THE IRISH NATIONAL SPATIAL STRATEGY - Planning for States and Nation/States: A TransAtlantic Exploration - University College Dublin

Planning for States and Nation/States: A TransAtlantic Exploration
                                       th   th
                                   15 - 16 October 2012
                         UCD Newman House, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2

                   THE IRISH NATIONAL SPATIAL STRATEGY
                                      Dr. Berna Grist BL

INTRODUCTION

This paper aims to provide participants coming to the symposium Planning for States and
Nation / States with some background information on the institutional structures within
which the Irish national planning framework, the National Spatial Strategy, is to be
understood and evaluated. It then discusses the political and financial circumstances
surrounding the gestation of the Strategy and the vicissitudes it has had to face almost since
birth.

The author is conscious of representing the host country and has placed some importance
on providing international participants with an overview of the historical development of
the Irish legal and political systems, to give them a context within which cultural attitudes
can be analysed. It is suggested that two national policies in particular have undermined
the implementation of the National Spatial Strategy and both can be linked back to this
historical context. The third factor working against the Strategy is more easily addressed
because it has its roots in the Planning Acts which provided for almost complete local
autonomy in the matter of zoning land.

THE POLITICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK

The Republic of Ireland is a parliamentary democracy based on the Westminster model,
with a bicameral legislature, the Oireachtas, composed of a Lower House - the Dáil
(directly elected by universal suffrage) - and an Upper House - the Seanad (members of
which, in general terms, are elected by serving local and national level politicians). The
principal differences with the British model are, firstly, the electoral system of proportional
representation and, secondly, the absence of a theory of parliamentary supremacy because
Ireland has a written Constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann, loosely based on the
Constitution of the United States of America.

(i)      Legal System

The Normans invaded Ireland from the south east in 1169, just a century after Duke
William of Normandy had led them to victory at the Battle of Hastings (1066). Their
conquest of England had been effected swiftly through the feudal system of land holding
whereby the new King saw himself as the absolute owner of the land he had conquered. To
reward his closest allies and supporters, he devised the doctrine of tenure, granting large
tracts of land to them as tenants-in-chief, in return for feudal services, this centralising
political and military control. As the new class of Norman landlords established
themselves, a variety of issues concerning rights and responsibilities at each level in the

© Berna Grist – October 2012                                                                    1

feudal hierarchy had to be settled. High ranking members of the Norman nobility traveled
from London on circuits throughout the Shires to decide disputes and settle administrative
matters. Eventually, the administrative functions fell away and these representatives of the
Crown became itinerant judges who attempted to apply an amalgam of the Norman law
they had brought from France and the local customs already in existence. On return to
Westminster, they compared notes and decided to adopt the most reasonable principles
which emerged from this fusion of French, Saxone and Wessex law for future application
throughout the conquered territory, declaring it to be the law common to England (and
Wales).

Common law was judge made law, in contradistinction to statute law, which was made by
Parliament, and its most significant characteristic was the application of the doctrine of
precedent, which ensured equivalence of treatment on similar facts being proven. As a
consequence of our history, the Irish system of Brehon law was displaced and Ireland
became part of this common law tradition, as are many countries of the former British
Empire , such as Australia, Canada and the United States of America.

The Norman feudal system addressed more than land tenure, it was also an arrangement
designed to centralize the administration of the country under the power of the king. This
was completely alien to the pre-existing Irish society, which was essentially decentralised
and, there was constant tension between the two systems. Subinfeudation and the writ of
the King were confined largely to the area around Dublin and the East Coast, which became
known as “the Pale”. Here a fledgling centralised administration was established in the
century after the invasion, which led to the summoning of an Irish Parliament in 1297, a
point which can be taken as the first step on our road to democracy.1 More correctly
described as a representative assembly, the Dublin Parliament was subject to various Crown
restrictions and vetos.

