This article is from page 11 of the 2007-07-03 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 11 JPG
ENNIS Green Party councillor Don- al O’Bearra has claimed that there is no need to zone further land for housing in Ennis.
He made his comments following a workshop on planning and rezoning with planners which heard that there was already enough zoned land.
Councillors and planners have been holding workshops to adjudicate on 168 submissions on planning and rezoning in the county. The next workshop will be held tomorrow (Wednesday). The first workshop with councillors dealt with the first 13 submissions.
Cllr O’Bearra told The Clare Peo- ple yesterday: “The planners ex- plained that there is already enough land already zoned and I would be- lieve that when there is enough room within the Serviced Land Initiative (SLI) why do we need to zone more land for housing?
‘There is a need to get critical mass in order to get bus routes in place and that can’t be done if we continue to rezone lands.”
Cllr O’Bearra added: “I will be accepting the advice of the plan- ners that we don’t need to zone these lands because there is no need for it. The common good has to take prec- edence here and we must get away from the car-dependent culture that we have at the moment.
“The more land we zone for hous- ing in the outskirts of Ennis, the more car dependent we will be.”
The rezonings proposed for the En- nis and Environs Development Plan are to come before the July meeting of Clare County Council next Mon- day where councillors will be able to give directions to the County Man- ager, Alec Fleming on the various submissions before them.
Cllr O’Bearra alleged that planners were bullied into making rezoning decisions by councillors when draw- ing up the existing Ennis and Envi- rons Development Plan.
Asked if any such activity had tak- en place this time, Cllr O’Bearra said
4 y
no.
In total, developers seeking to prof- it from the property boom are seek- ing to rezone a total of 1,720 acres of land around Ennis to residential, mixed use, commercial and indus- were
The developers are seeking to re- zone 1,247 acres of land for hous- ing, 150 acres for mixed-use devel- opment, 115 acres for commercial development, 57 acres for industrial and 97 acres for low density residen- tial zoning.