New Bill to end rezoning madness

The staggering legacy of the insanity that characterised the boom years in Ireland was revealed in figures last week which showed that there is currently enough zoned land in the country to build homes for another three million people. The eagerness with which councillors were prepared to rubber-stamp zoning applications at the behest of landowners and developers in this county is also evident when one realises that County Meath today has sufficient zoned land for almost 320,000 people, almost double the current population of 163,000. With this massive oversupply in the current stagnant property market, it will be many years - if ever - before anything is built on much of this land. It is estimated that one-third of the impaired property-related loans which Nama will end up with will be greenfield sites, which may effectively be worthless, although this very much depends on their location, among other factors. Nama is only likely to be interested in landbanks which have some prospect of being realised within the next decade, so literally tens of thousands of acres of sites could be left lying idle for decades to come. Unsustainable development is nothing new in County Meath. Over the years, there has been excessive and unecessary rezoning of land for housing, much of it in inappropriate locations, such as flood plains. Some of the worst examples of bad planning exist in places like east Meath where land was rezoned and built upon without proper services being put in place first. Seaside villages were turned into vast housing estates and apartment developments without any sporting or community facilities - never mind something as simple as a playground for children. The story of the area's once hopelessly inadequate school capacity is already well-known and was a catalyst for protests by parents which finally saw new facilities provided. Land rezoning is a reserved function of county councillors; in other words, they have the final say on it, and can even go against the advice of officials and planning staff. The rash rezoning decisions made by councillors during the Celtic Tiger years, which are now about to be dropped into the laps of taxpayers, should no longer be possible under new legislation that will impose restrictions on councillors' abilities to zone land if it does not comply with national or regional planning guidelines. The new rules will also allow a local authority to 'dezone' land from residential back to agricultural if it deems it necessary or appropriate. The damage, in many cases, already has been done and, indeed, calls into question Nama being able to attain long-term value on landbanks, many of which are realistically worth possibly one-tenth of what may have been paid for them. The new Development (Amendment) Bill 2009, currently on its passage through the Seanad, will bring some badly needed joined-up thinking to this debate and will ensure that councillors must in future make development plans that are consistent with national and regional guidelines, which will hopefully mean there will be some coherence on where and why rezonings take place. At the very least, the new legislation should mean that the days of rash, unbridled rezoning of land is at an end.