Council welcomes planning review report

Meath County Council has welcomed the findings of the Planning Review Report published by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. The report concludes that "it is impossible to see why Meath County Council should be investigated for refusing to accept an inadequate plan and for adhering to the need for balanced settlement patterns, proper planning and sustainable development". It had been alleged by a group of developers and landowners that Meath County Council had frustrated their attempts to have a local area plan prepared for the development of land at Bryanstown, near Drogheda and that the Council had given them an understanding that a plan would be adopted and the land zoned for development. It was the Council's case that the developers and landowners had not satisfied them in relation to various crucial infrastructure aspects of the plan, particularly road access and the availability of water services. The Council also expressed concerns about the excessive residential component of the draft plan and the relative lack of employment and community facilities and open space. The Council informed the development group in early 2007 that it would not be proceeding with their draft plan but instead would examine the lands as part of the imminent scheduled review of the Drogheda Environs Local Area Plan. The report notes that the Council at all times tried to deal constructively with the developers and landowners, that there were open and appropriate lines of communication in place and that the Council had raised publicly and internally its ongoing concerns about certain aspects of the plan. A spokesperson for the Council said: "We are pleased to see that the report found that the Council acted correctly in insisting that any plan must provide for the proper planning and sustainable development of the area. The report, in its recommendations and conclusions, also acknowledges that this Council would not accept a plan where critical questions in relation to infrastructure, employment uses and community facilities had not been adequately addressed". Meath was one of seven councils reviewed following complaints made about planning practices and procedures. All seven councils coming out squeaky clean beggars belief, given what we know happened in the light of Dublin, Waterford and Carlow, said Green Party Planning spokesperson Tom Kivlehan today. "We will never know what the real stories were in these and other councils because Fine Gael and Labour are in control of both local and central government. It is beyond belief that the key problem that has been identified relates merely to communication and PR issues. We saw in the recent Court case in Waterford, where John Gormley had intervened in his role as planning minister, that there are real problems in the Irish planning system. What we are seeing with this Government is no real reform, no transparency and a willingness to cover up past failings that make us fear for the future. Bad planning laid the foundations for our present economic woes and this Government is acting ostrich like and is prepared to learn nothing from past mistakes." The following points should be made: - This report is very similar, both in format and content, to the internal review of complaints that was undertaken by the Department and submitted to Minister Gormley back in November 2009. - It is very unlikely that this report took more than a year to produce - it is much more likely that it was put together subsequent to the issue being raised after the publication of the Mahon Report. - The appointment of an independent expert to "assess all actions contained in the planning review report" is clearly a fig-leaf for the lack of any independent involvement in the preparation of the report. This independent expert is to be given no role in actually investigating any of the matters raised, so in effect the outcome of the internal review is to draw a veil over all of the cases. The Government criticised Minister Gormley for the costs of appointing independent experts, but they are now appointing an independent person purely as a PR exercise to undertake work that should be done by the Department itself, while keeping such experts out of work that should be done independently. Tom Kivlehan said that the methodology by which they seem to have come to the conclusion that there was no abuse of office was that officials from the Department visited senior officials in the Councils for a chat, they asked them a list of questions and that was the sum total of the inquiry.