Developers ‘should be made pay for schools’

ONE of the senior planners in Ireland’s largest local authority believes it’s time legislation is introduced to make developers pay for schools adjacent to where they construct large numbers of houses.

Andrew Hind, a senior executive planner with Cork County Council, said yesterday that increasing population growth and house construction made it imperative that the issue was addressed now.

Already schools in several towns and villages are over capacity, and two or three of them apply to the local authority every week for permission to install Portocabins in their yards.

“There shouldn’t be a need for Portacabins and schools should be built at the outset, otherwise children will have to commute to other schools,” the planner said.

He pointed out that this also created extra congestion on the roads and more harmful emissions.

“Some legislation is needed like Social and Affordable Housing. It isn’t rocket science to say that a school is a building block of the community,” Mr Hind said.

Under Social and Affordable Housing legislation, developers are required to give a percentage of their houses over to the local authority.

Mr Hind pointed out it was his view that developers would be willing to fund the building of schools as to advertise the availability of such a facility close to their developments would promote them even more.

He said that while planners liaised with the Department of Health, the latter needed more resources to create a forward planning structure.

Mr Hind pointed out that in Britain developers are required by law to provide land and construct schools if their projects are large. He said at minimum in this country developers should pay a financial contribution for providing a new school or a school extension.