The period between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries involved almost continuous
disturbances. Following the “Flight of the Earls” in 1607, the plantation of Ulster began to
grant lands to English and Scottish settlers, usually by creation of feudal tenure which left
the Irish as the tenants of these new landlords. The rest of Ireland continued to oppose
attempts at resettlement until 1652 when Cromwell completed a campaign which was
successful in military terms and led to large scale confiscations and resettlement of lands.
The cruelty and bitterness of the Cromwellian plantations were such that there are
continued resonances in Irish cultural attitudes today which can be traced back to this
period in the history of the country and these form a strand in the shaping of the planning
system and what has been politically acceptable in terms of strategic planning. The
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the Irish marginalised into the western counties,
where the poorest land is, the completion of the conquest of Ireland and the imposition of
English common law throughout the island.2

Pockets of resistance continued and, in the aftermath of the 1798 Rebellion, which had been
assisted by the French and had almost succeeded, the Irish Parliament was dissolved.
Ireland became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the 1800 Act
of Union. From 1 January 1801, a number of members were returned to the Houses of
Parliament in Westminster, which legislated for the island of Ireland until 1922. The
standard procedure was for an act to be passed in respect of Britain and, some five to ten

1
    Moody T. W. and Martin F. X. (1978) The Course of Irish History, Cork, Mercier Press
2
    Wylie, J. C. W. (1975) Irish Land Law, London, Professional Books Limited, pp 10 to 15

© Berna Grist – October 2012                                                                 2

years later, a corresponding piece of legislation would be passed for Ireland, amended to
take account of the very different social and political situations. This is how in 1898, ten
years after the adoption of a similar Act for Britain, the Local Government (Ireland) Act
established the two tier system of local government which is still largely in place.

(ii)     History and Structure of Local Government

The upper tier of local government consisted of thirty two newly created county councils,
members of which were elected under a franchise newly extended to the minor landowners.
This brought a considerable element of democracy to the Irish countryside with dramatic
suddenness and the county councils became “centres of nationalism”3 . The six largest
boroughs, which already had a historic range of functions and royal charters, were created
county borough corporations and given the same suite of powers as the councils. Being
administrative counties in themselves, they were made independent of the counties in which
they were geographically located. The lower tier of local government consisted of the
remaining five smaller borough corporations, urban district councils, rural district councils
(whose functions were later taken over by the county councils) and town commissioners.
While management of their financial and administrative affairs was entrusted to the cities
and counties, the lower tier had a reduced range of local government functions and formed
part of the county in which they were located for administrative purposes.

A pattern of opposition to the central control of the Local Government Board in Dublin
developed over the next two decades because it was seen as the agent of a colonial
government. As the administration of local services was of far less interest to the county
councillors than political activity, they were inefficient in the discharge of their functions
and this situation was made worse by their tendency toward nepotism to the point of
corruption in their appointments4. Independence in 19225 did not change this culture and
the new ministers together with their civil servants took a very strict line with the local
authorities, a number of which were dissolved during the 1920s, for failing to discharge
their duties, and replaced by salaried commissioners who had administrative expertise and
displayed complete impartiality in the solution of many urgent local problems. This
experience was so successful that a group of business and professional men in the city of
Cork, drawing on the example of town management systems in the USA, proposed having a
permanent official, not to replace but to share power with the elected members. The post of
city manager was created in Cork by the 1929 Cork City Management Act and similar
management systems were introduced to the other three cities (Dublin, Waterford and
Limerick), replacing committee administration. Finally, the 1940 County Management Act
brought the management system to the county councils (that is, to the rest of the country) in
1942.

The duties and powers of local government were divided between the elected members and
this newly created, permanent office holder who would be centrally appointed by the
impartial Local Government Commission in Dublin. Functions were designated ‘reserved’
if they were seen as concerning policy, political or financial matters, and were to be
discharged by a vote of the councillors on the proposal of a resolution by one or more of
them. The manager took responsibility for the administration of decided policy and, in

3
  Chubb, B. (1992) The Government and Politics of Ireland, Longman, London, p. 269
4
  Lee, J. J. (1989) Ireland 1912 – 1985, Cambridge University Press, p. 161
5
  Six counties and two cities, Belfast and Londonderry, became part of the separate Northern Ireland
administration in 1922 and remain part of the United Kingdom

© Berna Grist – October 2012                                                                           3

particular, for decisions which might be open to personal or political influence. These were
designated ‘executive’ functions. The default position in legislation is that if a function is
not specified as ‘reserved’ in the relevant local government statute which creates it, this
function is to be discharged by the manager. The manager, therefore, is not only the chief
executive but also a statutory part of the local authority.

