This article is from page 11 of the 2005-08-16 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 11 JPG
CLARE County Council has been ac- cused of engaging in an abuse of proc- ess in its bid to compulsory purchase land for a new €25 million waste wa- ter treatment plant for Ennis.
The charge comes from land-owner, Peter Anthony Liddy who has joined the Diocese of Killaloe in lodging a formal objection to the Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) for the scheme.
Mr Liddy’s hard-hitting objection stems from the Council not seeking to acquire lands it will sterilize for any future development as it 1s designating the lands as a buffer zone around the waste water treatment plant proposed for Clareabbey.
In his objection, Mr Liddy describes the Council’s CPO as “ill-conceived, uninformed and premature”.
His objection states: “It now tran- spires that the Council now only in- tends to CPO part only of the lands it initially agreed to purchase and now also wished to place a buffer zone over most of what remains, thereby steriliz- ing the same.
“The piece of land not being com-
pulsory acquired by the Council is of virtually no value to our client as it is of no economic, commercial or agri- cultural value.
“We would suggest the Council is now attempting to acquire not only the lands which it initially agreed to pur- chase, but is in essence, acquiring the whole lot as a result of the imposition of this buffer zone over most of the re- mains of Mr Liddy’s property.”
“By doing this, the Council finds that the acquiring costs will be halved, but the net benefit to the Council will be the same as if they purchased all of our client’s lands. We would suggest that this is a complete abuse of process and will not be tolerated by Mr Liddy.
Meanwhile the Diocese of Killaloe this week sought to distance itself from the contents of the objection lodged in its name to the CPO.
The diocese — prior to selling the lands to a developer in June — did lodge an objection, but only against the 1m- position of a buffer zone around the waste water treatment plant. However, the new owner has lodged a revised ob- jection, listing a number of grounds in the letter to An Bord Pleanala.