DUBLIN residents could face the prospect of service charges if plans for the future development of the capital are to reach fruition, according to the Cathaoirleach of the Dublin Regional Authority, Councillor Donal Marren.
"It's going to cost money and people are going to have to pay for it," said Mr Marren. "If we want a better environment and we wants a cleaner environment it will have to be paid for.
"The financing of local government is crucial, but unless we as a people are prepared to grasp that and, within the context of overalls taxation, to provide for adequate funding for local government, we're not going to get the service. Quality service costs money."
Mr Marren was speaking at yesterday's launch of the Dublin Regional Authority's regional report. The report, the first of its kind for Dublin, provides a strategic vision for the future development of the capital.
The Dublin Regional Authority" was established in 1994 and is one of eight such authorities in the country responsible for the co ordination of public services and the monitoring of EU funding and EU programmes in each region.
The report emphasises the need for a strategic approach to the future development of the Dublin metropolitan area over a timescale of 20 years. Its proposals include the protection and enhancement of both natural and man made environments and effective measures to combat crime and ensure safety for the city's inhabitants, including "adequate Garda resources".
The report also stresses the need to reduce the region's high level of unemployment, which increased by 95 per cent between 1981 and 1993.
Mr Marren said Dublin would have to counter attempts to "ringfence" it from EU funding and maintain an urban focus to EU funds. "In the present structural funds, 1994 to 1999, Dublin region has the lowest per capita allocation of the eight regions in the country. There's a popular perception out there that Dublin has everything, that Dublin is doing very well, but that ignores the fact that there are wide areas of deprivation and worse poverty in more barren landscapes, than anything that is to be found in any bother part of the country."
The report was welcomed by the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, who described it as "excellent and timely".
Mr Bruton said that one of the major changes that will have to be addressed in the next 20-30 years is the capital's ageing population. "The big change that will have occurred 30 years from now will be that there will be far more people with hair the colour of mine living here," he said. The planning of housing should enable different generations of the same family to live close enough to each other so that the younger generation, could look out for the older, he said.