As can be imagined, the councillors did not accept this replacement of committee
administration by a manager easily and subsequent legislation went some way towards
redressing their grievances at their loss of power and influence. In particular, the 1955 City
and County Management (Amendment) Act gave the elected members the right to direct
the manager how to perform any of the executive functions, by resolution The relationship
between the manager and the councillors can be strained to the point of fractiousness at
times but they are like horses under the same yoke and to a greater or lesser degree
especially in these times of financial austerity, have to jog along together.

The introduction of the management system was described by the former Chief Justice,
Ronan Keane, as the most important single development in the history of Irish local
government in the twentieth century.6 It would be my opinion that, despite some
significant innovations in the 2001 and 2003 Local Government Acts, it retains this status.
The 2001 Local Government Act had four central aims, two of which were the
enhancement of the role of elected members and the modernisation of local government
legislation. The latter included replacing some of the nomenclature used in the 1898 Act. 7
The 2001 Act did not fundamentally alter the nineteenth century structures because this
would have been politically unacceptable to entrenched positions and procedures at local
level. In particular, the abolition of the dual mandate (membership of both a local authority
and the Dáil or Seanad), a reform strongly espoused by the Minister as central to enhancing
the role of local government, had to be dropped during the Bill’s passage through the
Oireachtas because of vigorous opposition from backbench Teachtaí Dála (members of the
Dáil, customarily referred to as TDs) of all parties, including the Government. However,
this measure was reintroduced by the Local Government (No. 2) Act 2003, which
disqualified some 118 councillors from going forward for re-election in the 2004 local
government elections because they were members of the national parliament.

A second much publicised reform was the provision for direct election of the Mayor
(Cathaoirleach) of county and city councils by the public for the five year term of the
council. Due to come into force in time for the 2004 elections, it was repealed in the 2003
Act on the basis that the ending of the dual mandate would result in a large number of new
entrants to local government in 2004 and these changes needed “time to bed down”8.

(iii)    Introduction of Land Use Planning

It is not only the overall political, administrative and legislative landscapes of the Republic
of Ireland that bear strong resemblances to those of England, the Irish planning system also
has its origins in British planning. When introduced initially, planning in Ireland was
discretionary9, as was the pre-war planning system of the 1909-1919 Housing and Town
6
  Keane, R. (1982) The Law of Local Government in the Republic of Ireland, Dublin, Incorporated Law
Society, p. 18
7
  Section 10 of the 2001 Act provide that county borough corporations became ‘cities’, borough corporations
became ‘boroughs’ and urban district councils and town commissioners became ‘towns’
8
  Minister for the Environment, Seanad Debates, Vol. 171, 26 February 2003
9
  Grist, B. (1999) An Introduction to Irish Planning Law, Dublin, Institute of Public Administration, p. 2

© Berna Grist – October 2012                                                                                  4

Planning Acts, and was regulatory in nature with its centrepiece the cumbersome adoption
of a planning scheme. Eventually, it was recognised that the planning scheme procedure
was too rigid to be appropriate in the improved economic climate of the early 1960s and the
1947 Town and Country Planning Act provided the model for the Irish 1963 Planning Act,
which introduced a system broadly similar to that in existence today. When planning was
introduced in 1963, although the system was based on the British Act of 1947, it was
adapted to reflect the local government structure. The making of development plans was
allocated to the elected members and decisions on individual planning applications, which
were recognised as susceptible to political patronage, were allocated to the manager. All
local authorities, except town commissioners, were entrusted with the full range of planning
responsibilities in 1963, which gave eighty seven planning authorities for a population of
2.8 million. The management system is intended to provide co-ordination and consistency
within the county boundaries, the county manager ex-officio being also manager for each of
the sub-county urban authorities. Nonetheless, this multiplicity of small planning units,
each solely with securing the proper development of its own functional area, has given rise
to an undesirable level of fragmentation.

Unlike Britain, where the administrative boundaries of the counties have been altered on
more than one occasion, Ireland has had no significant geographic revisions to the
organisation of local government since 1898. There is a recognised emotional attachment
among the public to the county structure, attributed to the influence of the Gaelic Athletic
Association, which organised itself on a county basis from its foundation in 1883.10 After
the publication of the Barrington Report in 1991, consideration was given to the need to
retain all eighty smaller urban authorities (borough corporations, urban district councils and
town commissioners), the range of whose functions had dwindled over the years. In
January 1994, the Minister for The Environment, announcing details of the Government's
decision on local government reorganisation at a sub-county level, confirmed the retention
of the existing, town-based system because of the strong sense of civic tradition, local
identity and loyalty in many urban areas, which the Government perceived as a strength to
be built on.11 This has remained the position ever since, which does not assist attempts to
promote strategic planning initiatives.

HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL RELATIONSHIPS

The 1963 Planning Act did not require plans to be approved by the Minister or any higher
authority. It appears to have been envisaged by the legislature and the sponsoring civil
servants that local officials would prepare a plan in draft form which would then be
presented by the Manager to the councillors, who could make changes if they chose but
were unlikely to do so until after public display and receipt of submissions. Even at that
stage, it was anticipated that a material alteration of a draft plan would be the exception.
This local autonomy for a function considered to be of limited political potential was an
innocuous element of the planning system for its first two decades but has since proved to
be its Achilles heel.12 The adoption of the development plan is the most significant local

10
     Tierney, M. (1982) The Parish Pump, Dublin, Able Press, p.18
11
  Department of the Environment Press Statement, 27 January 1994
12
  Grist, B. (2011) Politicians and the Irish Planning Process: Political culture and impediments to a strategic
approach in Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, Vol. 4, Issue 2, p 159-172

© Berna Grist – October 2012                                                                                      5

government function remaining with councillors, and their focus of interest has been and
continues to the on two aspects – zoning and rural housing policy.

(i)      Establishment of Regional Planning

Neither regionalisation nor regional planning were mentioned in the 1963 Planning Act and
early attempts to combine areas for the co-ordination of physical planning were largely
ineffectual.13 Regional planning was finally given a statutory basis in 1994, when eight
regional authorities were established by grouping cities and counties together.14
Membership consists of city and county councillors selected by the constituent authorities
and each regional authority is supported by a small administrative unit. The culture of local
autonomy was so strong that the Minister for the Environment had to reassure the
councillors that these new bodies would not diminish or restrict their powers. The regional
authorities were given two functions (i) promoting the co-ordination of the provision of
public services on a regional basis and (ii) advising on the implementation of programmes
for the delivery of European funding.

From these inauspicious beginnings, the regional authorities have developed into a major
component of the planning system. The economy began to grow rapidly in the mid 1990s
and the Dublin and Mid-East Regional Authorities responded to development pressures in
the Greater Dublin Area (GDA) by preparing non-statutory Strategic Planning Guidelines
to provide an overall context for the development plans of the capital city and the six
surrounding counties, which included a plethora of some eight urban district councils (as
town councils were then styled). The Strategic Planning Guidelines for the Greater Dublin
Area, were of immense planning significance and were launched in 1999 to widespread
acclaim as an exemplar of the best methodology for securing comprehensive and co-
ordinated planning across local authority boundaries. Subsequently, the principal of
regional authorities having the power to prepare strategic guidelines was incorporated into
the 2000 Planning and Development Act, while the GDA Guidelines were given statutory
recognition.

(ii)     Towards a Hierarchy of Spatial Plans

One of the three core principles underpinning the Minister’s vision for a planning system fit
for purpose in the twenty first century was that it should be “strategic in approach and
integrate the various layers of spatial planning which affect modern Ireland”.15 This was
secured by the 2000 Planning Act introducing a hierarchy of land use plans, which replaced
reliance on co-operation between adjoining local authorities and the co-ordinating role of
the manager within them. The hierarchy consists of regional planning guidelines,
development plans and local area plans, all of which are set within the context of the
National Spatial Strategy.

Regional planning guidelines provide a long term framework for the individual
development plans of their constituent planning authorities, they have a twelve to twenty
year time horizon and address strategic matters such as population projections and
transportation. Within the hierarchy, the development plan continues to be the basic policy
document of each planning authority and it is here that development objectives for the area
13
   Grist, B. (1999) An Introduction to Irish Planning Law, Dublin, Institute of Public Administration, p. 45
14
   Local Government Act, 1991 (Regional Authorities) (Establishment) Order, 1993 S. I. 394 of 1993
15
   Minister Noel Dempsey’s Opening Address to the Convention on the Review of the Planning Legislation,
Dublin, 27 November 1997

© Berna Grist – October 2012                                                                                   6

are set out. Adoption of a development plan remains a function reserved to the elected
members and the 2000 Act required planning authorities to “have regard to” regional
planning guidelines when making and adopting their development plans. This may simply
have been loose wording or it may have been a further manifestation of reluctance on the
part of the Department and the Minister to grasp the nettle of local supervision.

