'Rural towns in crisis’ warning as members call for balanced housing plan across Westmeath

Action is needed to ensure Westmeath’s rural towns and villages are not left behind in the county’s next development plan, Cllr Denis Leonard told the November meeting of the Mullingar Kinnegad Municipal District.

Calling for a “balanced rollout of residential zoning” between Mullingar and the county’s smaller towns, Cllr Leonard said rural Ireland was being hollowed out by planning policies that concentrate development in key urban centres.

“The National Planning Framework was probably one of the most flawed documents ever written in this country,” he declared. “If we don’t get this right, we’ll end up with an awful lot of small, rural, unsustainable towns and everyone living in Mullingar or Athlone.”

He warned that unless planning policy changed, the rural areas of Westmeath would continue to lose vital services: “That’s why we’ve no doctor in Rochfortbridge, no bank in any rural town except Mullingar, hardly a credit union, no secondary school in Kinnegad, no station in Killucan. SMEs and pubs are closing, Garda numbers are halved,” he said.

Cllr Leonard said that while thousands of homes are being proposed for Mullingar, there is little land elsewhere zoned for residential use - to the extent that in many rural towns, there is not enough land zoned to accommodate a single house.

“We need to tell our planners that we want sustainable planning — not all the houses in Mullingar to the detriment of our wonderful rural towns.”

He argued that housing in smaller settlements was vital to sustain schools, clubs, and services: “These aren’t available in our rural towns because we’re not building up to that waterline which makes each of these services sustainable,” he said. “If villages like Kinnegad and Rochfortbridge don’t grow, their schools will shrink and their communities will fade.”

Cllr Leonard added that the concentration of development in large towns contradicted the government’s own sustainability goals: “The Greens say we should put everyone into two large towns in every county, but that’s the most un-Green idea I’ve ever heard. If people have to travel 20 miles for a school or a bank, that defeats the whole purpose of sustainability.”

Broad support

Cllr Alfie Devine strongly backed the motion, saying that zoning was badly needed in towns such as Castlepollard, where “a sewage treatment plant is future-proofed for another 500 houses,” but only a fraction of land is actually zoned for housing.

“There’s only six students in Coole because there’s no zoned land there,” he said. “We need to ensure that these rural villages get a certain amount of zoning and that it’s left there for future use.”

Cllr Emily Wallace said rural communities were being denied the opportunity to live locally: “People like myself, who are rural born and bred, want to live in our own villages. We’ve spent millions improving rural amenities — traffic calming, streetscaping, playgrounds — but we’re not giving people the chance to invest in and live in these communities,” she said.

She added that census data should be used to ensure that planning supports the age profile and future needs of smaller towns.

Cllr Niall Gaffney also backed the motion, saying rural communities must be “future-proofed".

“We have 16 towns with active communities – Tidy Towns, Christmas lights, sports clubs – and they want to be part of the future,” he said. “It’s not about turning them into metropolises. People in the country just want a bit of space, but they also want services like water, schools, and safe roads.”

Planning review underway

The written response to Cllr Leonard said that the council’s planning section confirmed that as part of any review of the Westmeath County Development Plan, a comprehensive appraisal will be carried out in line with relevant legislative requirements and would include consideration of the key town, the regional growth centre, as well as the remaining towns and rural villages across the county.

"Any review must ensure compliance with the National Planning Framework, and the Regional Spatial and Economic Strategy, while examining appropriate residential zoning distribution across all settlements," the reply continued before going on to state that "factors including infrastructure capacity, sustainable development patterns, and the need to support rural communities will all be taken into consideration as part of this process."

Cllr Leonard welcomed the response but urged that the planning section be formally made aware of the district’s concerns.

“This is an issue now, but if we don’t address it, it will become a crisis,” he said. “Our farming and rural communities are letting their land go to wind and solar farms because their local communities are disintegrating. That tells you everything.”