Sir, - Your paper recently reported comments by Michael Smith, chairman of An Taisce, on the failure of the Strategic Guidelines for the Greater Dublin area to limit the sprawl of Dublin into neighbouring counties. Sadly Wicklow has become an example of how these guidelines are failing because the Department of the Environment is incapable of enforcing them.
The aim of the strategic guidelines is to limit the spread of Dublin into Wicklow and restrict commuting by car into the city from rural areas. This was to be achieved by channelling population growth, as well as industry and infrastructure, into the designated growth centres of Arklow and Wicklow town. Other villages should cater only for local needs and so would grow very slowly.
This proposal did not match the aims of Wicklow County Council, which wants to absorb as much of the housing demand from Dublin as possible and planned to do this by extensive rezoning in a range of small villages such as Kilcoole, Dunlavin, and Shillelagh.
To quote the council's own reports, it intended to spread the population "into the four corners of the county".
When Wicklow County Council initially unveiled its plans to treble the populations of the villages of Kilcoole and Newtownmountkennedy, the Department of the Environment queried why the development was not being directed towards Wicklow town and Arklow as planned in the strategic guidelines.
The council affirmed its intention to develop Wicklow and Arklow, but indicated that it was also necessary to extensively rezone throughout the county in order to accommodate "local needs". Evidently the fertility of the native population is such that it will increase in size by 30 per cent in the next 15 years.
Far from rejecting this bizarre defence, the department has given the plans the go-ahead. In doing so it has set in train a process which will eventually lead to urban Dublin sprawling as far as Wicklow town.
We have heard much recently about the spatial strategy being prepared for the country as a whole. Can we expect this to be a similar exercise in futility? - Yours, etc.,
Fiachra Etchingham, Member of Greystones Town Commission, Mountainview Park, Greystones, Co Wicklow.