This article is from page 12 of the 2007-07-10 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 12 JPG
PLANNING issues once = again threatened to overshadow last night’s meeting of Clare County Council with councillors engaging in a half hour long shouting match about plans to conduct an audit of planning pro- cedures at the local authority.
Following a heated debate in coun- cil chambers, it was decided that a cross party committee would meet before the next meeting of Clare County Council and draw up the boundaries in which an audit could take place.
Concerns were raised by council- lors as to whether an audit was the best way to proceed and also if any audit could be completed before the next local election.
“I could say to the county manager he doesn’t need any audit, I could bring him in the car up to north Clare and show him houses built that should not have been built.
“T’m all for change in the planning process but we have been promised this over and over again,” said Cllr Martin Lafferty (Ind).
Clare’s planning authority was de- scribed as being “an emergency situ-
ation” by north Clare Cllr Michael Kelly (FF) while Labour’s Pascal Fitzgerald raised fears that the audit would take in excess of two years to complete and that the coulcil was “going around in circles’ on the is- sue.
Responding to these remarks, May- or Patricia McCarthy (Ind), said that no planning files would be ommited from the investigation by the auditor.
“The purpose of the audit is not to pick which cases to examine and which ones not. Every file would be examined by a specific person and that person would give us a report,’
she said.
“At least we will have something solid to talk about. An academic would quickly be able to look through the system and find out if files were missing.
“We need to try and find a balance between what the elected members and the planning officials are saying.
‘However, I did not say that all discussions on planning would stop while this was going ahead.”
Delegates are now to be chosen for an eight person cross-party commit- tee to decide how the audit will oper- a1 Ken