An Irish Planning Students Blog » Minister for Environment

[IT] Gormley tells council to reconsider plans

Colin Broderick — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:03:00 +0000

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.

[IT] Gormley to reject remarks on incinerator

Colin Broderick — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 21:10:13 +0000

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.

The Cabinet is holding an all- day meeting in Dublin on Wednesday.

The Dáil is not due back until January 19th and Ministers will use the extra time to discuss issues of general policy in such areas as the environment, local government, energy, and social welfare.

Green Party sources told The Irish Times last night that Mr Gormley would “express dismay at Cabinet about comments by the Dublin city manager on waste policy”.

Mr Gormley is expected to draw attention to the High Court ruling of December 21st which says that when a private company collects waste, it owns that material and can determine where the waste is to be deposited.

Mr Justice Liam McKechnie also said the planned Poolbeg incinerator was “not free from uncertainty”.

Mr Gormley said at the time that in light of the decision, the council would be digging itself into “deeper trouble” by going ahead with building the 600,000-tonne incinerator.

On the issue of local government reform, the Minister will stress the need for “strong content” on the powers of regional government and the importance of ensuring that “proper funding” is put in place.

Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin will lead a discussion on social welfare policy, including the principle as to whether the lone-parent allowance should be phased out when a child turns 13.

However, Government sources were keen to emphasise there was no question of a decision being made at the meeting on this issue, and that the discussion would be confined to general policy approaches.

Ms Hanafin said last month that the Government’s policy on the one-parent family payment was not working.

She had told Cabinet colleagues the issue should be discussed formally by Government and the systems in other countries examined.

“The idea of continuing to pay somebody until their child is 22 if they’re in full-time education, it just [militates] against that lone parent herself having a stable relationship or marrying or even taking a full-time job, because of the attachment to ‘the book’,” she said.

Ms Hanafin said last month that Britain was in the process of ceasing the benefit when children reached the age of seven, but she thought that was too young and would put too much pressure on both children and parents.

IrishTimes

Gormley ‘open’ to nuclear debate

Colin Broderick — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:30:51 +0000

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.

“I believe we are now looking at the possibility of a politically binding agreement rather than a legally binding treaty,” he said. “It is disappointing and in my view it flies in the face of the fact that we are all too quickly approaching a point where the impact of climate change will become significantly more challenging and cost a lot more to address.”

Environment Protection Agency (EPA) director general Mary Kelly said time is of the essence when dealing with the issue of carbon emissions. She said Ireland is projected to exceed its 2020 emission target by almost three per cent even if all current measures reach their goal.

Some 104 industries in Ireland are covered by the European Union’s Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) and year-on-year these have seen reduction in emissions. However, emissions in the non-ETS sector are more difficult to reduce she said in her presentation.

With agriculture and transport accounting for 70 per cent of Ireland’s non-ETS emissions, she said there is a need to look at different measures including congestion charges.

She said transport demand should be decoupled from economic activity and warned of the dangers of “depending on a recession to cover our international obligations.”

IrishTimes