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
PEOPLE who live in rural areas all their lives are being turned into urban dwellers who can’t get permission to build homes, it has been claimed. Speaking on a motion he tabled for last night’s county council meeting, Cllr Joe Arkins(FG) said that people, “who have been brought up and lived their lives in rural areas, surrounded by green fields are being urbanised because this council has drawn a line around their homes and re-zoned.” The councillor wanted the county
development plan interpreted as, he Said, was discussed with a former senior planner, to ensure that people who enjoyed the status of local rural person status should not have that status “eliminated by virtue of re- zoning the area of their birth”’.
The councillor said that much of the land which had been rezoned “will not be developed in the lifetime of this plan. Meanwhile, sites are sell- ing for figures that resemble foreign mobile phone numbers. It’s virtually impossible to buy a site.”
Councillors supported the motion
and detailed how people who had lived in the country could not now get planning permission to build if they wanted to build even a few hun- dred yards down the road.
Cllr Cathal Crowe (FF) described it as, “absurd that a person can have a line drawn around them and be told they are urban when all around them are green fields”.
Cllr Madeleine Taylor Quinn (FG) said that when the council had origi- nally discussed the issue “we were conscious of people coming in and buying up land. Now we have a situ-
ation where local rural people are be- ing actively discriminated against.”
In a reply to the councillors motion, planners said that the result of doing as the councillors had asked would be “to remove any need for any land- owner to show they have current links with the rural community.”
Replying at the meeting, senior planner John Bradley said that what councillors had asked of planners in the past was “to be consistent”.
“You don’t want us flip-flopping. You want to see consistency in deci- sions,” he said.