Commuter Counties revisited: Co. Laois : When Laois councillors tried to earmark acres of land for ‘development’ the then minister for the environment, Dick Roche, stopped it
CO LAOIS has the distinction of being the first county in Ireland where a minister for the environment used his powers to overturn land rezoning decisions made by councillors against planning advice. And this served as a warning to others that they could be next in line for similar ministerial intervention.
The fact that it was a Fine Gael-led rezoning mission probably made Dick Roche’s decision to take action easier. So did the sheer brazenness of the councillors in designating hundreds of acres of land for residential development on the outskirts of 21 villages in Laois, including Borris-in-Ossory, Durrow, Stradbally and Timahoe.
Killenard, a village 5km from Portarlington, should have served as an object lesson in what not to do. With almost no warning and certainly no plan, it was swamped by suburban housing, gathered around the Heritage Golf and Spa Resort. And when the developers moved in, some of the local farmers became millionaires overnight.
The running was made by Portlaoise-based Tommy Kane, of Corrigeen Construction, when he got permission in 2001 for an 18-hole golf course designed by Seve Ballesteros and a road layout for future housing development. And since all of the land was unzoned, there was no obligation to provide any “social and affordable” housing.
His first salvo was followed by separate schemes for a five-star hotel, 82 semi-detached and terraced houses, a golf clubhouse, leisure centre, golf academy and driving range, indoor bowls arena, 18 “golf villas” (one of them built for Ballesteros) and a par-three golf course. This was classic “developer-led planning”, on a staggering scale.
A similar fate lay in store for all the other villages in Co Laois if Dick Roche hadn’t acted to stop the rezoning frenzy in 2005. All of it was being done behind closed doors, with the initiative coming from Fine Gael councillors supported by Progressive Democrat and Sinn Féin colleagues. Fianna Fáil opposed what it called “blanket rezonings”.
Of course, there was no provision in the Midlands Regional Planning Guidelines, adopted in April 2005, for the villages of Co Laois to become engulfed by suburban housing aimed at Dublin commuters; its focus was on building up the urban structure of the region based on a “hierarchy” of towns, such as Portlaoise and Portarlington.
An Taisce, among others, argued in favour of developing villages as a viable alternative to indiscriminate one-off housing in the countryside. But this would mean preparing detailed local plans, rather than simply zoning land as was being done in Laois. The Heritage Council also stressed the need to draw up “village design statements” first.
No such steps were taken before the council decided, by 12 votes to nine, to proceed with the controversial rezonings. Cllr John Bonham (FG) said they were taking “a holistic approach to planning. People want to live and be able to afford housing in local areas, go to local schools, support local businesses; this gives them that opportunity.” But Cllr Jerry Lodge (FF) said members of his party had walked out of the meeting after being “denied the opportunity” to speak.
“We had proposed that there should be local area plans for each of the villages to ensure there was proper and sustainable development in each case, but the chairman [Cllr William Aird (FG)] wouldn’t listen to us.” As minister for the environment, with powers to intervene under the 2000 Planning Act, Dick Roche gave them a hearing, however. This resulted in a submission being made on his behalf after the draft county development plan went on public display, in which it was made clear that he would use those powers if the rezonings were confirmed.
Roche said he intended to “frustrate” what the councillors were doing and later described as “insufferable” the council’s decision to proceed with the rezoning of sufficient land for 34,900 new homes – more than nine times what was actually needed – despite being told that this threatened to turn villages into dormitory towns.
He also became the first minister for the environment to enunciate as policy that publicly funded sewerage services would not be provided for land zoned in defiance of regional planning guidelines. This was one of the most effective weapons in the Department’s armoury to deter “maverick” rezoning decisions, yet it had never been used previously.
Finally, in October 2006, Roche refused to approve the Laois county plan, saying the councillors’ decisions to zone enough land to accommodate the entire population of the midlands up to 2020 were “grotesquely irresponsible”, and he had seen the negative effects of such activity in his Wicklow constituency over the previous 30 years.
Despite his intervention, Co Laois now has nearly 4,150 acres of zoned land available for residential development – sufficient for some 6,000 new homes at standard suburban densities, to accommodate a nearly 17,000 people. A recent survey by the Department found 632 newly built homes empty and as many again nearing completion.
Most of the development was taking place in and around Portlaoise and Portarlington – driven by Dubliners “leapfrogging” into Co Laois and commuting to work in the capital, usually by car on the newly-improved roads. Iarnród Éireann’s train services also found new patrons, many leaving their cars in park-and-ride sites at the stations.
The population of Portarlington has nearly doubled to 6,000 since the mid-1990s. But Laois County Council was ill-equipped to plan for this growth, as it had only two planners before 2000 and only set up a forward-planning unit in 2002 when the horse was “half-way out through the door”, as senior planner Peter Dolan conceded.
No wonder nearly 47 per cent of the council’s decisions were reversed on appeal by An Bord Pleanála in 2006. It was still happening in 2008, when the board overturned planning approval for Tesco to develop a new outlet in Portarlington; even the planning application acknowledged that the site was in the River Barrow’s floodplain.
A year earlier, the Office of Public Works announced a €9 million flood relief plan for Portarlington, involving the erection of flood walls and embankments along the Barrow and its tributaries. The avowed aim was to protect existing properties at risk while simultaneously improving the town’s development potential.
IN PORTLAOISE, things turned sour for the local GAA club after it agreed in 2007 to sell its grounds to Cork-based Firestone Developments for €19 million, to make way for retail, residential and commercial scheme. An Bord Pleanála refused permission, citing its edge-of-town location, and Firestone pulled out – leaving the club with a €6.5 million debt.
But Laois county manager Peter Carey was determined to capitalise on Portlaoise’s location at “the crossroads of Ireland” by facilitating the development of a “logistics and distribution park” on a site of 250 acres adjoining the M7. The scheme was to include 278,706sq m (three million sq ft) of warehousing and parking for up to 15,000 cars.
