Anyone who has the wellbeing of our small towns and villages at heart should be delighted that An Bord Pleanala has thrown out plans to add a 450-house suburb to the existing 173 houses in Ballymore Eustace. The over-ruling of the decision of the deputy county manager to allow the development came at a symbolically appropriate time, just before the announcements of the results of the SuperValu Tiny Towns competition, in which Ballymore came first in Category C in Co Kildare.
Had the development been allowed to go through, Ballymore would not have qualified to enter any sort of existing competition, and instead SuperValu would have had to introduce a new category for "dormitory estate", whose bread-earning residents are gone by 6.30 in the morning, are not back until 8 o'clock in the evening, and who know as much about the community they have landed among as they do about Pluto's outer moons.
Determined reaction
There is an object lesson in all this, which would have ended quite differently if the people of the village had not been alerted to what was afoot and had not acted in a determined and co-ordinated manner. Other, less cohesive communities might well have buckled at a proposed development which seemed to have the backing not merely of powerfully wealthy individuals but also of the most influential individuals in Kildare County Council. That this might not have been the whole truth is barely relevant; it could easily have been seen to be the truth, and when it comes to taking a fight to the enemy, the perception of how strong that enemy is can be absolutely vital.
The people of Ballymore are lucky. Their village is built around a square, which adds a dynamism to their sense of community. Other villages, perhaps following a more common linear pattern, would not have been so favoured, and might easily have surrendered to the prospect of a developer quadrupling the number of houses in their immediate area. Today the houses would be in existence; and so too would the extra thousand or so cars such commuter developments inevitably bring with them, bombing down tiny country lanes in the headlong rush to get to Dublin workplaces.
At no stage did officialdom go to the people of Ballymore and say: This is what is planned for your community; what do you think of it? There was no active process of communication or consultation. Council officials did not ask this community, which would have been dwarfed, overwhelmed and destroyed by the proposed development. This is what is planned for you. What do you think? Instead, Ballymore people themselves had constantly to enquire what was going on.
Are the council officials to blame? They are not. It is not their brief or business to take the initiative on such matters. They merely comply with the planning laws, which do not compel discussion, public inquiries or specific notification to a community that something vast is approaching. Indeed, our planning laws severely restrict the power of local authorities to limit development at all once outline planning permission has been given, as it was for the Broadleas land which was to be turned into an estate.
Council vote
This land was rezoned by a council vote which the people of Ballymore were blissfully unaware was taking place. Once that had happened, council officials were severely handicapped. All three officials responsible for vetting the Ballymore estate development wrote utterly damning reports about it. They could not have been more hostile; yet on the morning the deputy county manager received those reports, he nonetheless authorised the development.
It sounds insane; but what else could he do? County councils which have vetoed particular developments on zoned sites have been sued and have lost. Was there any reason why the courts might regard the opinion of the manager - and his officials - as being superior in law to the binary power of the original zoning and the constitutionally enshrined property rights of the developer? Was, in fact, the deputy county manager defending both the financial well-being of his council and his integrity as a public servant by allowing the matter to be decided at a higher level, by An Bord Pleanala?
That local authorities are so limited in their powers both of consultation and of decision-making is clearly ludicrous; but then so too are the largely haphazard processes by which towns and villages are permitted to grow, as grow they must. But that growth must be organic, with restraint, with an eye to tradition, community and habit.
Village suburbs
Can it be right that Stillorgan-style suburbs should ever be constructed on the outskirts of any of our villages? And is not the SuperValu Tidy Towns Competition, splendid though it has been for the visual revitalisation of so many of our small communities, now not far too restricted in its remit? Might not a key factor in any future awards be the sympathy with which new developments have been added to existing towns and villages?
Moreover, should not county councils and their managers now press for severe limitations on the style and scale of house-building in existing communities? Ballymore narrowly escaped death by commuter suffocation. Unless we introduce rules, to be vigorously enforced by council officials, barely a village or a town in Ireland will escape fatal Burbankification over the coming decade of prosperity.