Madam, – Gerry Sheeran, President of the Irish Planning Institute (Home News, February 13th), misrepresented statistics in furtherance of the ongoing campaign against building houses in rural areas.
He stated that since 1971, the number of one-off houses has increased from 156,000 to 450,000. However, the latter figure refers to detached houses in what are known as “aggregate rural areas”. This means all clusters of population with fewer than 1,500 people. It includes a huge number of towns and villages in every county where many of the houses are detached. The figure does not remotely represent the true figure for one-off houses in the open countryside.
He speaks of 12,000 individual houses completed in 2009 and while that figure is correct, Fingal, South Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Rathdown have more individual houses completed in 2009 than either Co Sligo, Offaly, Longford, Laois or Carlow. In fact, the number of individual houses in Dublin city in 2009 is greater than the number in all of Co Longford.
He says the proliferation of one-off housing was undermining rural towns by “siphoning” residential development from them. However, this is incorrect. According to the 2006 Census there was an increase of 51 per cent in houses built between 2000 and 2006 in open countryside in settlements of less than 50 houses. However, in settlements of towns of 500-999 population and in towns from 1,000 to 1,499 population, there was an increase of 145 per cent and 125 per cent respectively. This illustrates that the major increases in private dwellings occurred in small and medium sized towns and not as one-off houses.
Organisations such as the Irish Planning Institute which have an inordinate influence on national planning guidelines ignore obvious realities when advocating their policies.
Their recent suggestions that guidelines should be further prejudiced in favour of urban housing ignore the reality of grossly inferior water and sewerage infrastructure and the fact that so many urban areas are deficient in terms of quality of life.
Their policies also ignore the desirability of maintaining a healthy balance between urban and rural habitations. Although many parts of Ireland have majority rural populations – reflected in active communities, sustainable schools and sports clubs – the Irish Planning Institute (IPI) seems determined to alter the balance in favour of unsustainable urban development. – Yours, etc,