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.