INCONSISTENCY among planning authorities and a dictatorship approach by An Taisce were forcing people out of rural Ireland, according to delegates to the annual seminar of the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers (IPAV), which was held in Ashford Castle, Co Mayo, at the weekend.
An Taisce has become so powerful that it has turned into a monster, overruling planning permissions granted by local authorities for completely unknown reasons, according to Senator Willie Farrell of Sligo.
"It is an organisation made up of nameless, faceless people, who don't even come down to look at a site. They just tell you they object to the development and that is the end of it. This behaviour is forcing people out of rural communities" he said.
Mr Eoin Hynes, of the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises organisation, said that Ireland was being ruled by a number of local planning authorities, each of which had its own agenda.
"In some counties they are pro-business and in another they are anti-business, making it impossible for some business people to develop," he said, calling for greater regulation of the system.
The ICMSA president, Mr Frank Allen, said that because of the BSE situation, there were too many cattle marts and this market would continue to shrink.
The president of the IPAV, Mr Tom Collins, responding to a call by the Minister of State, Mr Jim Higgins, to advise on Government intervention in the property market, said that stamp duty should be removed on both new and second-hand houses up to a value of £100,000.
"Stamp duty is acting as a deterrent to getting people to invest in property. While we are all enjoying the boom at the moment we are also taking the spiralling property process very seriously and are fully behind Central Bank strategy to reduce this," he said.