Planning applications for one-off houses in rural areas were being refused in order to swell the populations of towns and cities, and "enforced urbanisation" was at the core of the planning policy, with which there was "deep frustration", a conference of the Irish Rural Dwellers' Association (Irda) was told yesterday.
The conference in Killarney, "Last Call for Rural Planning", heard that the policy of forcing people to live in urban areas was fully endorsed by the Government and by most political parties as a cost-saving exercise, but it was having devastating effects on rural hurling and football teams and on social life.
Central Statistics Office figures due out next week would reveal a drop in the numbers living in dispersed settlement patterns in rural areas, where under the 2002 statistics some 33 per cent of the population had been shown to be living, Dr Séamus Caulfield predicted.
He said that in some parishes in north Mayo there had been a 42 per cent decline over the past 20 years - "in less than one generation".
Dr Caulfield asked: "If the grouse or snipe or salmon declined by over 40 per cent in half a generation, there would be a crisis declared for that species. Why isn't there a crisis declared for homo sapiens?"
So-called critical mass to create cities was one of the more "daft ideas" of the National Spatial Strategy, he said. "The idea that rural people should be urban fodder is a daft idea, but it is also an insult to rural people that they should be used as fodder to build up urban populations."
Tullamore, Athlone and Mullingar had been designated a gateway under the NSS and in Tullamore the population was set to grow by thousands, but this could only be achieved at the expense of rural areas by restricting planning in those areas. "Developers in these towns are licking their lips," Johnny Butterfield, an independent Offaly county councillor, told the conference.
There were calls from delegates for an end to third-party appeals to An Bord Pleanála in the case of one-off houses.
Planning was totally off the political agenda, but Irda would fight enforced urbanisation, which was the "core of the planning ideology" in Ireland, Jim Connolly, acting secretary of the association, told delegates.
South Kerry TD Jackie Healy-Rae said that the new rural housing guidelines were not working. On the election canvass, the planning issue was the "one major complaint" from families living in rural areas.