First unveiled in 2004, this ambitious development is taking a long time to materialise and has not been helped by the current recession. Apart from Iarnród Éireann’s national train depot, built at a cost of €65 million, it includes an “incubator unit” of 20,000sq ft (1,858sq m) for business start-ups, developed by the council, and not much else so far.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Showing posts with label commuting and planning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label commuting and planning. Show all posts
Thursday, 24 June 2010
Carlow: 'If you want a life-work balance, you have to cut your cloth'
Carlow town rose to the challenges of its population explosion over the past seven years, with lots of investment in infrastructure and services, but the town has taken a hit with a number of high-profile company closures
IN 2003, Carlow town’s population had soared by a third in just six years. Commuters faced a 90-minute drive to the capital (and that’s if they left at dawn). Yet, unlike other areas of sudden expansion, it seemed up to the challenge.
Looking back, it did better than most. The schools bore up well, although the post-primary system is coming under pressure. The €70 million Fairgreen centre with its big multiplex is a success, although it hived shoppers from the town centre. The sad business park is morphing into Merck Sharp Dohme and the promise of 250 jobs. The beautiful €18 million theatre and contemporary arts centre was funded almost entirely by Carlow’s local authorities. The long-awaited €20 million drainage and flood relief scheme finally got under way in recent weeks. And the new bypass, opened two years ago, restored sanity to the town’s core.
But there were also setbacks. Hundreds of jobs disappeared with the Greencore Irish Sugar factory, Braun, Läpple and Celtic Linen. Unsold houses on estates and a swarm of For Sale signs in the centre indicate that the town is in deep trouble.
Then again, if An Bord Pleanála comes back with a thumbs-up to the proposed €85 million development on the old Penneys site, “it would make an extraordinary difference”, says Joe Watters, the stalwart town clerk.
When we last met in 2003, Carlow-born Michelle Abbey (daughter of Cllr Michael Abbey), was about to marry Limerick native, Barry Wall. Both worked for Dublin IT companies but had set up home in Carlow, in a fine, four-bed, detached house bought for the price of a Dublin suburban two-bed apartment. The price was the commute. Though Michelle was able to “telework” from home three days a week, Barry’s daily journey to Clonskeagh began at 5.30am, ending back in Carlow 12 hours later.
So what happened next?
Both had good jobs, so it seemed feasible to buy a one-bed apartment in Stepaside, for a mid-week respite near the city. The arrival of their first child made the dual-location lifestyle barely manageable but the second prompted decision time. Dublin or Carlow?
Two mortgages and Dublin’s high creche charges were big factors but in the end, it was also about quality of life. “The creche here [in Carlow] is three minutes down the road . . . Michelle’s parents are literally in the next estate and her sister is here,” says Barry of their decision to stay in Carlow.
Apart from having two small children in the past seven years, Michelle completed a Masters degree and joined Ernst Young in Harcourt Street, Dublin, for whom she works three days a week in the city and two at home. Barry managed a similar arrangement and, for a few years, they alternated their home-working days.
In recent months, however, much has changed. Barry’s employer withdrew from Ireland leading to mass redundancies. His new job entails providing contracted support, remotely, for an American communications company, “so I’m at home five days a week now”, he says evenly. How is it going? “It’s early days.”
Michelle is expecting another child, but the commute continues. The new bypass makes for a “straighter run”, getting her to Newlands Cross in 45 minutes, “but it’s another 45 minutes to get the rest of the way. The roads are full. I try to leave work at 4.30pm and get home between 6pm and 6.30pm.”
Is it as tough as it sounds? “It is difficult. I don’t see the kids before I leave and if I’m home at 7pm, I might only be seeing them for an hour or half an hour. But the two days I’m working from home, you get three hours back,” she adds brightly.
The Walls are good at counting their blessings. They broke even on the Stepaside apartment, selling it just before the crash. They’ve bought a mobile home in Ballymoney, Co Wexford, which is 45 minutes south. “In the current environment, we’re very lucky,” Michelle says. “We have a good house and we both have jobs. At the moment, we’re not going to question too much how we do it.”
“People just have to be more flexible,” says Barry. “I’m 37. I’m not of the generation that doesn’t remember the bad days. I came out of college in the early 90s and took the first job I was offered.”
In 2003, their neighbour, Berni Murphy, a native of Dublin’s Liberties, was commuting to St James’s Hospital, where she worked a three-day week in nurse education. On the road at 6.20am, via Baltinglass and Tallaght, her journey took up to two hours and often she took respite overnight with her mother.
“I couldn’t carry on,” she says now. “I work a two-day week now and I still stay overnight with Mum or my sister or I’d be like a briar next day. But it has improved. With the new road and bypasses, I can leave at 7am and get in to work by 8.30am.”
The couple of years after the move to Carlow in 2000 were deeply challenging for a Liberties girl, but Berni is well settled. “I’m still a Dub, but even if I won the Lotto I wouldn’t move back now. I can ramble down the town for company, like my mother would walk down Meath Street. Everything is nearby. Every day I go for a walk in the Killeshin hills with the dogs.”
RURAL LIFE IS NOT for everyone though, Berni points out. Her daughter, Jessica, was 12 when they moved 10 years ago and she remained a “city kid” who “couldn’t wait to get out of Carlow”. For Berni though, it’s quality of life over money. “If you want a life-work balance, you have to cut your cloth.”
Seven years ago, Oonagh Barrett, then a theatre nurse working two 12-hour shifts a week in St James’s Hospital and her husband, Renny, an English-born IT contractor, had made the move from Kilmainham, seeking better local schools and a bigger house.
Back then, Renny was cramming his week into four 10-hour days in Park West off the M50, getting the 6.30am train to work and arriving home at around 6pm. Key to this was his determination to use travelling time as work time. He still does. The car would be quicker than the 90-minute train journey (he has to change at Heuston), “but driving is dead time”, he says. But he has gradually increased his days working from home and sometimes, works from Carlow for weeks at a time.
Renny is clear about the downside: “Working from home can quickly make you a poor cousin of those in the office.” But he now gets to have breakfast with his children. “I’ll walk them to school and pick them up. If the two of us are around, it leaves the other free to do stuff.”
Meanwhile, Oonagh lost her “verve” for nursing and did a diploma in holistic health. She now works for Carlow VEC as a tutor in adult and community education. “It’s The Good Life ,” says Renny gleefully. They have chickens in the garden, tickets for Electric Picnic in the dresser and – only today — a brand new, shiny Jaguar outside the door, a delighted Renny’s 40th birthday present to himself.
