Donegal has long since been forgotten….No Cancer care, little in the way of bus services, no train services, badly broken up main roads, little street lighting, no road markings on b roads, atrocious water quality, water pipes leaking nearly every day of the week….the list could go on and on…

Joe Shaw, No wonder it is called the Whingers’ County!

The N13 is repaired/rebuilt every month – I drive on it every week – it must have cost a fortune. Meanwhile the gigantic metal signs telling us about pavement strengthening 2005 or water works 2007 or other long-forgotten events remain in place – clear evidence of the County Council’s idleness/incompetence.

Planning in Donegal is like their driving – self centred with no regard for others.

@barry

Those types of signs are still in place all over the country.

Good old Ireland, the Wild West of Europe.

Totally agree with ya there. €13,000 for road frontage and “services” even though your using your own sewerage system,your own water supply and your drive way is on to an existing entrance whereas in Monaghan it’s just over €2,000 for the same. If you contest the fee they just turn around and say their not granting planning permission. Crooks!

alot of them use djvu

A deceased friend of mine who was a successful Dublin architect, and on the fringes of Fianna Failures golden circle related to me about five years ago that he had just been to a big funnction and was sharing a table with A FF minister when the head of Bord Plenala went past his table and they greeted my friend. The Minister said “d’ye know that bollox?” My friend said “yes, I play golf with him” to which the eFFer says “well, I’ll be getting rid of him soon – he’s far too independent for my liking!” That was, and probably still is, the way this economic blackhole is run.

We also have the General registry office here and land registry and a prison here but They Closed our Accident and Emergency DEPT of our hospital after allowing an influx of population into the county So what the Fcuk is it all about We have so many unfinished estates here in Roscommon Town alone go out either side if the town and we see mire and more abandoned sites disgraceful

I met a guy years back was studying whatever it is you study to be a town planner.. He said we don’t hire them here.. I’m not sure if this is true, but it may explain a lot!!

Hahaha, yea, good one Jason……. you were joking weren’t you?

Of course they wont, just get re-shuffled around into some other aspect of ‘public (dis)service’

I think you may not understand a planners job! Planners make recommendations on planning permissions to the administration (ie director of services) and they make the final decisions. yes planners are hired here and you have to have a master level degree to be one that was such an ignorant comment! The fact people try to lay the blame for the situation with the planner is just passing the buck – the fault lies with councillors who have no planning knowledge and admin in local authorities.

@ Kathy I wasn’t aware they had to have a masters. I guess if they only advise council officials who can decide against that advice and they aren’t accountable then as I said we should delayer and set them free to find new jobs where their valuable advice would be in high demand.

@Jason that is one role of a planner in a local authority there are many other roles. So planners are needed. If you wasn’t to de-layer there is an excessive amount of admin staff. In my opinion I think we have way to many county and city councils these should be streamlined! But planners are needed and should be given more power on decision making as they are the professionals!

@ Kathy I agree. They should have the final stamp so reform is needed.

@Kathy, as I said, I couldn’t confirm whether my statement was true or not,
I met the guy, he was studying something in DIT, I asked him what that was and he said he would ultimately be a town planner – but that he’d have to work overseas because we train them but we don’t hire them.
He may well have been talking out his backside – I truly can’t say. At the time as it was a subject I knew sweet f.a. about so I took him at his word.

My apologies if my comment somehow offended you, but I did say I didn’t know whether it was the truth or not, and merely suggested that if this were the case it would explain the lack of foresight..

@Shanti,your comment didn’t offend me. I just wanted to point out that planners are hired here by the state. I’ma planner (well about to qualify as one) and feel that we planners have been blamed for the state our country is in but the real blame should lie with Councillors and Admin staff who dont have any professional background in planning! I think this is where the lack of foresight comes in as i said previously planners are pretty much powerless in this country!

@ Sheila. An Taisce are a voluntary organisation with 2 part-time staff. They do not make planning decisions or have the power to stop planning applications.

Councillors can’t grant permission they can deal with zoning but a councillor has no role in day to day planning! Although I agree the majority of them are so corrupt!

Completely agree Rob.

An Taisce imo should be viewed at the same level as Shell to Sea at this stage. They are at the same level bias wise. Thats not to say that the current planning system we have is a corrupt shambles, but reports like this distract people from the real problems in planning.

holiday homes are not built on zoned land

It is Government policy to dezone Ireland’s 44,000 hectares of zoned land down to about 4,000. Donegal has 2,250 ha. See http://www.myplan.ie/documents

The ranking is an average over 8 indicators..why were 60% of decisions of Donegal Co Co overturned on appeal?

