The decision of the Minister for the Environment Dick Roche to provide nominating rights to An Bord Pleanala for the Co. Clare based Irish Rural Dwellers Association (IRDA) was, hopefully, a positive step towards bringing balance into the decision making processes of rural planning.

This was stated by Independent MEP Marian Harkin, a member of the Executive Committee of the IRDA, when she warmly welcomed the Minister’s decision.  “Minister Roche has often expressed his concerns about planning decision in rural areas and the need to retain the viability of these areas”, she said, “and there is a real need to review current policies including the creation of a broader base of expertise and knowledge on An Bord Pleanala”.

The controversy which had arisen concerning the planning application of journalist Fintan O’Toole in Co. Clare had highlighted the existence of an extreme element in An Taisce, an organisation which needed to re-balance itself if it was not to devalue its role across a range of environment and heritage issues, the Independent MEP said.

“Fintan O’Toole, a strong critic of the IRDA, and with an unsympathetic attitude to rural dwellers. might learn a lesson from his current planning problems and have a little more sympathy with the aspirations and needs of people to live in rural areas”, she said.  O’Toole had bought into the facile and erroneous propaganda of the cabal of elements in An Taisce and in planning where knowledge of rural planning was minimal, she said.  “If his current planning problems lead him to engage in a little investigative journalism he might find that there is an alternative side to the planning argument of which he has seen only one side up to now”, Marian Harkin said.