The Irish Times reports today that a proposal to dezone land in Kerry was subject to a heated council debate yesterday. The county manager and senior planners have proposed to dezone hundreds of acres in mid-Kerry, but were met with resistance from some councillors, with landowners and developers looking on from the gallery. The chief worry was that by dezoning land those that had bought it would be bankrupted (though this is unlikely to happen to those who continued to own land that was zoned whilst in they were in possession of it). Danny Healy-Rae made the interesting observation that “the more land zoned for development, the better. It created competition and brought house prices down.” Existing home owners in Kerry, already in negative equity, might not necessarily see this as a good outcome either, though this is a situation from which there are few winners. There have been similar stories relating to Clare, Waterford and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown in recent months.
As an article in the Irish Independent earlier this month makes clear, the zoning of land over the last number of years has ignored: good planning guidelines and regional and national objectives; sensible demographic profiling of potential demand; and the absence of essential services such as water and sewerage treatment plants, energy supply, public transport or roads. Instead it has been driven by the demands of local developers and speculators, and ambitious, localised growth plans framed within a zero-sum game of potentially being left behind (if that town had growth or particular services, then this town had to have the same as well). It is extremely difficult to justify a situation in which there is presently enough land to accommodate an additional 1.1m units (as reported by the Irish Independent). That said, we are where we are, and it seems likely we are going to go through the painful process of vested interests seeking to protect investments that were made in good faith as council officials seek to rezone and dezone land that is clearly surplus to requirements in both the short and long term. And no doubt a number of cases will end up in the courts. What seems vital, however, is that lessons of the present property crisis are learnt and the zoning and planning system changed to stop what John Gormley has called ‘unfettered and irresponsible rezonings’, so that a more sustainable situation arises with respect to the environment and land/housing market.
Rob Kitchin
Ireland after NAMA 
May 14, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Hats off to the good Rob Kitchen for highlighting the ongoing challenge of rationalizing Ireland’s over-zoning.
As the country slogs through the mess of banks making property loans made to speculators without any semblance of due diligence, we need to begin a multi-step process to recover from the addiction of speculation and false land values. Messrs. Gormley and O’Connor have called on local councillors to exercise restraint, but little seems to be forthcoming. Over-zoning (and the twin evil of extended planning permission where there is no hope of development) need to be reined in by the State with legislation that ties development rights to a scheme where those who benefit from a public good (zoning and planning permission) are obliged to pay for the costs of the infrastructure to suppport development.
This not-so-novel idea was surfaced in Ireland in the 1970s with the Kenny Report and re-surfaced again 30 years later in the Report on Property undertaken by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Constitution. The Celtic Tiger was roaring loudly when the JCOC report was made and we might have not understood the importance of it. Now, even bald men talk a new language of “haircuts;” we all understand about the discounts that are to be applied to property values in the planning and zoning of Celtic Wonderland.
Is it not time, dear thoughtful colleagues, to champion the cause of user benefits/user pays as respects planning and development policy in Ireland…? We’ve been thinkin’ about this for nearly four decades and now have a good fix on the pricetag of inaction. Could the draft planning bill not be revised to include this badly-needed remedy, so that the unholy trinity of reckless bankers, greedy speculators and feckless councillors are prohibited evermore from bringing this nation to its knees once again?