In any event, it was revealed to have significant adverse consequences when a legal
challenge was mounted by Mr. Tony McEvoy, an elected member of Kildare County
Council, to the Meath County Development Plan, which had grossly over-provided zoned
lands for the proportion of the projected regional population growth appropriate to County
Meath’s primary urban development centres. The High Court held that the phrase did not
require the planning authority to comply with the relevant guidelines but merely to give
them “reasonable consideration”.16 The effect of this decision was to sideline regional
planning guidelines as an element in the strategic hierarchy of land use plans. Thereafter,
planning authorities throughout the country overzoned with impugnity, which of course laid
the foundations for unfinished housing estates, inappropriately located developments on the
periphery of towns and other related land use problems.

Local area plans were a new type of plan introduced by the 2000 Act, in which objectives
could be set out in far greater detail for part of the planning authority’s functional area, such
as newly zoned residential lands or an area needing renewal. The requirement that a local
area plan had to be “consistent with the objectives of the development plan” was
undermined when the 2002 Planning and Development (Amendment) Act allowed land to
be zoned in local area plans.

(iii)      Restoration of Hierarchical Alignment

The 2010 Planning and Development (Amendment) Act re-established the intended linkage
between national policies, regional guidelines, development plans and local area plans by
introducing a requirement that development plans include a core strategy, which is a
statement containing specific information demonstrating that the development objectives in
the plan are consistent with the national objectives set out in the National Spatial Strategy
and the regional objectives contained in the relevant regional planning guidelines. A core
strategy must contain details of the quantity of land area already zoned for residential use
and the number of housing units to be provided thereon, together with similar information
on lands proposed to be zoned for residential purposes. It must also explain how account
has been taken of the Minister’s policies in respect of national and regional population
targets.

In addition to these requirements regarding the core strategy, in order to future proof the
hierarchical alignment of land use plans, the 2010 Act specifically and separately provides
that planning authorities must ensure, when making a development plan or a local area
plan, that it “is consistent with any regional planning guidelines in force for its area”.17

Put simply, the core strategy is designed to provide a warranty that zoning will be the
logical outcome of an evidence-based process rather than, as it has been in the past, a
discrete and arbitrarily discharged reserved function.

16
     McEvoy v Meath County Council [2003] 1 I.R. 208
17
     Section 16 of the 2010 Planning and Development (Amendment) Act

© Berna Grist – October 2012                                                                   7

The 2010 Act also states that, in providing the long term strategic planning framework for
the development of a region, the objective of regional planning guidelines is to support the
implementation of the National Spatial Strategy and that they must be consistent with it.18

The only weak link remaining in this hierarchy is the power to zone or rezone lands in a
local area plan. The provisions contained in the 2000 Act for making local area plans
indicate that this type of plan was devised to expand on the objectives set out by the
development plan, which was one rung up the spatial hierarchy. In making this assertion, I
point to the wording of the original section 19(2), which refers to a local area plan
indicating the objectives of the development plan in “such detail as may be determined by
the planning authority”, to the provision that a local area plan would be deemed to be made
in accordance with the manager’s recommendations unless the elected members decide
otherwise and to the absence of any provision for a material alteration of a “proposed local
area plan” following its period of public display in the original section 20(3)(d) of the 2000
Act. According to my reading of the 2000 Act, a local area plan would have fulfilled the
role of a subset of the city or county development plan, in circumstances where the size of
an area needing renewal in a city or the extent of an expanding suburb in a county required
something akin to a development brief. I also point to the issues regarding potential
eligibility for payment of compensation where the zoning of land is changed in a local area
plan, as discussed in the most recent issue of the Irish Planning and Environmental Law
Journal19.

THE NATIONAL SPATIAL STRATEGY

When the 2000 Planning Act was progressing through the Houses of the Oireachtas, the
National Spatial Strategy had not been published so it was not referred to in the Principal
Act. In 2003, it was specified as “of relevance to the determination of strategic planning
policies”20, which meant that the regional authorities had to take account of it in preparing
the first regional planning guidelines, which were completed over the period April to June
2004.

