Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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The immediate reaction to the Minister of State's decision to overturn decisions made by Kildare County Council on the Celbridge local area plan is, predictably, negative. People wonder what the point is in the public process that they are encouraged to engage in when it is a forgone conclusion. The decision is pretty much made in the Custom House. Utterly disheartened people have contacted me. Some say they are contemplating moving because of the mess that will be made of the town and the total disregard for the views of the public from which there have been thousands of submissions. People have questioned the point of electing councillors when the real power lies with the council CEO and the Custom House. This is not a rogue group of councillors. They have respected the process and listened and engaged with the public but that has counted for nothing. Democracy is sullied. The sheer scale and extent of the development now provided for, the location of some of the development and the absence of supporting infrastructure and services are matters that people have real concerns about. It is a pattern that people have got used to. It is not a planning system that avoids chaos but one that creates chaos and then responds to it. People in Celbridge are not opposed to new housing - far from it - but it is not enough on its own.

The directions the Minister of State made relate to two locations. The first is Donaghcumper, a location of significant historic importance adjacent to the internationally important Castletown House. An expert study commissioned by Kildare County Council in 2006, carried out by UCD's school of architecture, landscape and civil engineering, stated:

This study has clarified the extraordinary degree of design and planning evident in the composite design of three demesnes; those of Castletown, St. Wolstan's and Donaghcumper. With their key spinal town of Celbridge they form a remarkable instance of the quality and vision of eighteenth-century landscape design.

This is at the heart of Celbridge and is why it is a historic town. Following thousands of submissions from the public, people who value their heritage, the council rezoned the land in Donaghcumper demesne as strategic open space. The council CEO had proposed zoning for a town centre extension. The Minister of State has overruled the councillors and instead says that the Donaghcumper site is centrally located and is the most appropriate location for town centre zoning for future commercial retail and other related facilities. This site is small, at 6.5 ha. It is not a gigantic site but it is important.

If it was not of historic importance, this would be fine. There is a great irony in that the Minister of State's Department, on 22 July 2009, expressed concerns at the potential of a previously proposed development and how it might impact on the character and setting of Castletown House and its designed landscape and protected views. I quote from the correspondence from the Department at the time, which states the issues of particular concern would be the potential adverse effects on the built heritage and their settings which would include Castletown House, Donaghcumper House, the built heritage of the area, the built heritage of the town, protected structures and recorded monuments. There is history to this site. Some of the lands were zoned as residential and for town centre extension. Planning applications followed in 2001. They were approved by the council but there was a lengthy oral hearing when there was an appeal to An Bord Pleanála.

Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy will have a further two minutes.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I am just finishing. The board overturned the proposals on the principle of building on this historically important site and said that it was unfortunate it was zoned in the first place.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for giving me the opportunity to address this important issue. I thank all our colleagues who engaged with me over the months about this site and this development plan, including many councillors who have engaged through the system. I also thank the residents, many hundreds of whom have emailed me personally or taken time to make submissions to the process. That is part of it. Everyone's submission was listened to, as was the council. I have visited the site and spent time in the area, as well as at Castletown House, to look at the views and see how this would affect the overall area. I take this part of my job very seriously.

I have a statutory function under the planning code whereby I monitor statutory plans to ensure that they are consistent with established national planning policies and comply with the relevant legislative requirements. Where this does not happen, the power to issue section 31 directions provides a safeguarding mechanism and is only used in a limited number of cases, relative to some 300 statutory development plans and local area plans across the State. In the case of Celbridge, I used those powers on Friday, 10 November 2017. The simple fact of the matter is that Celbridge is a strategically located town within that fast growing cluster of towns including Maynooth and Leixlip, and is earmarked to grow by about 10,000 people over the next five to ten years. We have to ask if we want Celbridge and towns like it just to be dormitory towns, full of commuters but with no commercial heart. Celbridge has a very weak, some say declining, but historic town centre. All I am trying to do is to uphold national policy in ensuring that the one small area it can grow into is not lost forever. If I did not do my job and allowed local planning policies to make these kinds of decisions, in the future those local communities would regret the situation they would find themselves in having to provide the shops and services they need at the edges of their towns and, worse than that, maybe not in those towns at all but in neighbouring towns. It will be important to get the balance right on the development of the centre of Celbridge. We will need to respect its historic urban and landscape character. I believe we would benefit from really well designed new housing right in the centre, to give new life to it and create new footfall for its struggling main street, the vitality of which should be the key focus. I emphasise that this is also to support that main centre. I have been on that street and many businesses there have seen a decline in business over the years because people cannot access it. This plan would put some housing right beside it and I support that.