Oonagh volunteers at the “really beautiful” contemporary arts centre and Renny as a maths tutor to adults doing their Leaving Cert. They love Carlow’s diversity, the booming sports clubs – “there’s about 30 kids in the seven- to eight-year-olds’ rugby team, where other towns have only eight or nine”. They have the security of knowing the children can “wander” safely outside, and that the countryside is only three minutes away. A good decision then? “Anything that could be better is better here – and nothing was worse,” says Renny.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
IN 2003, Carlow town’s population had soared by a third in just six years. Commuters faced a 90-minute drive to the capital (and that’s if they left at dawn). Yet, unlike other areas of sudden expansion, it seemed up to the challenge.
Looking back, it did better than most. The schools bore up well, although the post-primary system is coming under pressure. The €70 million Fairgreen centre with its big multiplex is a success, although it hived shoppers from the town centre. The sad business park is morphing into Merck Sharp Dohme and the promise of 250 jobs. The beautiful €18 million theatre and contemporary arts centre was funded almost entirely by Carlow’s local authorities. The long-awaited €20 million drainage and flood relief scheme finally got under way in recent weeks. And the new bypass, opened two years ago, restored sanity to the town’s core.
But there were also setbacks. Hundreds of jobs disappeared with the Greencore Irish Sugar factory, Braun, Läpple and Celtic Linen. Unsold houses on estates and a swarm of For Sale signs in the centre indicate that the town is in deep trouble.
Then again, if An Bord Pleanála comes back with a thumbs-up to the proposed €85 million development on the old Penneys site, “it would make an extraordinary difference”, says Joe Watters, the stalwart town clerk.
When we last met in 2003, Carlow-born Michelle Abbey (daughter of Cllr Michael Abbey), was about to marry Limerick native, Barry Wall. Both worked for Dublin IT companies but had set up home in Carlow, in a fine, four-bed, detached house bought for the price of a Dublin suburban two-bed apartment. The price was the commute. Though Michelle was able to “telework” from home three days a week, Barry’s daily journey to Clonskeagh began at 5.30am, ending back in Carlow 12 hours later.
So what happened next?
Both had good jobs, so it seemed feasible to buy a one-bed apartment in Stepaside, for a mid-week respite near the city. The arrival of their first child made the dual-location lifestyle barely manageable but the second prompted decision time. Dublin or Carlow?
Two mortgages and Dublin’s high creche charges were big factors but in the end, it was also about quality of life. “The creche here [in Carlow] is three minutes down the road . . . Michelle’s parents are literally in the next estate and her sister is here,” says Barry of their decision to stay in Carlow.
Apart from having two small children in the past seven years, Michelle completed a Masters degree and joined Ernst Young in Harcourt Street, Dublin, for whom she works three days a week in the city and two at home. Barry managed a similar arrangement and, for a few years, they alternated their home-working days.
In recent months, however, much has changed. Barry’s employer withdrew from Ireland leading to mass redundancies. His new job entails providing contracted support, remotely, for an American communications company, “so I’m at home five days a week now”, he says evenly. How is it going? “It’s early days.”
Michelle is expecting another child, but the commute continues. The new bypass makes for a “straighter run”, getting her to Newlands Cross in 45 minutes, “but it’s another 45 minutes to get the rest of the way. The roads are full. I try to leave work at 4.30pm and get home between 6pm and 6.30pm.”
Is it as tough as it sounds? “It is difficult. I don’t see the kids before I leave and if I’m home at 7pm, I might only be seeing them for an hour or half an hour. But the two days I’m working from home, you get three hours back,” she adds brightly.
The Walls are good at counting their blessings. They broke even on the Stepaside apartment, selling it just before the crash. They’ve bought a mobile home in Ballymoney, Co Wexford, which is 45 minutes south. “In the current environment, we’re very lucky,” Michelle says. “We have a good house and we both have jobs. At the moment, we’re not going to question too much how we do it.”
“People just have to be more flexible,” says Barry. “I’m 37. I’m not of the generation that doesn’t remember the bad days. I came out of college in the early 90s and took the first job I was offered.”
In 2003, their neighbour, Berni Murphy, a native of Dublin’s Liberties, was commuting to St James’s Hospital, where she worked a three-day week in nurse education. On the road at 6.20am, via Baltinglass and Tallaght, her journey took up to two hours and often she took respite overnight with her mother.
“I couldn’t carry on,” she says now. “I work a two-day week now and I still stay overnight with Mum or my sister or I’d be like a briar next day. But it has improved. With the new road and bypasses, I can leave at 7am and get in to work by 8.30am.”
The couple of years after the move to Carlow in 2000 were deeply challenging for a Liberties girl, but Berni is well settled. “I’m still a Dub, but even if I won the Lotto I wouldn’t move back now. I can ramble down the town for company, like my mother would walk down Meath Street. Everything is nearby. Every day I go for a walk in the Killeshin hills with the dogs.”
RURAL LIFE IS NOT for everyone though, Berni points out. Her daughter, Jessica, was 12 when they moved 10 years ago and she remained a “city kid” who “couldn’t wait to get out of Carlow”. For Berni though, it’s quality of life over money. “If you want a life-work balance, you have to cut your cloth.”
Seven years ago, Oonagh Barrett, then a theatre nurse working two 12-hour shifts a week in St James’s Hospital and her husband, Renny, an English-born IT contractor, had made the move from Kilmainham, seeking better local schools and a bigger house.
Back then, Renny was cramming his week into four 10-hour days in Park West off the M50, getting the 6.30am train to work and arriving home at around 6pm. Key to this was his determination to use travelling time as work time. He still does. The car would be quicker than the 90-minute train journey (he has to change at Heuston), “but driving is dead time”, he says. But he has gradually increased his days working from home and sometimes, works from Carlow for weeks at a time.
Renny is clear about the downside: “Working from home can quickly make you a poor cousin of those in the office.” But he now gets to have breakfast with his children. “I’ll walk them to school and pick them up. If the two of us are around, it leaves the other free to do stuff.”
Meanwhile, Oonagh lost her “verve” for nursing and did a diploma in holistic health. She now works for Carlow VEC as a tutor in adult and community education. “It’s The Good Life ,” says Renny gleefully. They have chickens in the garden, tickets for Electric Picnic in the dresser and – only today — a brand new, shiny Jaguar outside the door, a delighted Renny’s 40th birthday present to himself.
