Activists see opportunity to get firm guarantee of real planning

TONY McEvoy, a quietspoken science teacher from Clane, Co Kildare, is so modest that he agreed to be interviewed only under duress. Yet he is an outstanding example of the new breed of community activists who have no fears about taking on the powers that be.

Despite the loss of his right and in a machinery accident when he was 21, he sweeps the streets of Clane every morning "in the same way as other people go jogging".

He's been doing it for the past 12 years, since Kildare County Council said it could no longer afford to perform this basic civic function.

"I'm the sort of person who takes on responsibilities, maybe too many," Mr McEvoy says.

He is involved in the Tidy Towns Committee and the Clane Community Council, now in its 25th year, as well as being an articulate spokesman for the Clane Public Committee Against Excessive Rezoning (of land).

This was formed two years ago after Kildare county councillors voted to rezone 139 acres of land around the village, threatening to increase its population more than threefold to 11,000, almost as large as Naas.

"We were aghast, because Clane's infrastructure and facilities were already bursting at the seams.

The same thing was happening to every town in north Kildare. But instead of taking it lying down, the people revolted.

Petitions were collected, with overwhelming public support, but Fianna Fail and Fine Gael councillors could not be dissuaded from voting through the land rezonings, usually with PD support.

The people went further. All nine towns got together to form the North Kildare Alliance for Better Planning. It was a year old last week.

Undeterred, the Kildare councillors adopted their "plan" for Clane by 18 votes to five last July.

"We wrote to the party leaders and the environment spokespeople," Mr McEvoy recalled.

"Noel Dempsey (of Fianna Fail) didn't reply and we got a pleasant but cursory response from the Taoiseach, which said nothing.

"The only parties which were prepared to back us were the ones who were already doing so, Labour, Democratic Left and the Greens.

"It was very frustrating. We even had to go through the Council for the West - we've also joined forces with them - to use their good offices to arrange an interview with Bertie Ahern.

"He told all the media in the west that there was a need for proper national planning and what was happening in Dublin's hinterland was wrong.

"But he doesn't say that on this side of the country. He talks about an environmental policy where he will cons tilt with the `partners', which we take to mean builders, landowners and financiers."

Clane's prospects started to look brighter when the Minister for the Environment intervened in the Kildare rezoning dispute last September, effectively ordering the county council to produce a strategic plan. A High Court action for judicial review, in Mr McEvoy's wife's name, resulted in the Clane plan being struck down.

A firm of planning consultants, Blackwell and Associates, was commissioned to produce a strategic plan for Co Kildare. It recommended that development should be concentrated around Naas and Newbridge to relieve pressure for largescale land rezoning in the northern part of the county, closest to Dublin.

"Fine Gael wanted the word `strategy' removed because, as one of their councillors said, they could be `hung on it later.' They went over it [the Blackwell plan] word by word with a view to giving themselves the greatest possible freedom to rezone land everywhere. Yet there's enough land zoned in Clane to bring its population to 7,000."

An audit of residentially zoned land, requested by councillors Ms Catherine Murphy (DL) and Mr John McGinley (Labour), showed that there were already 2,850 acres in the county which had not yet been developed.

Given that the next local elections have been put off until June 1998, Mr McEvoy says the only option which local people have is to make their feelings known in the general election; and the North Kildare Alliance for Better Planning is about to distribute 16,000 leaflets suggesting what they should do.

"We don't want to appear to be political, because we're a non party political group, but we're putting it up to the people that if they value good planning in their community, they now have no option but to vote down Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and the PDs.

"But we're still open if the party leaders give us firm guarantees on proper planning."