Mick Clifford: Regulator keeping eye on less than best-laid plans

As national and regional planning guidelines are repeatedly disregarded, the setting up of a regulator in 2019 has proved to be a good move, writes Mick Clifford

Setback distances, the distance between a wind turbine and a domestic dwelling, are a hugely contentious issue in rural Ireland. Successive governments have run away from what is a hot political potato. Picture: David Creedon/Anzenberger

Earlier this year, the Planning Regulator was cast in the same company as the totalitarians who occupied the politburo in the old Soviet Union. Independent TD for Wexford, Verona Murphy, suggested that the regulator was attempting to “ghettoise” people into towns in her constituency. She appealed to the minister for housing to rein in the “Stalinist regime in the Office of the Planning Regulator”.

The comments evoked an image of the head of the regulator, Niall Cussen, atop an armoured vehicle, directing army generals in rural Co Wexford to round up all rural folk and transport them by lorry into the teeming ghettos of Gorey, Wexford, and maybe downtown Ferns. 

Therein they would be forced to live in an alien culture, left to rot in urban decay until the agents of the totalitarian state deemed it time to move them on again.

Politicians get carried away and sometimes they carry themselves away in order to send a message to a subset of constituents. In this instance, Ms Murphy was letting some of her voters know that she felt their pain when it came to being forced to observe the law as it applied to rural housing. In large tracts of the State, planning law as it relates to rural housing is an obstacle to be surmounted rather than a statute to be observed. And how dare some busybody down from Dublin point out that we are equal before the law.

Ironically, Ms Murphy’s observations merely highlighted the reason why we need a planning regulator in this country. The history of planning has been woeful. 

Repeatedly, national and regional guidelines have been wholly disregarded in order to serve local interests, particularly but not exclusively in the area of housing.

That record ultimately led to the planning tribunal which sat between 1997 and 2012. It uncovered a system in which money talked, whether through bribes or political donations, but also exposed the propensity for elected members to repeatedly disregard planning guidelines for narrow political advantage. One outcome from the tribunal was the recommendation of the establishment of a planning regulator. Mr Cussen and his team officially took office in April 2019. No other modern state in Europe has provision for such a role, but all the evidence is that it is required in this one.

The Office of the Planning Regulator published its annual report for 2020 on Monday. There were no fireworks or great revelations, just a few observations that will either be acted on or ignored until they develop into crises. Mr Cussen said that planning resources in local authorities are under serious pressure. Planning fees have not increased in 20 years. The Housing for All blueprint envisages 33,000 houses being built every year, yet currently, when around 20,000 are being built, the system is beginning to creak.

“One thing that is becoming quite clear to us is the degree to which local authorities are very, very hard stretched at the moment,” said Mr Cussen. He pointed out that investment in the extra resources should come from those using the system, the people who want to build.

Where the regulator really earns his corn is in evaluating local authority development plans. This is the juncture at which the serious money was transacted in the early 1990s in the greater Dublin area.

The annual report records that the regulator evaluated 45 local development plans last year and a total of 203 recommendations and observations were made by the office. Some of these will have been down to errors in planning, others due to decisions taken perhaps under political pressure. 

What they all have in common is that they contravene national planning guidelines and, without the regulator, many would most likely have simply gone ahead.

The only issue that remained unresolved and led to a direction from the regulator to the minister for local government to intervene concerned the €100m retail outlet proposed for East Cork, near the village of Carrigtwohill. Mr Cussen’s office directed to the minister that the outlet contravened the development plan. Earlier this week, the matter was before the High Court where the local authority is challenging the minister’s direction.

This year, the regulator issued another direction in relation to an area of planning that is set to feature in a major way in the coming years. Westmeath’s county development plan stipulated extended setback distances for wind farms. Setback distances, the distance between a wind turbine and a domestic dwelling, are a hugely contentious issue in rural Ireland. The original guidelines dating from 2006 have not been fully updated. Successive governments have run away from what is a hot political potato.

In Westmeath this year, the setback distances inserted for the county development plan were so long that it would not have been possible to construct any windfarms in the county. This is at a time when official climate action policy is to have 70% of electricity generated from renewables by 2030. So Westmeath was effectively taking a stance in which the county would not be making any contribution to the 70%. This stance was taken at the behest of the elected members, presumably on behalf of residents who simply don’t want the hassle of any wind turbines anywhere near them.

The regulator informed the minister for local government, Peter Burke, about this effective abrogation by a county of its national duty, and the minister directed the Westmeath council to revisit the issue. 

Ironically, when Mr Burke was a Westmeath county councillor back in 2013, he supported a motion to extend setback distances to be up to 1.5km, which would also have done away with the prospect of any wind energy being generated in the county.

The Westmeath example is, in all likelihood, a harbinger of things to come. Decarbonising is going to place major demand on wind energy, and while the current fashion among politicians is to big up offshore energy, the reality is that such development is coming from a tiny base and will be a slow burner. 

How exactly local democracy is going to deal with a ramping up of wind energy will be one to watch for the Office of the Planning Regulator.

In such a vein, it is also likely that the regulator will be subjected to further attacks from politicians on the basis that the office is being a pain in the neck by standing over plans to ensure they comply with the national guidelines.

The planning tribunal wandered all over the place and went on far too long. But at least it produced the idea of a planning regulator, a unique office but one entirely suited to a State where the political culture ensures that proper planning often goes missing in action.