Tag Archives: planning

Clare Public Participation Network, the organisation of Community and Voluntary Groups in County Clare, is holding its first county level public meeting of 2017 on Wednesday next at 7 pm in The Old Ground Hotel, Ennis. Each Public Participation Network is required to hold two county level plenary meetings each year and these meetings are the main decision making forums for the whole organisation. At Wednesday’s meeting the PPN’s board members, ‘the secretariat’ will be reflecting on the great year that Clare PPN had in 2016 and will be calling for input from all member groups about what activities to prioritise in 2017. Marie Therese Carroll, the representative from Ennis Municipal District explained, “The PPN is a great resource for community groups. In the last year, as well as having our community representatives participating in Clare County Council’s committees, we have been able to organise training and workshops for group members in all sorts of things from media and social …

THE de-zoning of almost nine acres of land land in Quin due to flooding concerns has a potential loss of between €2 million and €2.5m in land sales, a former councillor has claimed. Sonny Scanlon has previously received in the region of €1m for selling land at Madara, Quin, which facilitated the construction of 45 houses in a new housing estate. The former Fine Gael Councillor had planned to provide land to a prospective developer to build phased housing on land adjoining the existing residential estate. However, Mr Scanlon’s plans suffered a major set-back on Monday after councillors supported a recommendation from acting chief executive officer, Ger Dollard, to remove residential zoning from this site and amend the settlement boundary accordingly. According to Mr Scanlon, he had received two offers to purchase this land for €2m and €2.5m from different developers. In a submission to the planning authority by Project Design and Building Services on behalf of Mr Scanlon, it …

Lord Inchiquin Conor O’Brien has lodged an objection to a planning application by Dromoland Castle Holdings Ltd, who are seeking to bore three wells to service the castle. The company is seeking planning permission for the provision of a new potable water source serving Dromoland Castle. This would consist of three bored wells and ancillary infrastructure, including a sunken storage tank; underground contact tank; service building; pump system and all ancillary site development works. The development is proposed within the grounds of Dromoland Castle, which is a protected structure. In his objection letter to the application, Lord Inchiquin states that the application relates to an extraction of water by borehole from a watersource that extends in a defined channel under his land and which is accordingly subject to a natural right of reservation of that source attaching to his land and forming part thereof. He outlined that the water source is the subject of High Court proceedings between Lord Inchiquin …

Plans have been unveiled for the development of six solar farms, which could result in €30 million renewable energy investment in the county over the coming years. County Clare could become a leading generator of solar powered energy with the announcement that the county’s first solar farm is to be located at Ballymorris in Cratloe, just off the N18 Ennis-Limerick road. The 12.4 hectare solar farm will be connected to the national grid and will generate enough electricity to power 1,200 homes over a 25-year period. Following a number of pre-planning meetings with the local authority, Terra Solar will lodge its first planning application to develop a solar farm at its Ballymorris site in the coming weeks. The company has selected six sites that all share certain common characteristics and have applied in each case for grid connection to ESB Networks. Requiring an investment of €5 million apiece, the six sites in the Shannon area will provide enough electricity to …

WHEN it came to the crunch, a planning application by Applegreen Ltd to build a motorway service station on the Limerick to Ennis motorway has been refused permission by Clare County Council. A decision has been made on the controversial planning application, which received a number of local objections, including one from Ennis Chamber. In January, Applegreen Services Area Ltd submitted an application to Clare County Council for the development of a motorway service area at Latoon South and Latoon North, Dromoland on the M18. In making their decision to refuse permission, the planning authority noted other proposed service stations along the M18. Pat McDonagh, CEO of Supermacs, was granted planning permission for a motorway service station at junction 12 of the motorway. This decision has since been appealed to An Bord Pleanála. Meanwhile, Transport Infrastructure Ireland has undertaken public consultations in relation to the provision of an online service station between Ennis and Sixmilebridge. Clare County Council’s planning authority …

CLARE County Council has been asked to conduct a thorough planning review concerning the start of civil engineering works for a €20 million windfarm amid claims it constituted unauthorised development. Councillor PJ Kelly has called on chief executive officer, Tom Coughlan, to conduct a review into how a windfarm company, Tullabrack Energy Limited, was allowed to start work on its site in  Tullabrack in West Clare despite a series of written warnings about its alleged non-compliance with planning conditions. The Lissycasey councillor wants a review to establish whether or not planning laws were administered in accordance with proper procedure and to put the necessary structures in place to ensure there is no repetition of “administrative confusion”. “It seems that one section of the council doesn’t know what the other section is doing. There is a management deficit and I am calling on Mr Coughlan to intervene,” he said. A seven-day commencement notice for an ESB substation on the site came …

A discount supermarket should not be built in a North Clare town because part of the proposed site may have been used as a children’s burial ground, objectors to the project have claimed. Aldi Stores Ireland Ltd was granted permission by Clare County Council last month to demolish Ennistymon Mart and build a single-storey discount foodstore on the site. Now, the Save Ennistymon Mart Committee has submitted an affidavit, sworn by one of its members, to An Bord Pleanála claiming a woman who had lived in the town “had arranged for a priest to bless a part of the Fair Green below Doherty’s gate under which…the bodies of small children had been buried”. “These were unbaptised children whom the Catholic Church did not allow to be buried inside the grounds of the church and graveyard, which is nearby,” the affidavit from local farmer Tom Clair states. The group has opposed the closure and sale of Ennistymon Mart since it was …

DESPITE numerous local objections, Aldi Stores Ireland Ltd have been granted planning permission for the demolition of existing buildings at Ennistymon mart and the construction of a new discount foodstore, including off-licence, with a gross floor area of 1,590m2. Clare County Council granted their application subject to 21 conditions. These include a requirement that the development only operates between 9am and 8pm between Monday and Saturday and only between 10am and 7pm on Sundays and public holidays. There is also a requirement that there be no deliveries between 11am and 7am. The decision will be appealed to An Bord Pleanála, Pat O’Donoghue, chairman of the Save Ennistymon Mart Committee, confirmed on Wednesday. “We have decided to appeal and we have applied for an open forum because it’s much bigger than a farmers’ mart issue, there’s a lot of local residents quite unhappy with the location. There’s a lot of people who are employed in the town who are concerned about …