Largest property transaction in history of Irish state filed with land registry

The biggest property transaction in the history of the Irish State has been officially filed with the Land Registry.

Clare County Council has delivered transfer maps for all property in Shannon, less than two-and-half years after responsibility for Ireland's newest town was transferred from Shannon Development to the Local Authority. The move represents one of the largest transactions handled by the Land Registry in its 115-year history.

The September 2004 transfer of responsibility for Shannon Town represented a unique transfer and culmination of many years of discussion and negotiation on bringing the Town under Local Authority control. Since then, Clare County Council has assumed full responsibility for all public services within the town including - roads, water services, public lighting, open space and housing, originally part of Shannon Development housing stock.

Ger O'Brien, Chief Technician with Clare County Council said that the map transfer represented the largest single project he had ever worked on during his 29 years of service as a public servant. "Today's historic handover of maps to the Land Registry will cater for Shannon Town's development needs well into the future" - stated Mr. O'Brien.

He added - "Now that all lands within the town boundary have been officially documented and filed, in consultation with True North Mapping, I am confident that new development opportunities will be facilitated - therefore providing a further injection of economic activity into Shannon."

Ambitious Bioenergy Action Plan to reduce Ireland's CO2 emissions by 2m tonnes a year

Noel Dempsey T.D., the Minister for Communications, Marine & Natural Resources, has published a new Government strategy entitled the 'Bioenergy Action Plan for Ireland'.

The action plan - produced by the Ministerial Task Force on Bioenergy, comprising seven Government Departments and Ministers - is a comprehensive strategy to increase the deployment of renewable energy across three key sectors - transport, heat and electricity.

Among the commitments in the Government Action Plan are -

* By 2020, a third of all electricity consumed in Ireland will come from renewable sources (i.e. wind, tidal, solar, etc);
* All peat electricity power stations will be co-fired by 30% renewable material by 2015 (this will lead to CO2 savings of 900,000 tonnes per year);
* 12% of all residential and commercial heating will be powered by renewable sources (wood chip, solar, etc) by 2020 (5% by 2010);
* Within 12 months, building regulations will be reviewed to raise the energy efficiency of all new homes by at least 40%;
* By 2009, a new biofuel obligation will mean that all petrol and diesel will have, on average, a 5.75% biofuel mix (this will lead to CO2 savings of 770,000 tonnes per year);
* All new buses in the public fleet will use a biofuel blend of at least 30%;
* New energy-efficient designs for schools (2.3 times more energy-efficient than international normal standards) will be piloted in 40 new schools, with a view to a national roll-out thereafter;
* A new programme of efficiency measures - including mandatory use of energy-efficient lighting in hospitals, offices and other public buildings - will be introduced with immediate effect.

Speaking at the launch of the Action Plan, Minister Dempsey stressed the significance of the Government decision to tackle renewable energy policy in an integrated and holistic manner - "We recognised, early, that the transport, heat and electricity sectors are almost equal in the amount of energy they use and the CO2 emissions they produce. In this plan, we set out clear, cross-department strategies to deal with each of these sectors. The end result will be CO2 savings in the region of 2 million tonnes a year. This is extremely good news for the environment."

By setting ambitious targets, the Bioenergy Action Plan will lead to the development of a significant indigenous renewable energy sector. Bioenergy can provide a continuous and predictable clean energy source that has enormous potential for reducing Ireland's dependence on fossil fuel imports. It will provide benefits to rural economies by creating new jobs in new industries and it has the potential to open massive opportunities for Irish agriculture and forestry, with the production of fuel producing crops.

"Since the launch, last year, of the Greener Homes scheme and the Power of One campaign, I have been struck by the strong public appetite for increased energy efficiency. For our part in Government, we will continue our drive to empower the entire community to play a role in the development of a more sustainable energy economy in Ireland" - the Minister continued.

"The Bioenergy Action Plan, launched today, is only one element of a comprehensive renewable energy policy and a broader national energy policy. This policy will be published shortly in the forthcoming White Paper on Energy. Together with the publication of the revised National Climate Change Strategy, this Government will ensure that Ireland achieves its goal of a sustainable energy future" - concluded Minister Dempsey.

Group campaigns to ‘welcome back’ white-tailed sea eagles in south-west

THE tourism industry, community organisations and conservationists came out strongly, at the weekend, in support of a controversial plan to reintroduce the white-tailed sea eagle to the south-west.
They have formed the Kerry White-tailed Eagle Support Group, whose chairman, Jerry O’Grady, said the plan was “‘’warmly welcomed’’ by a large cross-section of people, despite some negative publicity.
He said the reintroduction of the eagle would bring social and economic benefits to the region.
“Together with our red deer herd and other indigenous species of flora and fauna, the return of the white-tailed eagle to our skies will add enormously to our image of a beautiful and green place, capable of supporting thriving flora and fauna side by side with the local population and visitors,’’ he added.
However, the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) is opposing the plan, claiming that the eagles could kill lambs and lead to the designation of more land for conservation purposes.
The project is being carried out by the National Parks and Wildlife Service and is fully backed by Environment Minister Dick Roche. But, with an election approaching, farmer pressure is being applied to drop the plan, which envisages 75 young eagles being released in Killarney National Park over a five-year period.
Some farmers have also threatened to shoot, or poison, the birds, which became extinct in Kerry a century ago.
Mr O’Grady described the project as the “‘’most exciting wildlife reintroduction programme ever undertaken in Ireland.’’
The group plans to collect thousands of signatures in support of the project.
The group rejected IFA claims that the eagles would kill lambs, saying there was no evidence of interference with sheep in Donegal, where the golden eagle has been introduced, or in Scandinavian countries.
The group claims many more lambs would die because of poor husbandry, cliff falls and fox attacks.
Donal Hickey
© Irish Examiner

Kildare sewage plant stalls slowing house building

This from Pal Melia in the Irish Indo' - MORE than 160 construction workers have lost their jobs because a developer cannot get planning permission to build new homes in one of the fastest-growing towns in the county.
And thousands of houses in Co Kildare might not be built because the sewerage system serving the county is overburdened and will not be upgraded until 2011.
Developers revealed yesterday that they had been told planning permission was unlikely to be granted for homes in Newbridge, Naas and Clane because the Osberstown sewage treatment plant cannot handle any more waste.
And one company let go 161 staff in the past two months because it cannot develop a site in Newbridge.
Denis McIntyre, of Roseberry Construction, said yesterday: "It's very strange for a blocklayer to be asking for work. Some of the guys we've had to let go are with us for 20 years."
He added that the company's 43-acre site in the town would lie idle until the new sewage treatment plant came on stream, which was unlikely to happen until at least 2011.
"The amount of levies being paid (to the council) is enormous, but the infrastructure isn't being put in place. This is totally out of our hands, it's up to
the council," Mr McIntyre added.The shortfall in new homes coming on stream is sure to push house prices up for hard-pressed first-time buyers. Other Kildare towns earmarked for expansion over the coming years include Sallins, Clane and Kilcullen and housing may also be curtailed here. Developers have warned that further job losses are likely unless a sewerage treatment plant servicing the county is upgraded.
In one case, a developer was granted planning permission to build 24 homes despite having applied to complete over 70. A condition of planning was that the remainder could not be built until the treatment plant was upgraded.
The Osberstown plant is already operating at capacity, and upgrading plans were put to the Department of the Environment in 2002. However, no work is expected to begin until at least 2008, although funding for the €17.4m scheme has been approved.
Kildare County Council is understood to be finalising contract documents with a view to putting the project out to tender. The council could not be reached for comment yesterday.
"I have 43 acres in Newbridge and it's not serviced," Mr McIntyre said. "I sought planning permission in January last year for 196 houses and a creche, and I'm now at the third request for additional information. My engineers are tearing their hair out, we've got the same questions back for clarification again."
The Kildare County Development Plan expects that 2,500 new homes will be built in the county every year up to 2011.
In Naas, Newbridge and Kilcullen - all of which rely on the Osberstown plant - 7,300 houses are supposed to be built. On Clane, Sallins and Kill over 1,000 are due to come on stream.
A spokesman for the Construction Industry Federation said last night that the situation had reached "crisis point", warning that house prices would "rocket" in the county.
"Kildare County Council has indicated that it has sufficient zoned and serviced lands to meet all projections of need," spokesman Kevin Flavin said.
"It is clear that this isn't the case. The council indicates that there are 160 hectares of zoned and serviced lands in Newbridge. We know this land is not serviced and cannot be developed.
He added that there was an absence of "joined-up, strategic thinking" on the issue and that houses could not be built because there was no basic infrastructure.

Is the NDP built on poor foundations?

This is what Frank McDonald writes in The Irish Times:

The experience of the past 10 years, according to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, "shows the need for, and benefits of, longer-term policy planning to ensure that we rise to the challenges and maximise the opportunities facing us".
Would that this were true. Although the word "sprawl" is mentioned nowhere in the latest National Development Plan (NDP), the document concedes that most of Ireland's population growth "is taking place in the urban hinterlands".
Among the resulting changes, it says, "are longer commuting times, increasing car numbers and usage, and serious congestion difficulties with attendant impacts on competitiveness, quality of life and the environment".
Had the last NDP been properly focused, some of these negatives could have been avoided - for example, with a determined effort to ensure an adequate supply of affordable housing in Dublin and the smaller cities, in order to curb sprawl.
Instead, the Government adopted a laissez-faire approach to planning, with the result that Dublin's commuter belt now extends to 100km and the same is true, to a lesser extent, within the orbit of Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford. There is much emphasis in the new plan on balanced regional development, with the Taoiseach saying implementation of the National Spatial Strategy (NSS) "is crucial to our ability to absorb the huge population growth predicted over the next 20 years".
As the plan says, "economic development in all countries, including Ireland, invariably occurs at a different pace in different regions", reflecting many different factors, "some of which can be directly influenced by Government policy".
The dramatic growth which Dublin has experienced is inextricably related to the fact that it "has spearheaded the growth of the Irish economy" and thus, in terms of scale and significance, it's on a different level to other NSS gateways.
The key question about the latest plan is whether it will succeed in developing these eight gateways and nine "hub" towns in a way that would ensure their growth and prosperity while simultaneously taking some of the pressure off Dublin.
As the NDP says, long-term population trends show that the economically stronger regions are those with large urban centres containing a high proportion of their population. In that broad context, some of the gateways hardly qualify at all.
The best bet in counterbalancing Dublin would be to strengthen the "critical mass" of the Atlantic gateways of Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford, both individually and collectively, to develop a second "major metropolitan corridor".
However, apart from better road links between them, there is not much on offer to Ireland's second-tier cities - though one of Cork's real strengths is its scale, which is equivalent to the combined populations of Limerick, Galway and Waterford.
Yet, notoriously, when it came to "decentralising" public servants from Dublin, the Government ignored Cork city, opting instead to scatter them around smaller towns throughout the county, from Clonakilty right round to Youghal.
Had the Government paid any attention to its own spatial strategy, this would not have happened. So now there isn't even a clutch of civil servants to people a single office block that would help underpin the redevelopment of Cork's docklands.
How can this be reconciled with the new NDP's declaration that promoting regional development "will aim to ensure that each NSS gateway region maximises its potential for economic and social development"? The answer is that it can't.
It is simply disingenuous to say, as the plan does, that the "direct instrument [ of decentralisation] will strengthen . . . the hub, smaller town and rural structure and complement the key and dynamic role to be played by the gateways".
As for the new Gateways Innovation Fund, worth €300 million over three years, each of the nine gateways (including Dublin) will have to make bids for a share of the money for projects that are not funded by "mainstream capital programmes".
This pilot programme is intended to "stimulate and reward joined-up thinking at local and regional level [ and] bring about better co-ordination in regional development and to support distinctive and innovative projects in gateway areas".
But there is a stick as well as this carrot: local authorities that adopt policies which are inconsistent with the NSS by facilitating development patterns such as extensive low-density housing "will not be favoured by investment under this plan".
In addition, Minister for the Environment Dick Roche "will as necessary use his powers under the planning Acts to compel local authorities to adopt land use policies that are consistent with the NSS and the regional planning guidelines".
Mr Roche has already intervened to curb the over-zoning of land in Laois by issuing a planning policy directive under the 2000 Planning Act, and he may well do the same in the case of Monaghan County Council's recent spate of land rezoning.
Roche's predecessor, Martin Cullen, declined to use these powers in 2002 to halt the over-zoning of land around Gorey, Co Wexford, even though there was evidence that up to 70 per cent of its new residents were commuting to Dublin.
The capital's sprawl was allowed to continue unabated, piggy-backing on major road improvements financed under the last NDP. It remains to be seen whether the Government will really crack down on similar piggy-backing on the latest plan.
At least it talks about the importance of promoting a switch from car to public transport. The critical issue for Dublin, it says, is to ensure that the range and quantity of housing as well as transport and social infrastructure can accommodate its population within the region, served by high-capacity public transport.
The real shame is that this was not recognised and made a priority by the last NDP.