Oonagh volunteers at the “really beautiful” contemporary arts centre and Renny as a maths tutor to adults doing their Leaving Cert. They love Carlow’s diversity, the booming sports clubs – “there’s about 30 kids in the seven- to eight-year-olds’ rugby team, where other towns have only eight or nine”. They have the security of knowing the children can “wander” safely outside, and that the countryside is only three minutes away. A good decision then? “Anything that could be better is better here – and nothing was worse,” says Renny.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Sunday, 20 June 2010
Return to Commuterland
In 2003 FRANK McDONALD and KATHY SHERIDAN wrote an award-winning series of articles about the areas of Leinster colonised by commuters during the boom. Revisiting, they find that much has changed and that - despite all the haphazard planning and half-buit houses - many of those who moved now love their new home
Ghost estates, negative equity and soul-sapping commutes are the legacy of our planning-free property bubble. Cleaning up the zoning mess won't be easy, writes FRANK McDONALD , Environment Editor
The mantra of the boom years might well have been “Build it and they will come.” And for 10 years or more it worked. But the frenzy of construction was bound to come to an end, leaving Ireland littered with incongruous developments – as well as tens of thousands of vacant houses in ghost estates.
In 2003, when we first took a long look at the commuter counties, it was evident that much of this unplanned growth had been fuelled by Dubliners fleeing exorbitant property prices. Getting their hands on relatively affordable houses, even in places they had barely heard of, seemed worth the commute.
The trend of Dublin leapfrogging into Leinster and even, with Cavan and Monaghan, into Ulster ran counter to all planning policies, but this was simply ignored. The complacent view at the time was that the growth of Commuterland would tail off when the houses “out there” lost their value, which they now have.
It was in many ways a plan-free zone. Sure, there were plans aplenty – at local, county, regional and national level. But none of them really meant anything, as council after council indulged in an orgy of rezoning so that landowners could cash in on development values and every county in Leinster and beyond could grab a share of Dublin’s growth.
Local area plans intended to provide orderly frameworks for development were often subverted by councillors and used as vehicles to satisfy the greed of farmers, speculators and developers. And regional planning guidelines that were meant to take a broader view turned out to be paper tigers that could safely be ignored locally.
In 2002 the independent Kildare councillor Tony McEvoy and Michael Smith, then chairman of An Taisce, sought a judicial review of the Meath county plan. The High Court upheld it despite evidence that it didn’t comply with the Greater Dublin strategic planning guidelines and that rezoning decisions were influenced by lobbying from landowners. This ruling by Mr Justice John Quirke exposed the guidelines as meaningless: all the councillors needed to do was to “have regard to” them, which could involve merely giving the document a sideways glance. There was no legal requirement on councillors in Meath, or anywhere else, to comply with regional planning guidelines.
The High Court decision opened the floodgates, with councillors rezoning land to beat the band – more often than not against all planning advice. Field after field on the edge of a town or village was turned into gold, and not a finger was lifted by successive ministers for the environment until Dick Roche quashed the Laois county plan in 2006.
Four years earlier Martin Cullen had declined to use the 2000 Planning Act to rein in councillors in Gorey after they zoned enough land for development to cater for up to 10 times its population.
Asked by The Irish Times in 2003 if this was not in complete defiance of public policy, Cullen said: “Yes it is, in the very narrow purist sense. But it’s not in the context of catering for what has happened in Ireland in the last few years. This massive bubble of young people came through, and where the hell were we going to put them?”
They were “making choices” to live “down the country a bit” and commute to Dublin. “The gamble is that as we develop further on, this will change.”
Of course, it didn’t change. A whole new Commuterland opened up, in some cases encouraged by tax incentives; much of the housing explosion in Longford, for example, happened because the whole county was covered by former finance minister Charlie McCreevy’s misguided Upper Shannon Rural Renewal Scheme.
“The real villain was McCreevy’s decision to go with it, giving strong incentives for investors,” one senior planner said. “All the damage is the result of that. An interdepartmental group was put together to look at the impacts of the scheme, just two years after it was introduced in 1999, and recommended that it should be stopped.”
Its unforeseen consequences were noted by Carl O’Brien of The Irish Times in December 2008 when he visited Battery Court, “Longford’s most prestigious address”, and found about half of the 100 or so houses built and work on the rest abandoned. With no signs of life, it was “eerily quiet, almost like a post-apocalyptic scene from a science-fiction movie”.
There are scenes like this almost everywhere now, as property prices collapse – particularly in Commuterland – and developers go bust, with their unsustainable bank loans going into Nama. Empty houses, shops, retail parks and shopping centres are all grim evidence of how the boom was so grotesquely mismanaged. Few brakes were applied. In some cases the Department of the Environment withheld funding for water and sewerage schemes where land was zoned against planning advice. In others An Bord Pleanála simply refused planning permission where the zoning went against sustainable development.
But these were exceptions in a rip-roaring era that left us with thousands of hectares of zoned land that’s not developed. In Commuterland Laois is tops, with 1,678 hectares, followed by Meath (1,652), Wexford (1,382), Cavan (1,161), Kildare (1,147), Offaly (1,044), Westmeath (977), Louth (948), Longford (910), Wicklow (714) and Carlow (408). “Meath has six or seven times what it needs,” one planning source said. “But it’s a much deeper problem in the BMW [Border, Midlands and West] region, particularly in Longford, Roscommon, Leitrim and Sligo.”
The Department of the Environment is surveying every county, trying to “profile the status” of unfinished estates in terms of the number of houses completed, still vacant or at various stages of construction before the builders walked away. Based on this, the department will formulate a policy response. It is also planning a manual for local authorities on how to deal with unfinished estates.
“This relates very much to Nama, because it will be the owner of a lot of these properties,” the source said. “Its main function is to get the best value for taxpayers, but it will have to make choices. If it finds that there are 100 houses approved, of which only 20 are occupied, 40 vacant and the rest unfinished, including roads, public-safety problems arise. If Nama wants to extract a saleable asset out of that, it will have to resolve issues with the local authority and may have to abandon those parts of an estate that are no longer viable.”
A great deal of putative development land will have to be dezoned, whatever about the distress this causes to its owners and their bankers. This process has already got under way in Co Kerry, where councillors have started to unravel decisions that led to 2,529 hectares of land being zoned – enough to house six times its population. Nationally, for the foreseeable future, planning policy will seek to consolidate Dublin and other cities.
