Wicklow County Council has been strongly advised by the Department of the Environment not to adopt major rezonings of land in Kilcoole and Newtownmountkennedy.
Mr Kevin Ring, principal officer in the Department's planning division, pointed out in a letter to the council that neither of these villages had been designated as growth centres under the Strategic Planning Guidelines for the Greater Dublin Area (GDA).
The guidelines were intended to provide an overall strategic framework for seven local authorities, including Meath, Kildare and Wicklow county councils, to ensure the orderly provision of water, sewerage and transport services in the GDA.
Yet draft plans being considered for Kilcoole and Newtown envisage they would grow to accommodate, respectively, 4,500 and 6,000 residents over the next five years. In both cases, this would more than double their current populations.
Mr Ring said such growth rates in the timescale envisaged "would seem to be a very significant divergence" from the GDA guidelines, under which growth would be concentrated in identified development centres, such as Arklow and Wicklow town.
He reminded the council that the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, had formally requested in April 1999 that each local authority in the GDA "should ensure that its development plan is in line with the strategy set out in the guidelines".
Because of pressures for more housing due to its proximity to the metropolitan area, Mr Ring said it was "imperative that the development objectives for Wicklow are soundly based on sustainable principles which have a strategic view to the future.
"In the circumstances, having regard to the Strategic Planning Guidelines and the County Development Plan, it is difficult to see how the proposed town plans for Newtownmountkennedy and Kilcoole could properly be included in your development plan."
Requesting an early report from the county secretary, Mr Michael Nicholson, the letter said that if the apparent conflict with the guidelines could not be resolved, "it is the Department's strong view that the proposed town plans . . . should not be adopted."
Last December, the Department sent a similar letter to Meath County Council expressing "serious concerns" about the latest round of land rezoning in south Meath and noting that its unrestrained growth had been "specifically rejected" by the guidelines. Mr Dempsey has made it clear that he will use new powers under last year's Planning and Development Act to instruct local authorities in the Greater Dublin Area to bring their plans into line with the guidelines, which are public policy.
Mr Dempsey's hand has also been strengthened by another provision in the Act giving statutory effect to the strategic planning guidelines from January 1st. This means that local authorities in the GDA must take them into account in formulating their plans.
As for the proposed Kilcoole and Newtownmountkennedy rezonings, Mr Bryan Doyle, Wicklow's assistant county manager, has said that the council was responding to the housing crisis in Dublin, saying that "more houses have to be built" to meet demand.