The National Spatial Strategy had its origins in the third National Development Plan, which
covered the years 2000-2006. Unlike its predecessors, it was not designed principally to
draw down European Union structural funds. These moneys had already done their job of
lifting the Irish economy and a decade of strong economic growth had begun in the mid
1990s. This decade was the period referred to as the ‘Celtic Tiger Era’, a term attributed to
financial analyst Kevin Gardiner who compared the Irish economy to those of south-east
Asia in a 1994 report for multi-national investment corporation Morgan Stanley.

(i)      Emergence

The 2006 National Development Plan (NDP) recognised that Ireland had a significant
infrastructural deficit, which was compounded by unevenly distributed regional
development. Of €22.4 billion allocated to economic and social infrastructure in the NDP,

18
   Section 14 of the 2010 Planning and Development (Amendment) Act
19
   Grist, B. (2012) Development Plans, Core Strategies and Planning Compensation in the Irish Planning and
Environmental Law Journal, Vol. 19, No. 2, p 77 - 85
20
   Planning and Development (Regional Planning Guidelines) Regulations 2003, S.I. 175 of 2003

© Berna Grist – October 2012                                                                             8

approximately 27% (£4,700m) was to be invested in the national roads network. The very
high dependency on roads as a transport mode (96% of passenger traffic, 90% of freight)
meant road development was seen as the key to sustaining levels of economic activity and
promoting balanced regional growth. Chapter 3 of the NDP is titled Regional
Development. It acknowledged that, while all areas had benefited from recent growth,
there were significant variations between the east and the west of the country with the
greatest concentration around Dublin and its surrounding towns while the western city of
Galway had also performed strongly. The Government’s policy to reduce disparities
between and within the regions was to focus on the large urban centres which could serve
as development Gateways, being strategically placed to drive growth in their zones of
influence. These Gateways would be of pivotal importance to the economic performance
of their surrounding smaller towns and rural hinterlands. The NDP identified the five main
cities, each with its critical mass, as Gateways, and the roads between Dublin and the four
regional cities of Galway, Limerick, Cork and Waterford as the main inter-urban routes
which would be upgraded to motorway / high quality dual carriageway standard during the
period of the Plan.

In order to bring these and other elements of regional policy contained in the NDP to
fruition, the Government mandated the Department of the Environment to prepare a
National Spatial Strategy which would translate policies into “a more detailed blueprint for
spatial development over the longer term”. In addition to providing the promised blueprint,
the Strategy was also to proved a basis for long term co-ordination and co-operation in
decision making on major investment in infrastructure, which in addition to both roads and
public modes of transport would include water and waste water services, energy and
communications infrastructure. The 2000 National Development Plan was published in
November 1999 and the following February a process of consultation with relevant local,
regional and sectoral interests commenced in order to develop a high degree of consensus
around the Strategy which would emerge eventually.

(ii)     Overview

The National Spatial Strategy (NSS) was published in November, 2002. It provides a
national development framework to guide policies, programmes and investment and covers
the period to 2020. The NSS further developed the Gateways policy, identifying two
strategically located regional towns as additional Gateways – Dundalk and Sligo – and
introducing the new concept of a ‘linked’ Gateway, described as ‘one in which two or more
strong towns work in partnership to promote economic and social development in their
region.” Crossing the Border with Northern Ireland, the Letterkenny/(Derry) linked
Gateway reflected the Government’s commitment to supporting the Peace Process on the
island of Ireland, while the centrally located Athlone/Tullamore/Mullingar linked Gateway
was intended to ensure regional growth was not confined to the coastal areas. Below this
tier, nine strategically located medium sized "Hubs" were identified, which in turn would
support and be supported by the Gateways and would link out into the wider rural areas.
These were Cavan, Ennis, Kilkenny, Mallow, Monaghan, Tuam and Wexford and, again,
the ‘linked’ concept in the Ballina/Castlebar and Tralee/Killarney Hubs.

