The great debate on one-off housing

Donal Hickey on sustainable communities and a low-carbon future.

LOOKED at through the eyes of planners and environmentalists, Dublin and the far south-west might as well be in two different planets. There’s no shortage of examples to prove that.

A few days ago at the conference in Dublin, Prof Frank Convery, of Comhar Sustainable Development Council, spoke out against one-off housing which, he maintained, was not going to help provide sustainable communities into the future.

But, at a meeting of the Irish Rural Dwellers’ Association (IRDA) in Tralee, Co Kerry, tonight, there will be calls to seek the support of the EU Commission and the European Court of Justice, if necessary, to ensure people can build houses for themselves in the countryside.

We’re hearing more about sustainability, which has been defined as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations. With local elections to be held next summer, the question of one-off houses and planning will inevitably be raised.

The need for futuristic eco-towns and eco-villages will also be highlighted. Already, the argument is being made for having communities that are well-serviced instead of providing services to individual houses scattered all over the place.

The issue was aired at last week’s Comhar conference in Dublin at which Prof Convery said Ireland had the potential to become a leader in delivering models of sustainable communities, due to its small size.

“Sustainable communities are places where people want to live and work, now and in the future. Genuine sustainable communities are environmentally sensitive, are characterised by a high quality of life, and offer equality of opportunity and good services for all, regardless of income,” he said.

“While the idea of sustainable communities throughout Ireland should be attainable, the reality is our local authorities often take actions that are contrary to sustainable development. Indeed, the fact that most elected members of our local authorities still favour once-off housing is also a major barrier to achieving sustainability at a community level.”

He called on local authority members to rethink poor and wasteful decisions. Stretching water supplies to one-off houses and organising road maintenance, public lighting and other services to areas of low population was a waste of public money and did nothing to meet the challenge of climate change, he argued.

To say the IRDA is totally opposed to such views would be an understatement. The IRDA claims the residency clause attached to planning permission given for one-off houses is unconstitutional.

IRDA acting secretary Jim Connolly has argued against county council policies that restrict planning for one-off housing to residents or former residents of a county, people with blood links to an area, or those working locally or engaged in farming. “The IRDA has condemned these restrictions since its foundation in 2002 and welcomes the confirmation by the EU Commission that citizens’ rights were, in fact, being legally restricted by the Irish planning authorities,” he said.

The IRDA meeting at Fels Point Hotel will be addressed by the GAA columnist Eugene McGee and the former Kerry footballer and inter-county football manager Páidí Ó Sé.

The Comhar conference also heard from Klaus Harvey of the Transition Town Kinsale initiative and Gavin Harte from Cloughjordan Eco-Village, Co Tipperary.

Kinsale claims to be the world’s first transition town: a voluntary community initiative working to shift from a dependency on fossil fuel to a low-carbon future.

It began in 2005 when Rob Hopkins, teacher of permaculture at Kinsale Further Education College, produced the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan with his students. It explored ways in which the community could prepare for the time after peak oil production. One of his students, Louise Rooney, set about developing the transition towns concept on working towards energy independence, which was adopted by Kinsale Town Council. The concept has since been adopted by other towns not satisfied with the way the Government is facing up to the looming energy crisis.

Kinsale Town Council has granted €5,000 for community garden projects, schools projects and information leaflets.

Kinsale is working on a community composting scheme, looking at pedestrianisation of part of the town and the possibility of setting up an anaerobic digester for commercial food waste and agricultural waste. Kinsale has a free recycle system: a means of passing on unwanted goods to others instead of dumping them.

The group is also looking for land in the area that could be rented and used as allotments, giving people the opportunity to grow some of their own food.