“In the Dublin area, where the ‘completed but not sold’ overhang would meet less than a year’s demand, we’ll be prioritising Adamstown and Clonburris, where the State has put in €500 million in public investment,” the source said. “We have to make sure that we corral whatever emerges from the ashes into locations like that.”
The new Planning Bill should help, given its emphasis on the need for councils to demonstrate that their development plans comply with regional planning guidelines, the National Spatial Strategy and sustainable-development principles. Given that new guidelines are due to be finalised later this year, it is seen as essential that the Planning Bill is enacted before the Dáil breaks for its long summer recess. Only then would county managers and planning officials be able to say that inappropriate zoning proposals can’t be adopted – because now they’re against the law.
Against the odds, the blow-ins bed down
Rather than returning to the city, many of those who lived in the commuter belt in 2003 have been joined by their extended families, writes KATHY SHERIDAN
The sky did not fall in. The commuter towns we explored seven years ago did not explode and die. Blue-jerseyed Dubs failed to storm the capital after a second nuclear winter in Rochfortbridge.
It failed to happen because the view that miserable first-time buyers were being forced from their sophisticated native city into injun territory was always too simplistic. There was nothing homogenous about them, for a start. Sure, some talked gleefully of selling up in Drimnagh, Clondalkin or Walkinstown for fabulous money, getting a house twice the size for buttons 75km down the road and lashing the remainder on a good car.
But privately, in countless cases, there were deeper motives, never articulated for fear of upsetting good former neighbours: worries about children being enmeshed in antisocial gangs, a woman too frightened to walk to the shops, an inner-city school so deprived even teachers were bailing out.
Many of those who landed in Ratoath, then the fastest-growing commuter centre in Leinster, were ready-formed families trading up. Rochfortbridge was alive with Dubs in love with their spacious houses, big gardens, safe neighbourhoods and good local schools.
In Carlow and Gorey middle- class couples who missed Dublin’s variety and cosmopolitanism firmly believed they were giving their children a “country” ethos and freedom to roam.
The vast majority of those we interviewed in 2003 are still there. A cynic might suggest that of course they are; who can sell a house in Rochfortbridge or Carlow now? But how to explain, then, the startling number of parents and siblings who joined those pioneers? Or the offspring who failed to flee to Dublin as soon as they came of age? A couple who fled north Dublin eight years ago now have parents, siblings and offspring – 21 in total – living all around them in Rochfortbridge.
Some are mortgage-free, which suggests free choice. The teenage daughter of a Walkinstown family, who hadn’t quite taken to it when we talked seven years ago, has since married another Dub blow-in and settled in a house only metres from her parents’ home. Her brother has also bought in.
There were casualties, of course. The man who despaired that “in Dublin, house prices are unaffordable, but here is inaccessible” abandoned Gorey a year later for a dormitory town nearer Dublin. The exhausted cries of the baby being hauled out of bed at dawn to be loaded into the car were finally intolerable, and the long-promised commuter train and bypass were nowhere in sight. There was the inner-city girl, now 20, who moved to Carlow at 12 but couldn’t be kept out of Dublin. “She’s just a city kid,” sighs her mother now, as the daughter kicks up her heels in London.
Seven years ago, for an outsider, it was sometimes hard to see an upside. Freedom to roam was not the first phrase that came to mind in the little village of Ratoath, with its rampaging development, negligible amenities, lack of footpaths, poor lighting and thunderous traffic. Neither Rochfortbridge nor Portlaoise had a playground. The lack of a commuter train in exploding Gorey was inexplicable. Water and sewerage capacity was inadequate even at that stage. And for all the talk of great “country” schools, it was clear that no one on high was doing the sums.
In 2010 water supply remains a talking point in Rochfortbridge, where it arrives unreliably, through asbestos piping, and the town still awaits its playground. Ironically, the delay in upgrading sewerage capacity saved places such as Gorey and Rochfortbridge from further developer madness.
AGAINST ALL THE odds, these places have come a long way. Most have magnificent new arts and community centres, fine new schools and booming sports clubs. Transport links have improved hugely. In seven years Ratoath has created an entire new infrastructure.
If there are heroes in this story, they are the community activists, boards of management, parish priests and even some councillors and officials who consulted, raised funds, compiled reports, attended meetings and relentlessly badgered those in authority to live up to their responsibilities.
John Scott, a Glaswegian project engineer who arrived in Ratoath 10 years ago with his wife and two young children, remains astonished at the amount of lobbying required to get a basic essential, such as a school. “The Government tries to delegate responsibility but not authority,” he says.
By contrast, the number of creches, thin on the ground seven years ago, has reached saturation point, says Sonya Duggan of the Kilminchy creche in Portlaoise, and there is no longer a level playing pitch between trained professionals and home-based child-carers. Numbers of children in creches are falling because of job losses and couples finding their own way through the thorny thicket of work-life balance.
In 2003 this was a major source of angst, but even then surveys showed that families with two full-time working parents were not as common as was generally believed. Rochfortbridge and Rathoath had as many stay-at-home mothers as commuters, and quite a few had landed local jobs with child-friendly hours. Nonetheless, many mothers were marooned at home with largely absent fathers.
In Rochfortbridge, at Niamh Gallagher’s Little Rascals creche, the number of children in her charge full time has fallen dramatically since 2003; just five out of 60 now, and in general they arrive later. Sonya Duggan reckons that her full-time numbers are down by half. Many are in for three days a week – “a combination of fathers losing their jobs and parents working out a better work-life balance”.
The difference now is that many fathers are striving for that balance. Some have increased their days working from home as technology improves and managers learn to trust remote workers. Conor McAllister, who lives in Ratoath but runs the Grafton Barber on Grafton Street in Dublin, uses CCTV to monitor the business from home.
Commuting frustrations have also eased. Through the boom years the crisis points were predictable, says Dr Gerald White, a Portlaoise GP, recalling how “the wheels came off” for many commuting parents when someone fell ill. “The exhaustion factor kicked in, and they would come looking for a physical cause.” With the arrival of better roads and public transport, he is seeing a distinct improvement. “Most would tell you the road journey is much simpler. The train service is much improved . . . but now, of course, there are new and different worries. One or both are losing jobs. There’s a lot more pressure.”