It’s clear that An Taisce are not a fan of once off housing in the country. Personally I think anyone is mad building one but I don’t have a problem provided they can provide their own services (sewage & water) and the development is in line with surroundings. If someone is happy living an hr from the nearest town / local hospital that’s their own prerogative IMO.

You cannot expect the same level of services in less densely populated areas. That is the crux of my point. If you need that level of access, you need to live in / close to a large town.

@SmcB – hit the nail on the head there completely i think.

@One -Off – thanks for the random facts but not sure what i’m supposed to do with them!?

@SmcB I also agree. So what you are saying is that 25% of all Irish households [c.1 million people] should universally be subject to lower levels of services and infrastructure…and we should tolerate such a situation and not use planning restrictions to ensure that we can provide better and/or an adequate level of services to our population? so if we take your line – name a few services you would cut and/or charge full delivery cost? end subsidy of rural school buses, don’t pave roads, remove postal services, scrap rural broadband, remove health services (like the fact that there is no specialist cancer centre in the north west) further, take down phone lines..

This argument also does not stack up when you take into account the social, economic and environmental costs of sprawl.

@rob that overzoning ranking uses standard Dept. or Environment criteria. Zoned land (ha) X residential density x average household size/population. the amount of holiday homes is irrelevant as they are almost universally built on unzoned/agricultural land.

I think people should realise that in 99.9% of cases relating to mass re-zonings and inappropriate large scale developments from the past, the professional ‘planners’ would have recommended refusals of permission / advised against re-zoning based on council statistics. In majority of cases, these decisions would b overturned by Co Co directors succumbing to political pressure, or by Councillors themselves. Likewise, the large scale rezonings- if one looks to the transcripts of minutes from these Council meetings, it is obvious to see that Councillors have rejected the advice of technical staff (planners, engineers, etc) and instead sought a majority vote among elected representatives present which overrules any technical advice (even if the Councillors have been told the land to b zoned is a floodplain, they can still overrule all technical advice and herein lies the problem). Planners fighting an uphill battle to get the right decisions through the system, but Councillor interference has the strongest power, esp in rural local authorities.

That was meant as a reply to Jim Buckley Barrett above.

ohno one of the “I’m a culchie and destroying the countryside with my crappy bungalow is my god given right”…”and so what if my septic tank leaks shit into the town water supply shure aren’t they used to it”

In 2002 there were 358,000 one-off dwellings in the State. In 2011 there are 410,000, 52,000 more. 170,000 permissions granted in the past 10 years nationally.

So if they are doing what you say, they havent been very good at it!

Wow Eoin…just realised you are a Fianna Failer…..what are you showing your face around here for????

@gavin. If your worried about water pollution then you should check the standard and outfalls from the majority of town treatment systems in the country. Third world doesn’t describe how bad some of then are.

Eoin,
Why as a landowner should it be your right to build a house if you want, regardless of environmental and social implications? Given the severe lack of resources of the Irish environmental NGO movement I sincerely doubt An Taisce were objecting left right and centre to all one off houses! I remember back in the mid noughties when Bertie suddenly bought up the “ban on rural houses” as a national issue and watched an Taisce be attacked and villifed by one sided news reports and articles. There has never been a restriction or ban on one off rural houses. Look around the country and see for yourself. Look at the mess around most towns or ocastal areas. Of course it is sad that people can’t live near their parents, but is it not worse if they have to travel large distances to work everyday for that privilege? Lack of jobs forces people to live far away from their parents, not good planning. There is also the issue of social isolation with elderly people living in rural areas. Go to Donegal and see what a planning disaster that county is! Houses everywhere, including beauty spots, shooting the tourist industry in the foot there. It is very upsetting.

Gavin I have as much a right to voice my opinion as the next person. Even you are free to voice yours even if it is as skewed as your comment above about those of us from the country who value above all the environment in which we live. And for future, the county council stipulates what kind of septic tank people are to use on any new developments. These are often quite expensive, running in the average to the tune of almost €5,000.

One-off, by statute, An Taisce are only allowed to directly intervene in 5% of private dwelling cases in the state per annum. I have no doubts that if they were allowed to object to more, they would. That said, from my post above, you’ll see that I inferred that An Taisce were wrong in the majority of cases of which I am aware and the objection was shot down. However, in order to counter the objection, these people have had to spend thousands to prove themselves correct and An Taisce wrong. This is unfair on young couples especially. A case in point from the public point of view is a special bat house that was built on the Ennis by-pass on An Taisce’s insistence as they maintained that it would be needed for the migration path of a specific bat in the Ennis area. Several years later not one single bat has ever used the “bat-house” at a cost of thousands to the exchequer.

