Council in row over ‘defective’ development plan

MAYO County Council has become embroiled in a bitter rural planning row. A senior official in the Department of the Environment is challenging the authority’s adoption last April of its new county development plan (2014-2020).

Niall Cussen, the principal planning advisor at the department, hit out at the council’s failure not to implement the department’s policies and objectives in respect of sustainable rural housing, spatial planning and national roads.
This, he outlined, is in direct contravention to national and European law and unless significant steps are taken to rectify the failure, the risk of sanction by the European Commission against the council is increased.

He stated: “By making the plan in the face of adverse findings from their own strategic environmental assessment (SEA) and appropriate assessment (AA), the elected members of the council did not comply with this provision. The department is therefore very concerned that in the absence of significant steps being taken to rectify the failure to properly implement the habitats directive in the making of the plan significantly increases the risk of sanction by the European Commission and of legal challenge to the provision of the plan.

“In the opinion of the department, there is serious uncertainly over the validity of the specific aspects of the plan that are in contention and it is our view the onus rests on the authority to rectify the matter rather than relying on ministerial intervention. Accordingly, the department is strongly of the opinion that the appropriate mechanism available to remedy the issue would be to immediately initiate a variation of the county development plan to restore its findings from an SEA/AA perspective to that set out in the draft plan.”

Elected members were made aware of Mr. Cussen’s correspondence at this week's meeting of the authority. It is understood a special meeting of the council may be convened to deal with the matter.