This article is from page 14 of the 2006-09-26 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 14 JPG
A DRIVE along the route overlooking Lough Derg near Killaloe provides a snap-shot of the contrasting approaches to the control of one-off housing by Clare and North Tipperary County Councils.
On the eastern side of the lake, a free-for all continues in Tipperary with houses dotted throughout the hill-sides, while in Clare, the county’s planners are managing to limit one-off homes in sensitive landscapes to the minimum.
It makes for disgruntled Clare citizens who wish to build their dream homes in the countryside, but at least applicants know that their neighbours’ lives are also being made miserable by the council’s strict hard-line policies being applied to everyone.
The council’s overworked planners have also battled against continued assaults on the County Development Plan by councillors, as the elected members strive to ease planning restrictions for one-off homes.
So it makes it all the more surprising that senior council planning staff conspired to contravene their own County Development Plan to grant planning permission to Anna-Maria Murphy for a home near the historic Lemanagh Castle.
When An Taisce appealed, the council compounded their error by brazenly outlining the reasons why planning permission should be granted, in a submission to An Bord Pleanala running to five pages.
This was one decision the council did not want to lose, stung by the publicity in The Clare People surrounding the original decision and the accusations by An Taisce over the lack of transparency in reaching the decision.
Without the intervention of An Taisce, the public would never have become aware of the circumstances around how senior staff ignored the council’s rule-book on one-off homes, prompting the question how many other such cases lie unknown in council’s files?
The person who should be most concerned about this episode is the county’s chief planning officer, the County Manager, Alec Fleming.
The saga undermines the authority of the Development Plan and officials’ efforts to defend it.
As a matter of course, in future when executive staff are planning to disregard internal technical reports on scant evidence, those files must be referred to Mr Fleming as an additional safeguard.
More immediately, Mr Fleming must present a report at the council’s October meeting on how the ‘Lemanagh’ decision was arrived at in order to restore confidence in the council’s decision making processes.