Daniel, I don’t disagree with you that certain cases of one off houses are the result of poor planning however it is a persons uttermost right to live in the place they grew up. If they choose to live in the country away from the services of a town, and as long as they meet their environmental obligations, who are you or anyone else to tell them no. By in large these are the families and communities that take care of the area, its upkeep, maintaining the touristic scenery and country amenities with the pride of place they have to have been members of their community their entire lives. If they are hounded out of these communities and into town and cities, who shall maintain these areas once their parents become elderly. Indeed, who shall care for their elderly parents? More burden on the state I guess? These people want to maintain a community, not build a summer house. More power to them!

Hi Eoin,
Evidence would suggest that the countryside is not being looked after in regards to the environment or heritage or landscape. I have no issue with people living where they work and if for example the son or daughter of a landowner who is going to take over the family farm would like to build a house then I have no issue with this. I do have an issue with landowners selling sites speculatively and I do not think that one-off houses should be given blanket permission as a rural right. I think there should be restrictions in areas of sensitive landscape or important wildlife habitats and definitely along dangerous roads. Land on the outskirts of towns and cities within a certain radius should also be under scrutiny as this is where the proliferation of urban commuting dwellers live. I really don’t understand why you feel rural communities cannot be just as vibrant in villages or hamlets. If people are working in the countryside it of course doesn’t make sense for them to live in towns or cities. But why not villages? Rural depopulation is not being brought about by restricted planning Eoin but by a lack of jobs in rural areas. The rural population was bigger in the past due to the heavy reliance on manual labour in agriculture. Those days are no more. When you say one off rural dwellers can opt out of services provided by towns, what exactly do you mean? Do you mean school transport? postal services? The cost of fuel is going to make it increasingly difficult to live this heavily car dependent lifestyle and dispersed settlement makes such services much more expensive.

@ eoin An Taisce cannot ‘intervene’ in any application.

does someone from Clontarf or Cork city centre have the uttermost right to live in the place they grew up? or does this only apply to people who have land?

One-off, An Taisce can object. An objection is an intervention.

Daniel, agree that sporadic one-off housing is wrong especially in areas of unique national importance. However, rural communities are communities same as any other. I come from a parish of 1,700 people where we have a fantastic community that’s close nit, look out for each other and the area itself. There is no village as such in the parish however (despite the area it covers), so by the above logic, this community should wither and die and the children moved into towns and cities despite their wish. It’s preposterous in a Republic to suggest such nanny state draconian measures. It was the major failure of Lemass’s early political career, to try do something similar in Gaeltacht areas, and now you have people suggesting doing the same again. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different outcome. Again, a lot of bad planning out there in the past but we shouldn’t be rushing to the other end of the spectrum either at the detriment of established communities either.

Eoin,
Given fuel costs, which experts say are not going to come down but stablise or increase, your community may suffer and go into decline anyway. Our settlement patterns should represent what is needed based on economic activity and cost/benefit analysis of location and not sentimental traditional reasons. This is why the rural settlement pattern needs to become more centralised, for the better provision of goods and services, such as school transport, rural broadband and mitigating the isolation of the rural elderly. I am not suggesting people be forced into towns and cities. But if that is where your job is then that is where you should live, from and environmental and financially sound standpoint.

Eoin. My brother and sister would have dearly loved to have been able to buy or build homes where they grew up, but the house prices were astronomical so they had to move two counties over..

It’s not a right to live where you grew up, it’s a luxury for many.

In our local area, An Taisce were the only ones I remember stopping some of the madness during the boom greed. And they always got lambasted by apparently morally-outraged people who tended to have vested interests. Well done for trying to do something.

It’s the town planners I’d like to see held to account for incompetence & complacency

Whatever about the planning process and the results shown here, that is a totally stupid thing to say.

It was a JOKE, Eddie

An taisce are a disgrace. Their default position is to object to everything. Everything.

Why their report is given the light of day is beyond me.

An Taisce seemed to try & do something right. It was a real change to see a group taking a position without ulterior motives. They did ok in our area. And it’s good to see some naming & shaming. IMO They went too easy on the councils.

Well said Tom this report is not worth the paper it’s written on! They don’t have a position if they do it’s anti development they are responsible for holding up so much development that would of been a positive for economic growth!

@ Kathy – your not very well informed