Fr Gerry Stuart, Ratoath’s parish priest, who is seeing the new primary schools finally swimming into focus, likes to think that the recession is “a way for the soul to catch up with the body”. It’s as good an analogy as any for what happened to the commuter counties in boom-town Ireland.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Ghost estates, negative equity and soul-sapping commutes are the legacy of our planning-free property bubble. Cleaning up the zoning mess won't be easy, writes FRANK McDONALD , Environment Editor
The mantra of the boom years might well have been “Build it and they will come.” And for 10 years or more it worked. But the frenzy of construction was bound to come to an end, leaving Ireland littered with incongruous developments – as well as tens of thousands of vacant houses in ghost estates.
In 2003, when we first took a long look at the commuter counties, it was evident that much of this unplanned growth had been fuelled by Dubliners fleeing exorbitant property prices. Getting their hands on relatively affordable houses, even in places they had barely heard of, seemed worth the commute.
The trend of Dublin leapfrogging into Leinster and even, with Cavan and Monaghan, into Ulster ran counter to all planning policies, but this was simply ignored. The complacent view at the time was that the growth of Commuterland would tail off when the houses “out there” lost their value, which they now have.
It was in many ways a plan-free zone. Sure, there were plans aplenty – at local, county, regional and national level. But none of them really meant anything, as council after council indulged in an orgy of rezoning so that landowners could cash in on development values and every county in Leinster and beyond could grab a share of Dublin’s growth.
Local area plans intended to provide orderly frameworks for development were often subverted by councillors and used as vehicles to satisfy the greed of farmers, speculators and developers. And regional planning guidelines that were meant to take a broader view turned out to be paper tigers that could safely be ignored locally.
In 2002 the independent Kildare councillor Tony McEvoy and Michael Smith, then chairman of An Taisce, sought a judicial review of the Meath county plan. The High Court upheld it despite evidence that it didn’t comply with the Greater Dublin strategic planning guidelines and that rezoning decisions were influenced by lobbying from landowners. This ruling by Mr Justice John Quirke exposed the guidelines as meaningless: all the councillors needed to do was to “have regard to” them, which could involve merely giving the document a sideways glance. There was no legal requirement on councillors in Meath, or anywhere else, to comply with regional planning guidelines.
The High Court decision opened the floodgates, with councillors rezoning land to beat the band – more often than not against all planning advice. Field after field on the edge of a town or village was turned into gold, and not a finger was lifted by successive ministers for the environment until Dick Roche quashed the Laois county plan in 2006.
Four years earlier Martin Cullen had declined to use the 2000 Planning Act to rein in councillors in Gorey after they zoned enough land for development to cater for up to 10 times its population.
Asked by The Irish Times in 2003 if this was not in complete defiance of public policy, Cullen said: “Yes it is, in the very narrow purist sense. But it’s not in the context of catering for what has happened in Ireland in the last few years. This massive bubble of young people came through, and where the hell were we going to put them?”
They were “making choices” to live “down the country a bit” and commute to Dublin. “The gamble is that as we develop further on, this will change.”
Of course, it didn’t change. A whole new Commuterland opened up, in some cases encouraged by tax incentives; much of the housing explosion in Longford, for example, happened because the whole county was covered by former finance minister Charlie McCreevy’s misguided Upper Shannon Rural Renewal Scheme.
“The real villain was McCreevy’s decision to go with it, giving strong incentives for investors,” one senior planner said. “All the damage is the result of that. An interdepartmental group was put together to look at the impacts of the scheme, just two years after it was introduced in 1999, and recommended that it should be stopped.”
Its unforeseen consequences were noted by Carl O’Brien of The Irish Times in December 2008 when he visited Battery Court, “Longford’s most prestigious address”, and found about half of the 100 or so houses built and work on the rest abandoned. With no signs of life, it was “eerily quiet, almost like a post-apocalyptic scene from a science-fiction movie”.
There are scenes like this almost everywhere now, as property prices collapse – particularly in Commuterland – and developers go bust, with their unsustainable bank loans going into Nama. Empty houses, shops, retail parks and shopping centres are all grim evidence of how the boom was so grotesquely mismanaged. Few brakes were applied. In some cases the Department of the Environment withheld funding for water and sewerage schemes where land was zoned against planning advice. In others An Bord Pleanála simply refused planning permission where the zoning went against sustainable development.
But these were exceptions in a rip-roaring era that left us with thousands of hectares of zoned land that’s not developed. In Commuterland Laois is tops, with 1,678 hectares, followed by Meath (1,652), Wexford (1,382), Cavan (1,161), Kildare (1,147), Offaly (1,044), Westmeath (977), Louth (948), Longford (910), Wicklow (714) and Carlow (408). “Meath has six or seven times what it needs,” one planning source said. “But it’s a much deeper problem in the BMW [Border, Midlands and West] region, particularly in Longford, Roscommon, Leitrim and Sligo.”
The Department of the Environment is surveying every county, trying to “profile the status” of unfinished estates in terms of the number of houses completed, still vacant or at various stages of construction before the builders walked away. Based on this, the department will formulate a policy response. It is also planning a manual for local authorities on how to deal with unfinished estates.
“This relates very much to Nama, because it will be the owner of a lot of these properties,” the source said. “Its main function is to get the best value for taxpayers, but it will have to make choices. If it finds that there are 100 houses approved, of which only 20 are occupied, 40 vacant and the rest unfinished, including roads, public-safety problems arise. If Nama wants to extract a saleable asset out of that, it will have to resolve issues with the local authority and may have to abandon those parts of an estate that are no longer viable.”
A great deal of putative development land will have to be dezoned, whatever about the distress this causes to its owners and their bankers. This process has already got under way in Co Kerry, where councillors have started to unravel decisions that led to 2,529 hectares of land being zoned – enough to house six times its population. Nationally, for the foreseeable future, planning policy will seek to consolidate Dublin and other cities.
“In the Dublin area, where the ‘completed but not sold’ overhang would meet less than a year’s demand, we’ll be prioritising Adamstown and Clonburris, where the State has put in €500 million in public investment,” the source said. “We have to make sure that we corral whatever emerges from the ashes into locations like that.”
The new Planning Bill should help, given its emphasis on the need for councils to demonstrate that their development plans comply with regional planning guidelines, the National Spatial Strategy and sustainable-development principles. Given that new guidelines are due to be finalised later this year, it is seen as essential that the Planning Bill is enacted before the Dáil breaks for its long summer recess. Only then would county managers and planning officials be able to say that inappropriate zoning proposals can’t be adopted – because now they’re against the law.
