This article is from page 15 of the 2008-02-05 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 15 JPG
ALL-IRELAND winning Clare hurler Niall Gilligan has challenged a Clare County Council ruling that all the homes in a €7 million hous- ing development he plans for Kilkee be used for permanent occupation only.
Last month, the council gave the Sixmilebridge man planning permis- sion for 27 homes at Dough, Kilkee, on condition that each home would be the principle place of residence for the owners.
He was also told to omit two houses from the application.
The council has recently begun to implement a policy that new homes in Kilkee and Lahinch be used as per- manent rather than holiday homes.
Mr Gilligan’s appeal to An Bord Pleanala to have the conditions over- turned states that he is “extremely exasperated with the council deci- sion as he believes that at no time during the course of the application did the density of dwellings on site form part of correspondence.
“It represented a further reduction of his usable land, especially when he had already adhered to the green Space requirements for the develop- ment.
“In relation to the council requiring that the homes be used for permanent
residence, he believes that this cond1- tion should only proportionally rep- resent a percentage of his proposed housing stock and this should be re- flected as part of this condition.
“This would therefore allow for principle places of residence in nu- merous current and future residential zoned locations within the town of On rr
“In this case, by implementing this condition enblock to all dwellings, county council decisions will fur- ther increase the numbers of vacant dwellings in the off-peak season for upcoming developments once the permanent residence housing stock requirements has been fulfilled.”
A local resident opposed to the de- velopment, Ray O’ Halloran, has also lodged an appeal against the coun- cil decision placing a question mark over the entire development.
Along with the Kilkee application, Mr Gilligan also has two separate planning applications for his home village of Sixmilebridge where he is seeking to construct 14 apartments, two shops and a pub.
The council has put these applica- tions on hold after seeking further information from Mr Gilligan.
Mr Gilligan has operated his own auctioneering business in Sixmileb- ridge since 2000.
He continues to play for Clare.