Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I thank Senator O'Sullivan for raising this matter. I am taking this Adjournment on behalf of the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Gormley, who is busy with the Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Bill in the Dáil.

Local authorities have a duty, when making development plans, to ensure that the future development of their areas is based on sound planning principles. In his role as statutory consultee on development plans, the Minister wrote twice to Mayo County Council during the preparation of the county's development plan, highlighting significant concerns about the proposed rural housing policy which was introduced by way of amendment to the draft plan. He was also concerned about the lack of mechanisms for the phased development of residentially-zoned lands across the county which would support, rather than undermine, the strategic development of the linked hub of Ballina-Castlebar as designated in the national spatial strategy.

Expert advice was provided to the members over the course of the plan's consultation processes. This included the strategic environmental assessment of the draft plan, advice from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and from other Government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Roads Authority, and from Mayo County Council's own planning and environmental staff. The advice was set aside by the members when they adopted the final plan even though all of these issues and concerns were endorsed by the county manager in his report to the members. By deciding to ignore these concerns, the council failed to secure a proper planning and sustainable development strategy for County Mayo.

The national spatial strategy designated Castlebar-Ballina as a linked hub for the region in order to direct growth to these towns and develop critical urban mass which would attract industry, commerce and residential development. This designation was reinforced in the west regional planning guidelines. To promote the development of these towns, it is essential that the county development plan contains effective mechanisms to focus and channel adequate development and population growth into the hub. The adopted development plan contains no such mechanisms.

It is vitally important that the development of rural areas takes place in a balanced and sustainable manner. The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government's 2005 planning guidelines on sustainable rural housing recommend that the location and extent of four rural area types should be identified in development plans, namely, rural areas under strong urban pressure, stronger rural areas, structurally weaker rural areas, and areas with clustered settlement patterns.

This classification facilitates a well-balanced and sustainable approach through the tailoring of policies which respond to the different housing requirements of urban and rural areas and also to the varying characteristics of rural areas. The original draft development plan put forward an approach to rural housing that was in accordance with the guidelines. It struck a good balance between facilitating any housing proposal on suitable sites located in those parts of County Mayo experiencing persistent population decline, and directing pressure for urban-generated housing in the environs of the main towns in County Mayo towards zoned and serviced land capable of accommodating long-term and integrated development.

However, this approach was abandoned in the adopted development plan in favour of an unstructured and unplanned approach to rural settlement policy. This unmanaged and unsustainable approach to rural housing has serious and far-reaching implications for future settlement patterns in the county and would impact on the environment and water quality.

In all these circumstances, the Minister determined that he had no choice but to issue a direction requiring Mayo County Council to vary the development plan. This was in order to prioritise and phase the development of residentially-zoned lands in the Castlebar-Ballina hub over other locations in the county. It would also apply the appropriate planning policies as set out in the guidelines for planning authorities in sustainable rural housing by reverting to the reasonable and pragmatic rural settlement policies and mechanisms devised and approved by Mayo County Council itself in the draft development plan.