An Irish Planning Students Blog

MINISTER FOR the Environment John Gormley has told Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to reconsider plans to rezone land in south Dublin as part of its county development plan or he may make a direction forcing it to do so.

Councillors voted to accept a motion to rezone the Park Village, Carrickmines, close to the N11 motorway, to district retail centre status despite the opposition of county manager Owen Keegan.

The motion was tabled by Fine Gael councillor Tom Joyce and Fianna Fáil councillor John Byrne and passed in November by a majority of two. Some councillors complained of excessive lobbying before the vote. District retail centre status increases the space available for retail development to 25,000square metres, 6,000 more than the site’s current zoning of neighbourhood centre.

The Park Village is being developed by Park Developments Ltd. Mr Gormley wrote to the council to express his concerns about the rezoning last year. A further letter was sent to the council last Friday as part of the final consultation phase for the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Development Plan 2010-2016.

In it, the Department of the Environment on behalf of Mr Gormley expressed the Minister’s “serious concern that the council had failed to act on his previous advice and recommendation”.

The rezoning did not accord with the “hierarchy of retail centres in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown”, in the Greater Dublin Area Retail Strategy agreed by all planning authorities. The strategy would be “seriously compromised and undermined” if the rezoning went ahead. The rezoning would attract significant amounts of car-based traffic.

The department asked the council to indicate what steps it intended to take to address the Minister’s concerns.

“Failing a satisfactory response, the Minister will have to strongly consider whether further action is warranted, including the use of powers of direction under the Planning and Development Acts,” the letter said. The powers allow the Minister to order the council not to rezone lands.

MINISTER FOR the Environment John Gormley will express his “dismay” at a Cabinet meeting next week over remarks by Dublin city manager John Tierney on the controversial Poolbeg incinerator project.

Mr Tierney last week said the Minister “must be aware” that Dublin City Council had a statutory obligation to go ahead with the incinerator and that interference with the project could leave the State with a multimillion-euro compensation bill.

The incinerator site is in Mr Gormley’s own constituency of Dublin South East. As an opposition TD, he made a submission to An Bord Pleanála against the application for permission to build the facility. However, on becoming Minister, he was legally precluded from interfering in a statutory process that had already begun.

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The use of nuclear power should be open for debate, Minister for the Environment John Gormley told a climate change forum in Dublin today.

“The technologies being developed, which people claim are 100 per cent safe, are still in their infancy,” he said.

“I’ve seen presentations on chlorine fluoride reactors and on pebble bed technology but problems continue even though they say they are addressing the waste problem.”

“I remain to be convinced but I’m not closing the door…I do think we have to have a continued debate on those issues,” he said.

Mr Gormley told the forum, entitled W hat is at stake in Copenhagen? , that he felt a fully-fledged treaty is unlikely to be achieved at the climate conference in Denmark next month.

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