Claims have been made that the figures for population expansion contained in the development plans of Meath, Kildare and Wicklow do not add up.

Michael Smith of An Taisce and members of the planning alliances in the greater Dublin area have got their calculators out and have totted up the various sections of each development plan. They claim each plan seriously underestimates the total figures contained within its covers. The result, according to Mr Smith and Ms Judy Osborne of the Wicklow Planning Alliance, is that the population forecast for the greater Dublin area may be out by as many as 200,000 people.

The figures are important as they have massive implications for the provision of essential services.

Mr Smith, on behalf of An Taisce, is currently challenging the Meath County Development Plan in the courts, arguing that it is in breach of the Strategic Planning Guidelines. If the challenge is successful, immediate challenges to the development plans of Kildare and Wicklow are likely.

Meanwhile, members of Wicklow County Council have expressed horror at the conditions imposed by their own authority on planning permission for a much-awaited new second-level school at Kilcoole, in the north of the county.

Currently, the only second-level school between Bray and Wicklow Town is St David's in Greystones. Given the fact that there are five junior schools in Greystones alone, the pressure for a new second-level school is intense. The new one proposed for Kilcoole was sanctioned by the former minister for education, Ms Gemma Hussey, in 1986 and hopes were high that it would be delivered within two years.

At the 1999 drawing up of the Wicklow County Development Plan, much was made of the "imminent" arrival of the school and the council, apparently forgetting that there was a queue of people from the villages of Rathrum, Glenealy, Kilcoole, Newtownmountkennedy, Delgany, Ashford and Greystones, among others. The result was to plan to almost double the population of Kilcoole and Newtown adding significant numbers of potential students to the new school. Such was the pressure that Mildred Fox TD made its provision a condition of her support for the Fianna Fβil/PD coalition, but it now looks as if the next election will be first.

According to Wicklow Fianna Fβil TD Mr Dick Roche, the conditions imposed by Wicklow County Council have put the school back five more years. Among the conditions are demands for contributions for road realignment and traffic management.

The unjust part of the conditions, according to Mr Roche, is that the council is building nearby and did not impose such stringent conditions on itself. There is also the possibility that the lands behind the school could be rezoned and these lands would benefit from the investment made by the school. Indeed, says Mr Roche, the council could probably not rezone them if the school does not first upgrade the road.

Where exactly this leaves the plans to double the size of Newtown and Kilcoole, nobody is quite sure.