The Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Mr Ó Cuív, has claimed the mantle of Martin Luther King in upholding the "civil rights of ordinary people" to build houses in the countryside.
He was responding to a query from The Irish Times about whether his philosophical thesis about housing in rural areas - regarded as heretical by the planning establishment - had made him the Martin Luther of Irish planning.
Mr Ó Cuív, who insisted that his views reflected Government policy, was speaking after he addressed a conference in Portlaoise on rural development and the environment, organised by the Border, Midland and Western Regional Assembly. In his speech, which was warmly received by councillors and other participants, he said the time had come "to stop squabbling about whether development should be allowed in rural areas and get down to the job of figuring out how best to do it.
"Arguments on the grounds of sustainability put forward against rural housing and development in rural areas often have no firm basis in reality."
These include arguments on services for old people, pollution, use of cars and the cost of infrastructure. He said nobody "born and bred or working in a rural area should have to move from that area because of planning laws". It was "reasonable to expect" that if 40 per cent of the population live in rural Ireland, 40 per cent of the housing would be built there.
"People want the right to live in rural Ireland," Mr Ó Cuív said, adding that this right had been "absolutely endorsed" by the White Paper on Rural Development, which said that planning policy should facilitate people willing to settle in rural areas.
"We are a unique people and an ancient race with long-established traditions and settlement patterns. Why should we be forced to live by imported models, designed to suit people who live in totally different countries with totally different cultures?" His view that it was possible to reconcile rural development with the environment would be reflected in the forthcoming National Spatial Strategy.
"We are talking about the kind of Ireland we bequeath to the next generation. It is important that we get it right."
Dr Seamus Caulfield, originator of the Ceide Fields project in Co Mayo, strongly endorsed the Minister's thesis. He said that to suggest the Irish countryside was turning into a visual slum was "an attack on the society, community and homes where people live". Rejecting the view that land in Ireland was finite, Dr Caulfield said that even if 10,000 bungalows were built in the countryside every year for the next 20 years, each of them occupying a half-acre site, they would not even consume one per cent of the land mass.
He said it was "a lie" that he had advanced an "anti-planning agenda", as An Taisce had claimed. He would not even accept the term "one-off house" because what he favoured, like Mr Ó Cuív, was a return to the baile fearann, or dispersed townland pattern.
Dr Caulfield said there was also a need for rural housing to be "strictly controlled" to curtail ribbon development and the eruption of "satellite surbubs" a mile or more away from towns. Rather, the aim should be to cater for the sons and daughters of farmers.
Mr Michael Smith, national chairman of An Taisce, warned the conference that the inherent car dependency of dispersed rural housing, combined with the aging population of rural areas, represented a "potential catastrophe" for the future.
He emphasised that An Taisce was not opposed to housing in rural areas for people associated with the land. But housing for commuters and holiday-homers was another matter because its proliferation in the countryside raised serious issues of sustainability.
Referring to the strong attacks against his organisation for its interventions in the planning process, he pointed out that An Taisce had lodged appeals against only 50 one-off houses in rural areas - a ratio of 1 to 360 in terms of the numbers being built.
Mr Smith also said that An Taisce was on the same side as the BMW assembly in opposing the uncontrolled sprawl of Dublin. If the National Spatial Strategy did not address this issue by designating other cities to give them a "critical mass", it would have failed.
