Landowners in north Co Dublin stand to make several hundred million pounds in windfall gains as a result of Fingal County Council's plans to rezone substantial tracts of farmland for development, it has emerged.
The proposed rezonings include the former Baldoyle racecourse and adjoining land between the Dublin-Belfast railway line and Baldoyle estuary as well as the former Phoenix Park racecourse, where plans for a casino and conference centre have been abandoned.
In Balbriggan alone, the draft Fingal county development plan would rezone 530 acres of agricultural land to the west and south of the town for housing and a further 163 acres for industry. Ultimately, the council envisages Balbriggan will have a population of 25,000.
The draft plan, circulated to councillors last Wednesday, is being debated at a series of special meetings over the next 10 days, after which it will go on public exhibition for three months. Some councillors have already tabled further rezonings for inclusion in the draft.
An attempt by Mr David Healy (Greens) to have consideration of the new county plan extended from June to December 1999, allowing councillors to take into account strategic regional planning guidelines now being prepared, was defeated at the first of the meetings yesterday by 17 votes to three.
Mr Healy said there was "something Alice in Wonderland about going ahead with a new development plan" before the strategic planning guidelines for the greater Dublin region (including Meath, Kildare and Wicklow) were produced by consultants appointed last June.
But Mr Tom Kelleher (Labour) said the council would have to provide more housing in its area for the people who were getting jobs there.
Mr Joe Higgins TD (Socialist Party) said it was clear the "obscene profiteering" in the housing market was now being used as an excuse for more land rezoning.
The county manager, Mr William Soffe, denied there had been undue haste in preparing the draft plan.
Mr Higgins said there was already almost 2,000 acres of zoned land in the Fingal area - enough to last until 2010 - which had not yet been developed.
Mr Peter Coyle (Labour) said there was "hysteria" among landowners in Fingal to have their land rezoned. So many of them, misled by other councillors about the process involved, had been lobbying him in recent weeks that he barely had enough time to eat his dinner.
But Mr G.V. Wright TD (Fianna Fail) said Fingal was the most successful area in Ireland in attracting inward investment and, with Dublin Airport projected to grow to a throughput of 20 million passengers a year, decisions had to be made on rezoning more land.
Mr Soffe told the councillors the substantial rezonings he was proposing were based on planning grounds and had "nothing to do with land ownership". He also maintained there had been "extensive public consultation" on the general strategy being pursued.
Mr Healy said it was "not enough to go out to the public with a glossy brochure titled `Fingal 2000' and not tell people in Baldoyle, for example, that you're going to rezone their greenbelt". This was not genuine public consultation, but "just tokenism", he said.
The county manager defended the draft plan as "thrusting, up-todate and dealing with new ideas" - such as the proposal that any major tract of land rezoned for residential development would be subject to an action plan which would specify provision for social housing.
Mr Soffe described new housing at present as a "sellers' market" and said it was "not sustainable" that people with jobs in the Fingal area should have to commute from Dundalk, Navan, Maynooth or Wicklow because they could not afford to buy houses in Fingal itself.
He also suggested that, in addition to landowners and builders "jacking up" their prices, there was another form of greed on the part of "people who have got a house and a job and don't want anyone else coming to live in their area". This would also have to be "faced down", he said.
Mr Higgins said he was "astounded" that the county manager would put people who were simply defending a greenbelt in the same category as those who had caused "mayhem" in the housing market. "If they didn't do it [defend greenbelts] we would have wall-to-wall concrete."
The cathaoirleach, Mr Cathal Boland (FG), vigorously defended the proposed rezonings in Balbriggan, which would at last have a chance to develop as a community.
An attempt by Mr Higgins to have the extensive rezonings in Balbriggan deferred was defeated by 20 votes to two.
