Green Party councillor, Deirdre de Burca, opposed recent calls at a Wicklow County Council meeting to have Tinahely moved from the ‘Rural’ to the ‘Urban’ section of the new County Settlement Strategy. This proposal was made by local Tinahely councillor, Vincent Blake (FG) who argued that its rural designation placed too many ‘restrictions’ on it.

Cllr de Burca expressed her surprise that Cllr Blake was seeking to have Tinahely moved from Level Six in the Rural Category of the County Settlement Strategy to Level Five in the Urban Category. “The real difference that moving Tinahely up into the Urban Section would make is that it would allow its future target population to rise, and for 50% of all new houses built to be sold on the open market - in other words to people from outside of the county” says de Burca. “If it stays in the Rural Section, its population will grow more slowly and 75% of new houses built will be reserved for people from County Wicklow”.

Cllr de Burca says that she does not believe that people in Tinahely would want their very attractive rural town to become an urban centre. “This would probably suit developers in the town but I don’t believe that the residents would welcome it” she says. “They are probably aware that since the Tinahely Local Development Plan was adopted in 2002 after much public consultation, councillors have voted on three different occasions to vary it” she says. “On one occasion they voted to rezone 17 acres of land on the outskirts of Tinahely for industrial development. More recently they voted to increase the target population of the town”.

Councillor de Burca says that people will become very cynical about the planning process in County Wicklow if they see councillors voting to change Local Development Plans without any real consultation with local residents. “As far as I am concerned Tinahely is a very attractive rural town in South County Wicklow that will only suffer if some model of urbanisation is imposed upon it” she says. “I will certainly be voting against any attempt to do so by Wicklow County Council”.