This article is from page 4 of the 2012-04-17 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 4 JPG
CLARE planning is in the dock this week after the county capital of Ennis has been held up by heritage watchdog, An Taisce, as being “an example of some of the most senseless zoning excesses of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ era”.
This damning indictment has been delivered in an Taisce’s hard-hitting annual report, ‘ State of the Nation – A Review of Ireland’s Planning Sys- tem 2000-2011’ that was published on Monday.
Ennis and wider Clare have been singled out for special mention in the 45-page report that turns the microscope on 32 planning authorities throughout the country.
Clare has been ranked 23rd out of the 32, the planning in Ennis coming in for special mention because of a range of decisions that were made during the 11-year timeframe covered by the report.
“Clare was the most over-zoned county in the State with 3,208 hectares allowing for an overall additional population of 273,000,” the report says, while noting that between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of all planning decisions in the county was for one-off housing in unzoned land.
In Ennis, An Taisce have said that “almost 4,500 acres of land was zoned for development, sufficient to increase the population of the town from 26,000 people to over 100,000”.
And in turning the microscope on Clare, An Taisce mentions one high profile planning case – the 48 acres of zoned land sold by Clarecastle man JJ McCabe to a Galway developer for € 18.8m that was subsequently re fused planning permission because it was located on a flood plain.
“Despite the fact that Ennis was one of the worst affected areas by flooding in 2009, and that the town only needed a maximum of 175 acres, the Department of the Environment encountered significant difficulties from local councillors in seeking to get this land de-zoned,” said An Taisce.
Commenting on the report, Clare County Council has said that “through its Clare County Development Plan 2011-2017, was one of the first local authorities in the country to adopt a ‘Core Strategy’ as required under the Planning & Development (Amendment) Act 2010”.
And the council has also stated that as part of local area plans in east, north, south, west Clare and Shannon “hundreds of hectares of lands previously zoned for residential use have been dezoned”.
“In addition, in 2011 Ennis Town Council and Clare County Council adopted variation No. 2 of the Ennis & Environs Development Plan 2008-2014 to introduce a phasing of zoned lands to bring the amount of zoned land in Ennis fully in line with agreed national and regional population targets for Ennis”. Tue17April12