Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, to the House. In this motion I refer to the County Mayo development plan which was adopted unanimously in County Mayo on 6 May. Subsequently a ministerial directive of 11 July effectively stopped the plan in its tracks by asking Mayo County Council to vary the plan under section 31 of the Planning and Development Act 2000.

I respect Deputy John Gormley as an excellent Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and I regret that my first motion to him on the Adjournment puts me in an adversarial position to him. I must tell the Minister and the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, that the entire membership of Mayo County Council is outraged at this move. To a man, the councillors are determined to resist the directive and seek the re-instatement of the original plan. The Minister has made an unusual move that I believe has been used only twice. It places the county manager in an invidious position because he is legally obliged to carry out the instruction of his Minister and is also similarly obliged to carry out the instructions of his members. This was expressed in their unanimous adoption of the plan.

There are two separate issues at stake. First, rural depopulation in County Mayo has been well documented. Some 75% of the county is in the CLÁR area. I do not pretend to know everything about the county but I come from County Kerry where I spent 20 years as a councillor. I am sure there is little difference between the two counties. They have similar problems and experiences in trying to settle people in single rural homesteads, as is the case in all rural areas.

Obviously, this is an area of conflict. The members of Mayo County Council acted very responsibly in adopting the plan. It was done legitimately and they went through all the procedures. They did not have to accept every item put before them by the planners and this was their prerogative as elected members. In fairness to them, they were very careful about any changes they made to the original draft in order to ensure that items such as water quality, road safety, heritage sites, etc., were safeguarded. It was not as if they behaved irresponsibly. They had the local knowledge and they are the people best placed to know what is good for their county.

The second issue at stake is possibly even more significant. Where is local democracy in this matter? To the credit of the Minister, Deputy Gormley, he has been proactive in seeking better local government and he is committed to devolving powers to local representatives, for which we applaud him. There is an inconsistency here, however, because this situation represents the opposite. Local representatives made decisions about their local areas but an interventionist Minister told them he does not accept their decisions and that they must return to the drawing board.

A delegation will soon come before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Environment, Heritage and Local Government regarding this matter. I ask the Minister to take the opportunity to meet that delegation and enter into dialogue with its members. Without dialogue there will be no progress. This is a serious issue for County Mayo and also for public representatives and councillors all over the country. I believe that the Minister is a reasonable man and I hope he will take on board the points I make and that common sense will prevail. It is not a free for all and people on the ground in County Mayo do not want any such thing. I believe this intervention may have been misjudged and should be examined again.

Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)
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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.

Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, for his comprehensive reply. I accept that the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy John Gormley, is well-intentioned in all he is doing and is trying to protect the interests of the people of the county. Although there always has been a healthy tension between planners and councillors, which is as it always will be, the Minister's intervention adds a new dimension. County Mayo undoubtedly has a particularly dispersed population. It is a big county and the local Deputies and councillors are best placed to know what is the balance in this regard. Nevertheless, with the arrival in Leinster House shortly of a delegation from the county, an opportunity will arise to open dialogue that the Minister, Deputy Gormley, should accept. Certainly, this is a hot issue for the councillors in County Mayo and it has been picked up by councillors nationwide, who will face the electorate next year and who also must answer to the people. I hope some dialogue will get under way and I sincerely thank the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern.