City dwellers subsidise rural life, says planner

CITY dwellers are subsidising the lifestyles of rural people, who are paying less for basic services, according to a planning consultant.

Dr Diarmuid O'Grada says the "urban fairy godmother" is paying for the higher cost of rural water services, sewage treatment and school buses.

"This has far-reaching implications for sustainable planning. If the cost of servicing random houses in rural areas is so high, the Government will have to tighten it up a lot more," he said.

Dr O'Grada's research, which will be presented at the Irish Planning Institute's annual conference in Galway today, shows the different service costs for urban and rural dwellers.

Bus Éireann's school transport scheme caters for 133,000 primary and secondary school pupils and costs the company €722 per pupil each year. According to Dr O'Grada, rural areas benefit the most from this service because the six border counties alone have 21% of the passengers whereas the Dublin city and county has only 4%.

Rural dwellers actually pay more in ESB charges. To connect a rural house to the ESB grid costs 122% more €1,135 compared to €511 for an urban house. ESB is allowed to recoup costs from rural users and Dr O'Grada said the postal services should be allowed to do the same. Postal deliveries to rural houses are four times more expensive than for urban houses, yet the charges nationwide are the same.

The cost of trunk roads in rural areas jumped up by 8.5% last year after the National Roads Authority agreed in 2001 to pay farmers an extra sum €12,250 per hectare for examining their property. Dr O'Grada said this represented a "further capital transfer from urban areas to the countryside".

Dr O'Grada also believes the lack of maintenance of rural septic tanks is a serious issue. The National Spatial Strategy report revealed that 64% of septic tanks were not emptied once a year and one third of them were not emptied until a malfunction occurred.

"All waste systems should be licensed and then tested every five years, like a motor car that needs a National Car Test," said Dr O'Grada.

The Irish Rural Dwellers Association agreed with Dr O'Grada's call for a septic tank testing system but strongly rejected his other conclusions.

"It's the same old chestnut about rural dwellers being a burden on the State. It's been proven to be nonsense," said its secretary Jim Connolly.

He said the one-third of the population living in rural areas had provided their own water supplies and septic tanks without any State funding, while billions had been invested in urban sewage and water systems.

"Electricity is produced in rural areas, like Moneypoint in Clare, and then it is transported to urban areas. It's hugely expensive to send it 200 miles to Dublin but you don't hear anything about that from these planners," he said.