Ballyvaughan a weekday ghost town

This article is from page 8 of the 2007-08-21 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 8 JPG

THE Burren coastal village of Bally- vaughan is becoming a weekender’s paradise and a weekday ghost town.

That is the view of two Bally- vaughan residents who made their claim during the course of an objec- tion against plans by Kevin Tuohy to build 44 homes in the village.

In their objection, Brendan and Katherine O’Donoghue stated that, “further holiday homes are not re- quired for Ballyvaughan. The com- munity cannot thrive or support a

range of services with empty houses most the year round”.

“This village is becoming a week- ender’s paradise and a weekday and winter ghost town. A balance is needed now in the village and any unnecessary development pressure must be avoided.”

The land is zoned ‘other settlement land’ which allows for restricted housing development, however, the O’Donoghues state that the develop- ment represents total overdevelop- ment in the small village.

“This development does not rep-

resent controlled settlement growth and its scale does not keep pace with the village infrastructure.

In her objection, Pauline Burke of the Ballyvaughan Lodge said, “It should be quite clear already that this development is unsustainable due to water and traffic alone.

“The resident make-up in Bally- vaughan at present is approximately 70 per cent holiday home owners. Given these statistics, it 1s clear that the developer intends to market this development as holiday accommo- dation. We do not feel that this is in

keeping with the current government policy on development in villages in the west of Ireland.”

“We would consider that the lack of two bedroom accommodation will price local people out of the market and is a further example of the inten- tion to market this development as holiday accommodation.”

Ballyvaughan resident, Barry R1- chards said that, “the public sewerage is insufficient to cater for an extra 44 dwellings and to use septic tanks for such a large development would be damaging to the environment.”