmental awareness in Ireland are very low compared to other EU countries and membership of environmental organisations here is one-twelfth of what it is in Germany. We have to work on that."