Against the odds, the blow-ins bed down
Rather than returning to the city, many of those who lived in the commuter belt in 2003 have been joined by their extended families, writes KATHY SHERIDAN
The sky did not fall in. The commuter towns we explored seven years ago did not explode and die. Blue-jerseyed Dubs failed to storm the capital after a second nuclear winter in Rochfortbridge.
It failed to happen because the view that miserable first-time buyers were being forced from their sophisticated native city into injun territory was always too simplistic. There was nothing homogenous about them, for a start. Sure, some talked gleefully of selling up in Drimnagh, Clondalkin or Walkinstown for fabulous money, getting a house twice the size for buttons 75km down the road and lashing the remainder on a good car.
But privately, in countless cases, there were deeper motives, never articulated for fear of upsetting good former neighbours: worries about children being enmeshed in antisocial gangs, a woman too frightened to walk to the shops, an inner-city school so deprived even teachers were bailing out.
Many of those who landed in Ratoath, then the fastest-growing commuter centre in Leinster, were ready-formed families trading up. Rochfortbridge was alive with Dubs in love with their spacious houses, big gardens, safe neighbourhoods and good local schools.
In Carlow and Gorey middle- class couples who missed Dublin’s variety and cosmopolitanism firmly believed they were giving their children a “country” ethos and freedom to roam.
The vast majority of those we interviewed in 2003 are still there. A cynic might suggest that of course they are; who can sell a house in Rochfortbridge or Carlow now? But how to explain, then, the startling number of parents and siblings who joined those pioneers? Or the offspring who failed to flee to Dublin as soon as they came of age? A couple who fled north Dublin eight years ago now have parents, siblings and offspring – 21 in total – living all around them in Rochfortbridge.
Some are mortgage-free, which suggests free choice. The teenage daughter of a Walkinstown family, who hadn’t quite taken to it when we talked seven years ago, has since married another Dub blow-in and settled in a house only metres from her parents’ home. Her brother has also bought in.
There were casualties, of course. The man who despaired that “in Dublin, house prices are unaffordable, but here is inaccessible” abandoned Gorey a year later for a dormitory town nearer Dublin. The exhausted cries of the baby being hauled out of bed at dawn to be loaded into the car were finally intolerable, and the long-promised commuter train and bypass were nowhere in sight. There was the inner-city girl, now 20, who moved to Carlow at 12 but couldn’t be kept out of Dublin. “She’s just a city kid,” sighs her mother now, as the daughter kicks up her heels in London.
Seven years ago, for an outsider, it was sometimes hard to see an upside. Freedom to roam was not the first phrase that came to mind in the little village of Ratoath, with its rampaging development, negligible amenities, lack of footpaths, poor lighting and thunderous traffic. Neither Rochfortbridge nor Portlaoise had a playground. The lack of a commuter train in exploding Gorey was inexplicable. Water and sewerage capacity was inadequate even at that stage. And for all the talk of great “country” schools, it was clear that no one on high was doing the sums.
In 2010 water supply remains a talking point in Rochfortbridge, where it arrives unreliably, through asbestos piping, and the town still awaits its playground. Ironically, the delay in upgrading sewerage capacity saved places such as Gorey and Rochfortbridge from further developer madness.
AGAINST ALL THE odds, these places have come a long way. Most have magnificent new arts and community centres, fine new schools and booming sports clubs. Transport links have improved hugely. In seven years Ratoath has created an entire new infrastructure.
If there are heroes in this story, they are the community activists, boards of management, parish priests and even some councillors and officials who consulted, raised funds, compiled reports, attended meetings and relentlessly badgered those in authority to live up to their responsibilities.
John Scott, a Glaswegian project engineer who arrived in Ratoath 10 years ago with his wife and two young children, remains astonished at the amount of lobbying required to get a basic essential, such as a school. “The Government tries to delegate responsibility but not authority,” he says.
By contrast, the number of creches, thin on the ground seven years ago, has reached saturation point, says Sonya Duggan of the Kilminchy creche in Portlaoise, and there is no longer a level playing pitch between trained professionals and home-based child-carers. Numbers of children in creches are falling because of job losses and couples finding their own way through the thorny thicket of work-life balance.
In 2003 this was a major source of angst, but even then surveys showed that families with two full-time working parents were not as common as was generally believed. Rochfortbridge and Rathoath had as many stay-at-home mothers as commuters, and quite a few had landed local jobs with child-friendly hours. Nonetheless, many mothers were marooned at home with largely absent fathers.
In Rochfortbridge, at Niamh Gallagher’s Little Rascals creche, the number of children in her charge full time has fallen dramatically since 2003; just five out of 60 now, and in general they arrive later. Sonya Duggan reckons that her full-time numbers are down by half. Many are in for three days a week – “a combination of fathers losing their jobs and parents working out a better work-life balance”.
The difference now is that many fathers are striving for that balance. Some have increased their days working from home as technology improves and managers learn to trust remote workers. Conor McAllister, who lives in Ratoath but runs the Grafton Barber on Grafton Street in Dublin, uses CCTV to monitor the business from home.
Commuting frustrations have also eased. Through the boom years the crisis points were predictable, says Dr Gerald White, a Portlaoise GP, recalling how “the wheels came off” for many commuting parents when someone fell ill. “The exhaustion factor kicked in, and they would come looking for a physical cause.” With the arrival of better roads and public transport, he is seeing a distinct improvement. “Most would tell you the road journey is much simpler. The train service is much improved . . . but now, of course, there are new and different worries. One or both are losing jobs. There’s a lot more pressure.”
Fr Gerry Stuart, Ratoath’s parish priest, who is seeing the new primary schools finally swimming into focus, likes to think that the recession is “a way for the soul to catch up with the body”. It’s as good an analogy as any for what happened to the commuter counties in boom-town Ireland.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Friday, 1 May 2009
Workforce "increasingly reliant’ on car transport
AT the height of the economic boom in 2006, Irish towns had a working population that exceeded the number of resident workers, with more commuters than ever using cars.
Using information from the 2006 census, the CSO yesterday issued a profile of the working population of large Irish towns in 2006 which showed that most Irish towns gained in terms of commuters.
