Planning reform needed in the Republic

dublin | politics / elections | press release Sunday May 06, 2007 20:12 by Noel O'Gara - THE PLANNING REFORM PARTY noelogara at iol dot ie 0906430197

How the land was stolen from the people

How the land was stolen with the planning laws by our own political masters.

THE PLANNING REFORM PARTY

MANIFESTO

NOEL
O’GARA

VOTE
NO 1
The love of the land is the dearest thing to every Irish person’s heart. Our 800 year struggle for national self determination was fundamentally a struggle for the ownership and control of the land.
We actually had achieved this freedom and ownership after the troubles when the British had given up their grip on the people and on the land of the 26 county Free State. We were finally free to determine our own future with our own constitution and our own judiciary freed from the monarchy.
Then in 1963 at a time of economic stagnation bordering on national bankruptcy, while our youth were leaving the country in droves to seek work in England and America, our very own home grown politicians stole the lands of the Free State back from the farmers and landowners when they brought the planning laws on to the statute books. These laws effectively consigned the land owner to the role of a herdsman or crop grower and to being only a nominal owner or caretaker of the land. There was no referendum to the people.
If a land owner wished to build a house or do any business on his own land he would have to get permission first and that is costly and not easy to achieve as many an innocent person found out to his dismay.
A person who cannot build on his or her own land does not own the land.
Our own politicians stole the most valuable element of the land from the Irish people and vested it in the hands of a faceless bureaucracy who now exert absolute and total control over all land use.

These planning laws were unconstitutional in 1963 and were a recipe for bribery and corruption that the tribunals are revealing. They are equally unconstitutional today and, as a citizen of the Irish Republic I assert the constitutional right of every Irishman or woman to do what they wish on their own land without having to ask for permission from bureaucrats, politicians or planners and pay them huge fees for this.
This right was gained for us by generations of patriots who sacrificed everything, even their lives, for us.
We do need a code of planning guidelines drawn up for developers, that would ensure that a development didn’t injure or obstruct other people. Guidelines such as no building closer than, say 25 yards from the centre of any road, railway, canal or river. No polluting of the waterways etc. Guidelines should be on commonsense matters.
It was not only the landowners who were mugged by the planning laws but the young landless Irish person who dreams of building a home for his/her own family.
You, whose forefathers sacrificed their liberty for the freedom of their children have been denied the liberty to buy a small piece of this supposedly Free State’s land and develop your own dream home in a location of your choosing by draconian legislation of our own politicians’ making.
Without planning laws, you could buy a small farm or an acre of land in a beautiful scenic spot of your choosing for small money and build any house you wished and do so at a fraction of the price rather than being funneled into zoned jerry built houses with paper thin walls and no view of the beautiful landscapes that are reserved for the birds by the planners. There you are saddled with a mortgage on your back for your lifetime when you could have bought an acre of land for 10 to 20 thousand Euros. God made a lot of land in Ireland for the Irish people but the planners have zoned tiny portions of it to suit their purpose and to confine and control the people. Planning controls and zoning have enriched the few well connected at the expense of the many and corrupted officialdom in the process. Now those chickens are coming home to roost in the tribunals and the courts.

A vote for the Planning Reform Party is a vote for freedom,
Whether you are a Fianna Fail or a Fine Gael loyal supporter, please face up to the fact that these once great parties have lost their way because of the planning and need to get back on track. If you can’t give Noel O’Gara your number 1 vote, than give him your number 2 because he is committed to freedom and justice for all.
Freedom to the land owners means freedom to the entrepreneurs who will identify the opportunity, buy the land and create developments that will provide the necessary services for all the people. Hospitals and all kinds of medical services will be developed by business people to cater for that market once freed from interference.
Would you prefer Mary Harney do it? Just as Mary O’Rourke put a tax on your talk and sold off your future for her political pension. Freedom from bureaucracy and red tape is the aim of the Planning Reform Party.

A vote for O’Gara will get the bureaucrats off your back
If you live in a city or town and in your own home if you wish to turn your front room into an office or a shop, or turn your basement into an apartment or use your front garden as a car park why can’t you do that? Where has your freedom gone to? Why pay huge fees to get permission from planners? We will restore your stolen rights.
Before 1963 Irish towns and cities were developed by land owners and builders without planning permission laws. The market dictated what was needed and builders and developers met that demand.
They built towns and cities with infrastructure and character while today’s planners have built monstrosities and are desperate to preserve that legacy of the past because they cannot compete with it.
The planners have a legacy of incompetence. They built Ballymun and many more white elephants and planned all the unfinished estates up and down the country. Quality of life was not an issue to them.
The planners crammed anti social people into their own estates and destroyed the quality of life of the majority decent people who have to bring up their families in fear.
Those people could have found rented houses in small private estates all over the place if there was no zoning.
Do not be deluded by cries of ‘what about the common good’ to justify these controls. That was the catch cry of the communist party in Russia. Our political masters have already shunted this Republic a long way down that road to instability and they have distorted the property market so much so that nobody knows the value of anything anymore. The planners have polluted the water in Galway and perhaps the whole country, they have failed to provide proper roads and car parking, they pump sewage into the seas and spread it on the land at night.
Our essential services are run by unaccountable bureaucrats rather than smart business people This is the bureaucratic nightmare that the planning laws have imposed on this Republic which could have been a model for the whole of Europe and this party is committed to reforming them as outlined.
Vote for the Planning Reform Party
Restore Ireland from bureaucracy to democracy

Address Ballinahowen Court, Athlone, Co Westmeath. 0906430107 email noelogara@iol.ie