There will also be a new public park and riverside amenity, which will be a major attractor for the town centre. We need to get working on putting this into practice. The land that was previously zoned a number of years ago has much less housing. There is also a portion of land that has been handed over which was owned by the local authority since 2012, which can be developed as a top-class amenity and park and protect the character of the landscape and the house and lands there. Great efforts have been made to do this right. I have seen previous planning applications and footage of what could have happened and the scale that could have happened. We are not allowing for that or envisaging that here at all. I look forward to working with Kildare County Council and others to make this vision happen and deliver it properly.

The site offers an ideal opportunity to revitalise and regenerate the core of Celbridge for new and existing residents alike and to integrate sensitively with the recognised assets of the River Liffey, Castletown demesne and the historic main street. The alternative would be the creation of more poor quality, car-based shopping and commercial developments that occupy peripheral locations and undermine the distinctive character and attraction of an important town like Celbridge. My Department is ready to work with Kildare County Council to ensure that those lands to the south of the main street at Donaghcumper are developed in a manner and at a pace that will protect the commercial vitality of the town centre, the heritage value of the adjacent Castletown demesne and will enable the creation of a new riverside public amenity as set out in the local area plan.

I have read all the submissions myself. We have engaged with the OPW, which owns the house in question, since everyone has been asking that. This is a zoning matter. It is not a matter of planning permission and anyone who wants to develop that has to bring forward plans that are sustainable, pass all the tests and that will address all the concerns of the residents in Celbridge.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I acknowledge that I have spoken to the Minister of State on several occasions about this matter. Celbridge has some 6,500 houses at the moment. There are an additional 3,500 houses proposed over the next six years. This is a nearly 70% increase. The site we are discussing today is a very small site at the centre that is historical and critical to the heritage of the town. It is the reason Celbridge is a heritage town and I question whether the national planning framework is being undermined by some of what is being proposed. Kildare, for example, has a population of 220,000 people with 80,000 extra people proposed over the next six years. We are not talking about a minor increase. Like the Minister of State's own county, Kildare is one of the areas that has done the heavy lifting in respect of residential development over the years. People engage with this process in their thousands. They do it every time. They did it with planning applications in the past and they have engaged at every stage of this process. They have the right to make their views known, but they do not feel that their views were listened to and they feel that their councillors were disrespected in the view they took. This is not just any site; this is an historically important site with an 18th century designed landscaped that is a reference point for Castletown House, of which people are rightly very proud.

The Minister of State spoke of commercial viability. That door is well closed. There is a huge 24-hour Tesco, a Lidl, an Aldi and a big SuperValu all located outside the town core. As these stores developed, the town's core businesses started to deplete. That is well gone and is not going to come back. I really wonder what the Minister of State was looking at.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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We do not share Deputy Murphy's view that it is well gone and cannot be saved. We believe this is an opportunity to save the town centre and its core. This is why this land, as a key piece of town centre land, was zoned many years ago for much more increased development. That, however, is not what this is about. This is about trying to develop a plan that can support the town, the people who live around the town and new housing on the site. Other housing was proposed for the outskirts of the town, which we have moved. We are not inflicting more houses in Celbridge with the overall number of units. It is wrong to say that. We are looking for a better balance and we are looking to develop the core centre of the town.

I have seen areas where, as the Deputy said, retail units are on the edge of the town. That does not support the town centre. We are quite happy now, and I will write to Kildare County Council on this matter, to try to work with the council on developing this site on a proper, phased basis that will work with the existing commercial town centre to get the balance right. Some new custom will be developed for those businesses through the new housing right in the centre of the town where people want to live. People do not always want to drive a car constantly. They will have a choice, with the opportunity to live beside a town centre, and to avail of all the services including the fabulous lands around Castletown House and the new park that hopefully will be developed by Kildare County Council. The council owns the land and I urge the council to bring the development forward in a very sensitive way. There is an ideal opportunity to do this right. I have read the submissions of the owners of the Castletown House and I wish everyone else would read them also. We try to respond to all the needs here.

I accept that many of the residents have raised concerns and I believe that we have managed to address those issues. With regard to some of the issues they were concerned about, compared to some of the maps that show how bad it could have been years ago with previous owners, I believe this plan is appropriate and is right. It is my job to do that. The national planning guidelines are there not to be paid lip-service, but to be used and implemented where we believe it is right. I engage with local councils often, and they generally do a great job when it comes to planning. In some cases, they do not always get it right. In this case, we believe it was not aligned with national policies and we had to intervene to make changes. It is not a decision that is taken easily and that is the reason I spent a lot of time on this decision. I went there on numerous occasions and I walked the lands to be absolutely sure we were doing the right thing. I am happy to work with all parties to develop it, but I will be clear that this is a zoning application, not a planning application.