Madam, - Eddie Sheehy, Wicklow County Manager (May 15th), may be factually correct regarding the correspondence between Wicklow County Council and the Department of the Environment regarding the county development plan. However, we would utterly reject the suggestion that the Wicklow county plan does in fact comply with the Strategic Planning Guidelines.
The growth centres identified in the county plan clearly conflict with the centres identified in the guidelines. The philosophy underlying the county plan, of accommodating growth in villages with no transport or amenities, flies in the face of the objectives of the SPGs.
The important issue here is the fact that the Department of the Environment accepted the Wicklow county plan despite the obvious conflict with the SPGs. This could only have been because the then Minister, Noel Dempsey, did not have the political will to enforce those guidelines.
In an interview in The Irish Times earlier this month the current Minister, Martin Cullen, made it clear that he has no intention of enforcing the regional strategy either. Thus a plan which might have brought a semblance of order to the growth of Dublin and its hinterland has been abandoned in the interest of accommodating the development lobby. - Yours, etc.,
JUDY OSBORNE, Wicklow Planning Alliance, Ashford, Co Wicklow.