CDO Review 1: Introduction

1. Introduction
1.1 Overall, we believe that the process that was followed in developing the most recent plan was very good, especially with regard to the extensive public consultation involved. Moreover, we think that the policies developed and followed by Cork County Council over the last few decades have been broadly correct and that Cork County is an attractive place in which to live largely as a result of these policies.
1.2 We are very disappointed that there is no section in the Issues Paper dedicated to Sustainable Development. This should be a primary concern of the Council given the obvious phenomenon of global warming.
1.3 The State has relatively few instruments to effect change in individual behaviour so it should not be slow to use those instruments it does have. One instrument is the power to grant – or not to grant – planning permission. There seems no good reason why the Council cannot refuse permission for new housing that doesn’t, for instance, incorporate solar water heating. Likewise, it could insist on higher insulation standards, etc. in new developments.
1.4 The Planning Applications Process could be updated. New developments can be ‘notified’ to the public through inclusion of a notice in a local newspaper which might have very low circulation. Erecting a small sign outside the site might have been sufficent in an era when everyone walked the roads, but this is no longer the case. Other jurisdictions require developers to consult with and notify immediate neighbours and this type of scheme could and should be implemented in Cork.
1.5 Many of the questions posed in the issues document, while interesting and valuable, are quite impossible to answer. Most would require considerable research on what should be done, what works, what doesn’t etc. There is perhaps a danger of being driven by the collective opinion of a host of well-meaning, but ill-informed individuals. For instance, there is scope to do considerable research on ‘what is a good place to live’, and a project such as this, which might collect data on a range of regions in different countries, might provide a useful benchmark for where Cork wants to go.
1.6 Ballygarvan is part of the green belt around Cork City and we believe that there’s scope to think more deeply about what a green belt is or should be. While we recognise the huge effort that goes into planning, the end product (LAPs, and CDPs) suggests that much of the work is around assigning colours to parcels of land. The decision about lands in the green belt, which is a huge area, seems to revolve largely about picking a particular shade of green. This is effective in so far as one function of the green belt is to separate off urban areas, but it is silent on land use (other than the crude designation ‘agriculture’). The designation ‘agricultural land’ harks back to a pre-industrial era when farms could be romanticised as being close to nature, etc. But most farms today are commercial, industrial enterprises that (a) follow a high-input/high-output model of food production; (b) are inaccessible to the public; and (c) are significant contributors to the production of greenhouse gases. The Council could use its powers to incentivise farmers, especially in the green belt, to move away from the industrial farming model and instead to use the land for recreation, amenity and more environmentally friendly food production.
1.7 The Council should compulsory purchase tracts of agricultural land along the major rivers to develop river amenity walks and cycleways across the county. In general, the Council should use the CPO instrument much more widely than it does at the minute. Roads, schools, parks, amenities, houses are all ‘infrastructure’ required for the greater good, and the Council should use its powers, under Article 43 of the Constitution, to compulsory purchase lands for these forms of infrastructure.