With regard to those parts of the country outside these urban centres, the NSS saw rural
potential being developed through tourism, agriculture, local services and enterprises
focused on land and marine based natural resources. In alignment with some of the policies
contained in the 1997 National Sustainable Development Strategy, rural towns and villages
were to assume increased importance as a focus for local investment and their established

© Berna Grist – October 2012                                                               9

structures were to be strengthened to assist local economies and to support local
infrastructure and services, such as schools and public transport. The NSS noted that in
some areas towns and villages were declining in population, resulting in under-utilisation of
serviced land, while at the same time recognizing that there was a tradition of people living
in rural areas and that sustainable rural development should be supported.

The NSS considered it likely that the population of the country would be 4.4 million by
2020. In 2002, the population of the country was approximately 3.9 million. The NSS
presented two types of population projections for the period to 2020. The first, based on
current demographic trends, forecast a population of 4.4 million by 2020. This figure has
already been exceeded. The 2011 Census of Ireland revealed that the population in 2011
April stood at 4.58 million. The second, based on expansion in employment levels, which
seemed a possibility back in those Celtic Tiger times, considered that the population could
be as high as 5 million by 2020.

(iii)    Analysis of Implementation

The National Spatial Strategy was integrated into a number of plans and programmes over
the years following its publication. Of course, the various regional planning guidelines
incorporated its provisions although their translation down the hierarchy was impeded by
the judgment in the McEvoy case, as set out in the second section of this paper. However, a
number of subsequent policies actually worked against the achievement of the goals set out
in the NSS. The most significant of these were the Decentralisation Programme
announced in December 2003 as part of the 2004 Budget and the steady relaxation of
controls on new rural housing contained in a series of national policies, including the
National Spatial Strategy itself.

The Decentralisation Programme, under which the headquarters of eight government
departments plus and some agencies were transferred out of Dublin, completely
undermined the foundation of the NSS as well as destroying the corporate memory in the
civil service. Some departments were moved to Gateways and Hubs but others were
relocated to lower tier towns such as Carlow, Trim, Longford and Carrick-on-Shannon,
with the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs being designated for a
rural site at Knock airport. Fortunately, this latter proposal required planning permission
and it was refused by An Bord Pleanála in 2007. The replacement relocation for this
Department was then designated as the nearby town of Charlestown, which the 2006
Census recorded as having a population of 744. A closer look at the chosen towns reveals
that, for the most part, they were in constituencies of various ministers, constituencies
which had not been allocated a Gateway or Hub. For example, the administrative
headquarters of the Department of Defence was moved to Newbridge in the constituency of
the Minister for Finance while Office of Public Works was relocated to Trim, County
meath, in the constituency of the Minister for Transport.

Professor Brigid Laffin, Principal of the College of Human Science at UCD, told the
MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, on 20 July 2010 that failures of
accountability went beyond unethical behaviour to the performance of public institutions
and those holding positions of responsibility. “It wasn’t decentralisation. Decentralisation
is a very good thing. This was a dispersal of public jobs throughout the country in the most
extraordinary fashion and it went completely against the government’s own spatial
strategy,” she said. “Decentralisation was costly. It increased the fragmentation of our
public institutions. It is a charter for mileage claims and a high cost to the Irish public.”

© Berna Grist – October 2012                                                               10

Her opinion was supported by Ed Walsh, founder of the University of Limerick, who
described the policy as daft and called for its reversal.

The second policy which worked against the achievement of the objectives of the National
Spatial Strategy can be traced back to the cultural attitudes discussed in the first section of
this paper. Particularly where the land was of poor quality, a tradition grew up of each
family attempting to survive at subsistence level on their own smallholding, where their
tenancy was anything but secure. This meant that single houses became an inherent part of
the Irish landscape in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and a folk memory of
evictions gave rise to a passionate desire to own a plot of ground and build a house on it.
The environmental and economic issues arising from promotion of a dispersed settlement
pattern have been analysed by many learned commentators. The Sustainable Development
Strategy for Ireland was the first national document to provide a policy on rural housing. It
stated that, in general, there must be a presumption against urban-generated one-off rural
housing adjacent to towns although permission might be granted for dwellings for certain
categories of person whose occupations required them to be rurally based, thereby catering
for genuine needs.21 However, between 1996 and 1999, one in three houses built in the
Republic of Ireland were built as single dwellings in the open countryside and there was
strong pressure on politicians to accommodating policies in development plans to meet the
requirements of their constituents.

