The chairman of Westmeath County Council says the council acted responsibly in rezoning large parts of the county for development.
Speaking recently on Midlands Green, Midlands 103’s environmental programme, Fintan Cooney denied accusations by the new junior minister with responsibility for planning, that councils are to blame for the development mess.
Minister of State Ciarán Cuffe, who is himself a planner by profession, criticised “the cargo cult of rezoning for all the wrong reasons”, which led to overdevelopment and has left ghost estates, unfinished, and sometimes inappropriate development.
His comments were echoed by Gerry Sheerin, new president of the Irish Planners Association at their recent national conference in Tullamore, who said “overzoning was not done in the interest of the common good but for sectoral interests, such as landowners and developers, and frequently against the advice of professional planners”.
However, Cllr Cooney said the council had been guided by the executive and by the wisdom of the day.
“The position in early 2000, 2002 when that plan was adopted were quite different from today,” he said.
He said he noted there seemed to be “a move by some government spokespersons to blame councillors for our crisis,” but, he added “there were reports issued that there was a housing crisis and there was a shortage of housing and we were more or less obliged to zone sufficient land to meet this housing shortage and they were the criterion on which councillors were working then.”
“Obviously we have too many houses, but hindsight is very good,” he said adding that he doesn’t think councillors can be blamed for the oversupply of houses.
“The record shows that the actions taken by the county councillors here collectively in this area have been responsible over the last eight, ten years and I think the evidence shows that,” he said.
According to Professor Rob Kitchin of NUI Maynooth, there are more than 20 ghost estates in Westmeath.
“That’s most unfortunate,” said Cooney, “but I don’t think that has to be the blame of the councillors. It’s economic collapse, and the decision by developers plus bankers that were responsible for that. It wasn’t the council’s decision.”
“The collapse came in,” he said, saying that couldn’t be blamed on county councils who rezoned the lands.
He accepted that there were now huge environmental and social consequences for people in terms of estates that cannot be taken over, social housing, and unfinished estates.
“We’re very conscious of that,” he said, but added Westmeath hadn’t zoned “excessive land”.
“There might be three or four areas where there was some over-zoning and these were brought to our attention in the preparation of the current development plan and following that we have decided that only 60 per cent of the area will be developed in the future.”
“Extensive” zoning and development in Mullingar and Athlone was in line with government policy, he said as both are gateway towns “and the strategy was to double the population in those areas”.
