An Taisce's new draft policy on one-off housing in rural areas in Ireland is coming under fire in Kerry, even before the policy has been adopted.
The county has seen a proliferation of housing in the countryside, much of it in the form of ribbon development along roadsides, in recent years.
Last year around 2,500 or 65 per cent of all applications to the county council were for single houses in the countryside. Many of the county's most scenic areas are already damaged, and views from major tourist routes including parts of the Ring of Kerry have become restricted.
The building of holiday or second homes in these areas is something An Taisce has come out strongly against, and a 1998 policy document argues that holiday-home development should be within existing towns and villages.
However, An Taisce's "One-off Housing in the Countryside" policy will be a more radical step, if adopted. It proposes a virtual ban on new one-off housing, even for locals, arguing that, if a house is given permission, it should only be under the strictest guidelines - including no uPVC, red brick or arches - and then only for residents who can demonstrate a compelling social need.
There are also proposals to ask the developer to sign affidavits showing the building is for personal use.
Perhaps most controversially, An Taisce proposes that planning permission be assessed on the levels of car journeys the establishment will generate "and that the proposed dwelling will not generate long-distance car-dependent commuting".
Not all of these proposals may be adopted, and they will be subject to intense discussion with An Taisce's 27 local associations State-wide before policy is set out in the coming months.
A Kerry county councillor, Mr Michael Healy-Rae, is one of those most virulently opposed to the An Taisce proposals. He has moved a number of Section 4s, or motions to overturn refusals of planning, in the council in the past six months. "All these section 4s are for genuine people, for family members, who have a God-given right to build on their own land," he pointed out.
Mr Healy-Rae has called for the disbanding of An Taisce, which he claims is "anti-rural Ireland".
`We are trying to keep growth in rural Ireland, and they want to close it down and to make us live like rats on top of each other . . . An Taisce are like the Ku Klux Klan," he said.
A Kerry An Taisce planning officer, Ms Catherine McMullin, admitted that some of the proposals in the draft policy were meeting stiff resistance among rural members.
But she said Kerry and other counties would have to do something about one-off housing which was poised to destroy the tourist industry and the environment.
She strongly disputed Mr Healy-Rae's pleas on behalf of family members. "Allowing people to build on land because they own it is in itself discriminatory. You are giving privileges to people who own land. What about the people who don't? Are they to be left to scrub around and pay the high prices while the environment is almost destroyed?
"It is our policies that are lax. We are only catching up with other countries," Ms McMullin said.
She also took councillors in Kerry to task over the high numbers of section 4s voted through at each monthly meeting. "They are arguing that young people can't afford a site and therefore should be allowed build on the family land. But then you look at the house that is built and it's a mansion, with no money spared."
An Taisce is very much in favour of developing rural Ireland, but sensitively, and in hamlets or villages. The chairman of An Taisce, Mr Michael Smith, said the countryside had been in crisis with "bungalow bliss" and one-off housing in the past 10 years, and the policy document was to ensure the rot stopped now.
Projections are that development will continue at present rates for the next 15 years. "We never had any doubt this policy on one-off housing would be profoundly controversial and that it will attract extremely strong feelings. But nothing has been decided yet and we would welcome submissions from individuals to us at Tailors' Hall as well as from our associations. We are a completely open organisation," Mr Smith said.