A legal challenge to the Meath County Development Plan has created grave uncertainty within the county, the High Court heard yesterday.
Many proposed sales and development of lands had been deferred pending a resolution of the proceedings, the Meath county manager, Mr Joe Horan, said. In an affidavit, Mr Horan said the Construction Industry Federation had been in contact with the council advising that federation members cannot commit themselves to development projects within the county until the uncertainty was resolved.
Yesterday was the second day of the hearing before Mr Justice Quirke of an application by Mr Tony McEvoy, a member of Kildare County Council, and Mr Michael Smith, chairman of An Taisce, for an order quashing the plan. They claim it does not comply with strategic planning guidelines for the greater Dublin area published in March 1999.
In his affidavit, Mr Horan said the planning guidelines set out a broad development framework for the greater Dublin area and were not concerned with local development issues within specific locations. That was left to elected members in the formulation of their development plan.
It was never intended that the guidelines be "deterministic" in pinning down local matters, he said. Responsibility for dealing with local issues rested with the elected members of each authority who, in doing so, needed to correlate those issues with the regional framework established by the guidelines. He believed the elected members of Meath County Council had fulfilled their statutory duties and obligations in adopting the development plan and had taken regard of the strategic planning guidelines for the greater Dublin area.
Mr Horan said Meath, Kildare and Wicklow, together with the local authority areas in Co Dublin, had experienced an unprecedented rate of growth, reflected in the level of development and building activity and a demand for building land.
The need for guidelines for the greater Dublin area was recognised. The demand for such guidelines emanated in the first instance from the local authorities themselves. In 1998, the Dublin and mid-east local and regional authorities, of which Meath County Council was part, had appointed consultants Brady Shipman Martin to prepare guidelines for greater Dublin.
A number of committees were formed to liaise with the consultants. Those committees were representative of the relevant local authorities. Meath County Council was represented. Prior to publication of the initial report, the individual local authorities were formally consulted as were the public.
Mr Joe Fahy, a senior engineer in Meath County Council's planning department, said the development plan was adopted by the council on March 5th, 2001. The hearing continues today.