Victory changes planning landscape

Game, set and match. That's what the Burren Action Group won in the High Court last week when the Office of Public Works agreed to rehabilitate the site near Mullaghmore where it had been seeking to build a visitor centre for nine years. Now, all traces of this ill-starred project are to be wiped off the face of Co Clare.

Mullaghmore turned out to be the biggest bureaucratic own-goal in the OPW's long and often illustrious history. Not only has it cost Irish and European taxpayers a total of at least £3 million, including legal bills, but it also led to the State losing its cherished exemption from planning control, by order of the highest courts in the land.

Yet it was clear from the outset that the plan to build a major visitor centre in the heart of the Burren was doomed. The die was cast in June 1991, when Father John O'Donoghue, the BAG's chairman, addressed the issue in spiritual terms at a press conference at Tailors Hall in Dublin, referring to the area's mystical landscape.

After listening to Father O'Donoghue, whose writings on spirituality would later inspire many, I recall telling the senior OPW officials who attended the press conference that they were on a hiding to nothing at Mullaghmore because they could never face down the fervour and passionately held convictions of their opponents.

But even by then, there was a bureaucratic juggernaut in motion. Three-quarters of the original £2.7 million price-tag for the visitor centre was to come from the EU structural funds, so the cost to the Exchequer was minimal. And in any case, the OPW didn't even need to seek planning permission for the project.

The visitor centre had already been designed before anyone was consulted about it. Even as early as February 1991, after An Taisce had expressed concern about its location inside the embryonic Burren National Park, there was a scale model available. The OPW, as guardian of our heritage, would do as it wished.

It didn't seem to matter as the controversy erupted that not a single prominent conservationist, apart from the OPW's Dr Alan Craig, could be found to back the project. There was also significant opposition overseas, very publicly from the World Wide Fund for Nature and, more privately, from senior EU officials.

The only reason an environmental impact statement was commissioned was that the OPW feared it might lose the EU funding which had driven the project. The statement, by RPS Cairns, was rated "poor" by the UK Institute of Environmental Assessment, but this didn't matter in the overall scheme of things. OPW officials could count on the unstinting support of a succession of politicians: Vincent Brady, the minister of State who announced it in 1991; Noel Treacy, who signed the contract for its construction in 1992 without waiting for the outcome of the Burren Action Group's High Court challenge; and Noel Dempsey, who decided to proceed with it.

Even Michael D. Higgins, who had taken part in BAG rallies while in opposition and went on as minister for arts and culture to divest the OPW of its heritage brief in retribution for its hauteur, was persuaded that something would have to be built on the chosen site, if only because of the amount of money already spent there.

His successor, Sile de Valera, followed suit. In October 1998, after Clare County Council had reluctantly refused planning permission for a scaled-down entry point for the Burren National Park, it was in her name that an ultimately fruitless appeal was lodged with An Bord Pleanala; the Clare TD was making a last-ditch stand.

Locally, the project proved extremely divisive, with neighbour set against neighbour and even businesses associated with BAG members boycotted by those who enthusiastically endorsed the OPW's plan, some of whom had a vested interest in its progress. Equally reprehensible was their branding of Father O'Donoghue as a pagan priest.

His view of the Burren's "mystical" limestone pavement obviously made a deep impression on Tom O'Connor, An Bord Pleaala's most senior planning officer, who conducted a nine-day oral hearing on the Mullaghmore appeal in Ennis last July. His voluminous report endorsed the case made by the objectors and recommended a refusal.

In a landmark decision issued on March 3rd last, the appeals board comprehensively rejected the entry point plan because it would have generated significant concentrations of visitors and traffic in the core area of the Burren National Park. Given its international botanical significance, nature conservation must take precedence.

This is precisely the point that BAG, An Taisce and other opponents of the plan had been making for the previous nine years. If there was to be an interpretative centre for the Burren, they argued, it should be located in one of the adjoining villages, such as Corofin or Kilfenora. The core area around Mullaghmore should be left alone.

Duchas, the heritage service, did itself no favours by running with the entry point at Gortalecka, as it was officially known. In doing so, it set itself against the Heritage Council, the State body which advises on heritage matters, as well as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. But Duchas must take its orders.

Mullaghmore has now been saved, following Sile de Valera's decision on May 3rd that she would not be seeking a judicial review of An Bord Pleanala's refusal - mainly because she hadn't a legal leg to stand on - and the agreement between BAG and the OPW in the High Court last week that the contentious site would be fully restored.

The planning regime has been fundamentally altered by Mr Justice Costello's judgment in 1993, in an earlier case taken by BAG, that the OPW had no statutory power to build a visitor centre at Mullaghmore - or, indeed, many other buildings - and that the State's exemption from planning control was unconstitutional.

Legislation had to be rushed through the Dail to give retrospective legitimacy to developments already carried out by the OPW, including courthouses and Garda stations. And after the failure of an appeal to the Supreme Court, the Government had to amend the planning laws to bring all State agencies fully within their remit.

Over the past nine years, countless thousands of hours were invested in prosecuting the case for or against Mullaghmore. The opponents gave their time freely, driving to meetings every two or three weeks, making submissions, organising rallies and taking legal actions. Taxpayers picked up the tab for the State and its numerous consultants.

Had senior OPW officials such as John Mahony, its former chairman, or Michael Canny, director of the Wildlife Service, and their political masters been prepared to listen to the genuine concerns expressed by conservationists early on, this debacle might have been avoided.

The Mullaghmore visitor centre was to be bulldozed through, come hell or high water. Even after the OPW was stripped of its heritage brief in January 1995, it still took a further five years to halt the juggernaut. And although the Burren Action Group won an unqualified victory, its members are faced with a bill of up to £150,000 in legal costs.

Just as Dublin Corporation ultimately forgave the late F.X. Martin a debt of £75,000 in legal costs over the Wood Quay case, surely the Government could write off BAG's debt, too. After all, in raising the standard for nature conservation at Mullaghmore, its stalwart members truly have "done the State some service".