The pre-occupation of planners in Co. Clare with finding reasons to refuse planning permission for one-off rural resettlement houses is indicative of a widespread attempt to prevent people moving to the open countryside.

This was stated by Marian Harkin TD, MEP when she described the recent planning refusals in West Clare as unnecessarily restrictive and in conflict with Government policy.

“Instead of devising a solution to qualify a site for housing it seems that many planners and local authorities are going out of their way to refuse planning permissions on what they describe as public health grounds”, she said.  There was a concerted campaign to place blame for ground water contamination on one-off houses, she said, despite the fact that the most recent EPA report for 2005 said that since 1995 generally there had been an increasing trend in the percentage of water samples showing zero contamination.

“Why then the pre-occupation with refusing planning permission in areas which have suffered consistent depopulation and which in Government rural and planning guidelines strongly recommend that permission should be granted”, she said.  The threat to Ireland’s water supply came much more from the failure of local authority sewerage schemes than from one-off rural houses, Marian Harkin said, and the current pre-occupation with trying to push people into urban habitation had to be strongly challenged.

“In areas like West Clare where the threat to ground water is infinitesimal, and where the rural planning guidelines specifically encourage house building in order to stabilise population, there must be acceptance that properly installed treatment systems are fully effective”, Marian Harkin said.

It was the responsibility of local authorities to implement a system which would monitor the effectiveness of treatment plants following installation, she said.