It paints a far different picture to Ireland today.
The profile shows the Irish workforce is increasingly reliant on car transport, despite efforts to increase the numbers using public transport in recent years.
It shows that over 57% of employees drove to work, while the percentage using bus transport dropped from 6.7% to 6.1% by 2006.
Over the same period the numbers travelling by train increased by over two-thirds, a direct result of the introduction of the LUAS in Dublin.
The number of people taking more than an hour to get to work increased from 142,500 to 187,000, with urban dwellers having a longer commute than their rural counterparts despite their shorter travelling distances.
Cork city had more than 65,000 workers in 2006, which rose to 84,000 when commuters were taken into account.
The city had higher than average proportions of workers in manufacturing, health and wholesale retail.
Cork also had proportionately more workers with a third-level qualification.
Three out of four workers travelled by car to work, with only 6.5% using a bus or a train.
Cork now has more than 16,500 people on the Live Register.
The profile shows that in 2006, more than 394,000 workers working in Dublin lived there. However, when the numbers commuting to the city are included, this figure rises to 442,000.
Real estate, renting and business activities accounted for more than 15% of workers, the highest percentage employed in this sector of all the cities and towns profiled.
Just over half the workers drove to work in Dublin city, making it the least reliant on car transport of all the cities and towns profiled.
Almost a quarter commuted by bus or train, while 13% walked to work.
In terms of employment, the situation in 2006 is very different when compared to the current employment levels in the capital, which now has almost 88,000 people on the dole.
Almost 40,000 people were employed in Galway city in 2006, making it the third largest working population in the country after Dublin and Cork.
Irish Examiner
www.buckplanning.ie
Using information from the 2006 census, the CSO yesterday issued a profile of the working population of large Irish towns in 2006 which showed that most Irish towns gained in terms of commuters.
It paints a far different picture to Ireland today.
The profile shows the Irish workforce is increasingly reliant on car transport, despite efforts to increase the numbers using public transport in recent years.
It shows that over 57% of employees drove to work, while the percentage using bus transport dropped from 6.7% to 6.1% by 2006.
Over the same period the numbers travelling by train increased by over two-thirds, a direct result of the introduction of the LUAS in Dublin.
The number of people taking more than an hour to get to work increased from 142,500 to 187,000, with urban dwellers having a longer commute than their rural counterparts despite their shorter travelling distances.
Cork city had more than 65,000 workers in 2006, which rose to 84,000 when commuters were taken into account.
The city had higher than average proportions of workers in manufacturing, health and wholesale retail.
Cork also had proportionately more workers with a third-level qualification.
Three out of four workers travelled by car to work, with only 6.5% using a bus or a train.
Cork now has more than 16,500 people on the Live Register.
The profile shows that in 2006, more than 394,000 workers working in Dublin lived there. However, when the numbers commuting to the city are included, this figure rises to 442,000.
Real estate, renting and business activities accounted for more than 15% of workers, the highest percentage employed in this sector of all the cities and towns profiled.
Just over half the workers drove to work in Dublin city, making it the least reliant on car transport of all the cities and towns profiled.
Almost a quarter commuted by bus or train, while 13% walked to work.
In terms of employment, the situation in 2006 is very different when compared to the current employment levels in the capital, which now has almost 88,000 people on the dole.
Almost 40,000 people were employed in Galway city in 2006, making it the third largest working population in the country after Dublin and Cork.
Irish Examiner
www.buckplanning.ie
Dormitory towns lose most commuters
DORMITORY TOWNS such as Celbridge, Greystones, Malahide and Balbriggan are the largest net losers of commuters to Dublin city, research from the Central Statistics Office has found.
Its study of Census 2006 data found that most large towns had more workers travelling to, than from, them in April 2006.
Not surprisingly, Dublin city gained the highest number of workers, with 104,865 travelling into the city while 56,752 residents worked outside the city.
In contrast, Greystones, which is 25 miles from the city, gained 949 workers but lost 5,232.
Swords, in north Dublin, had a resident working population of just over 15,000 but some 12,914 left the town for work.
Commuting workers caused an almost doubling of the working populations of Sligo and Castlebar, Co Mayo.
However, Carrigaline, Cobh and Midleton lost significant numbers of workers to Cork.
The CSO report profiled 27 towns, which accounted for 42 per cent of people at work, in April 2006.
It noted that Leixlip, Co Kildare, was “a notable exception” to the dormitory town pattern. It lost 5,362 commuting workers but attracted 5,794 workers.
Intel and Hewlett-Packard both have large plants in the town.
It also found that Leixlip’s working population had the highest level of education of the 27 towns, with more than two-thirds of workers educated to third level.
Killarney, Co Kerry, had the highest dependence on tourism, with 28 per cent of workers in the hotels and restaurants industry.
Athlone, which has an institute of technology, had the highest share of workers in education.
Meanwhile, Portlaoise, Co Laois, had the highest share of workers in public administration and defence, reflecting the importance of the prison in the midlands town.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Its study of Census 2006 data found that most large towns had more workers travelling to, than from, them in April 2006.
Not surprisingly, Dublin city gained the highest number of workers, with 104,865 travelling into the city while 56,752 residents worked outside the city.
In contrast, Greystones, which is 25 miles from the city, gained 949 workers but lost 5,232.
Swords, in north Dublin, had a resident working population of just over 15,000 but some 12,914 left the town for work.
Commuting workers caused an almost doubling of the working populations of Sligo and Castlebar, Co Mayo.
However, Carrigaline, Cobh and Midleton lost significant numbers of workers to Cork.
The CSO report profiled 27 towns, which accounted for 42 per cent of people at work, in April 2006.
It noted that Leixlip, Co Kildare, was “a notable exception” to the dormitory town pattern. It lost 5,362 commuting workers but attracted 5,794 workers.
Intel and Hewlett-Packard both have large plants in the town.
It also found that Leixlip’s working population had the highest level of education of the 27 towns, with more than two-thirds of workers educated to third level.
Killarney, Co Kerry, had the highest dependence on tourism, with 28 per cent of workers in the hotels and restaurants industry.
Athlone, which has an institute of technology, had the highest share of workers in education.
Meanwhile, Portlaoise, Co Laois, had the highest share of workers in public administration and defence, reflecting the importance of the prison in the midlands town.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
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