Many planners despair at the policy on planning, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
The Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, would have found few fans at the Irish Planning Institute's annual conference in Mullingar, which concluded yesterday.
Among some planners, he has become known as "the Minister for Anti-Environment".
None of those who spoke to The Irish Times would do so on the record because of the sensitivity of their jobs - apart from Mr Fergal MacCabe, a former president of the institute, who said the credibility of the planning system was at stake.
"There's a plethora of directives, guidelines and regulations flowing out of Government at a time when the credibility of the planning system itself and public confidence in it is very shaky."
Mr Cullen declined a formal invitation to address the conference, and sent along one of his junior ministers, Mr Noel Ahern, who sought to portray the new rural housing guidelines as good news for planners.
"It's laughable, really", one planner said.
Mr Ahern, who is the Taoiseach's brother, had to sit through a 20-minute speech by the institute's president, Mr Iain Douglas, who used such bald terms as "gerrymandering" and "railroading" to characterise the Government's recent actions.
He complained that Mr Cullen had meetings with "disgruntled opportunists" when he was framing his controversial guidelines on rural housing, but had not extended the same courtesy to the main professional body representing Ireland's planners.
By the time Mr Douglas had finished denouncing the short-termist approach being taken by the Government on rural housing and decentralisation, "Noel Ahern looked as if he had swallowed a lemon", as one of those attending observed. "Morale is low, there's no doubt about that."
Another planner said the rural housing guidelines "play to the worst element of clientelist politics" because they were "all about fixing up individuals" with planning permissions. "What's happening in Kerry now is just the tip of the iceberg."
A practising planner said she had spent her professional life "preaching the principles of good planning practice", and one of the central tenets was that a permission attached to the land rather than the landowner.
"That's now being turned around, so we're into a free-for-all where planners will come under emotional blackmail to consider the 'needs' of individual applicants for houses in rural areas.
"Urban kids haven't a hope of getting the same treatment. If all the children of the nation are to be cherished equally, as the Constitution says, surely they have an equal right to live near their parents in the areas where they grew up if they choose to do so. But they can't because of high house prices."
Just because someone had land "shouldn't make them more privileged", she said, referring to the Taoiseach's view that people with roots in rural Ireland had a right to build houses in their own areas. "Why doesn't he apply that to Drumcondra?"
The new, more liberal regime being introduced by Mr Cullen would "turn the system on its head", another planner said.
"Instead of looking at what a community needs to be vibrant and sustainable, we're meant to look at what individuals want."
Planning had suffered more than merely a lack of support from politicians in recent years, another said. "What's happening before our very eyes is that Martin Cullen is actively dismantling Ireland's planning and environmental infrastructure."