The National Spatial Strategy set rural housing in a more flexible context than the
Sustainable Development Strategy, defining rural generated housing need as housing “for
people who are an intrinsic part of the rural community by way of background or the fact
that they work fulltime or part-time in rural areas”.22 This was a response at national level
by members of the government, supported by opposition members of the Oireachtas, to
grass roots lobbying by councillors as well as direct representations by their own
constituents. In this sense, the NSS contained an inherent contradiction between its other
settlement policies and objectives and its stance on rural housing and contributed to its own
difficulties.

The policy contained in the National Spatial Strategy was further liberalised in the
Sustainable Rural Housing Guidelines for Planning Authorities, which were published by
the Minister for the Environment under s. 28 of the 2000 Planning Act. In the introduction,
these guidelines stated that the provisions of the 1997 Sustainable Development Strategy
were sometimes being operated over-rigidly and that a new, flexile context was being
established to enable people with roots in or links to rural areas to get planning permission
for one-off housing. Lip service was paid to road safety, waste-water disposal, design
criteria and heritage protection. Generous exceptions were given to the presumption
against granting permission for dispersed housing, including residency, former residency,
bloodline, local employment and agricultural activities and the exceptions even went as far
as “health circumstances”.23 It was not unknown for people who had a perfectly good
house in a nearby town or village, closer to their place of employment, to move children
into a rural primary school or to join a rural GAA club in order to establish links to an area
in which they wanted to build a self-designed home. The implications for the exponential
growth of a dispersed settlement pattern in such a policy are clear but, again, clientelism in
politics prevailed.

21
   Sustainable Development – a strategy for Ireland (1997) p. 151
22
   National Spatial Strategy, p. 106
23
   Sustainable Rural Housing Guidelines (2005) p. 32

© Berna Grist – October 2012                                                                 11

OUTCOMES

By October 2010, it had been acknowledged officially that achievement of the objectives of
the National Spatial Strategy could at best be described as sporadic. A review of the
implementation of the NSS published by the Department of the Environment identified that,
while there had been significant investment in public infrastructure, population growth had
taken place not in the cities and hub towns but in the smaller settlements and rural areas
within a 50 to 80 km commuting distance of these major urban centres. It stated that
excessive and inappropriately located zonings and developments had worked against the
implementation of the NSS principles and priorities and had undermined efficient
Exchequer investment in infrastructure and services.

The curtailment of local autonomy contained in the 2010 Planning Act would appear to
have gone some way towards addressing the problem of overzoning. The Regional
Planning Guidelines Annual Implementation Report for 2011 contains details about the
impact of core strategies on overzoning at a national level. In June 2010, adopted
development plans had made provision for almost 42,058 hectares of residential zoning,
with a potential for 545,592 additional residential units – an oversupply of approximately
4.5 times the actual need. By the end of 2011, a year after the adoption of the reviewed and
updated regional planning guidelines and therefore a date by which all core strategies
should have been adopted, the extent of residential zoning stood at 11,113 hectares, which
is stated to have a potential for 299,454 additional residential units. It would appear that
while further adjustments are required, this new evidenced-based mechanism is having a
sobering effect on the excesses of the Celtic Tiger era.

However, the problem of wanton zoning of lands for residential purposes has been the
subject of a Tribunal of Inquiry, which investigated corruption in the plan making process
in the Dublin area during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Fifth and Final Report of the
Tribunal states uncompromisingly that for some councillors in Dublin County Council,
corruption had become a regular aspect of their public role. The Report continues

           “Those councillors exercised their public powers in their own interests rather than in
           the interests of the public and bartered that power in exchange for cash and/ or other
           benefits. There was apparently no shortage of persons prepared to pay for the
           corrupt exercise of public power and large tracts of land were ultimately rezoned
           because of the making and receipt of corrupt payments rather then in the interests of
           proper land use and development.”24

The Tribunal made a number of recommendations which at local level are largely aimed at
ensuring transparency over the way the elected members exercise their powers. It declined
to accept proposals that the zoning of land be taken away from the councillors altogether,
for a number of reasons. At national level, it recommended the establishment of a Planning
Regulator, whose role would be to supervise the plan making function and to investigate
possible systemic problems in the planning system, including those raising corruption risks.
As yet, none of the Tribunal’s recommendations has been implemented.

24
     Final Report of the Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters and Payments (2012) p. 5

© Berna Grist – October 2012                                                                          12