A LIMERICK campsite will be forced to close its doors to tourists after an unwelcome planning decision from Limerick City and County Council.
Limerick Campsite and Aire in Feenagh was denied retention permission by the Council after it was found that its original development was undertaken without the correct planning permission.
Jason Carmody, disappointed owner of the campsite, told the Limerick Post that as the land the site is on is his own, he didn’t think he needed planning permission to operate a campsite.
“What I set out to do was to try just provide a safe parking spot for tourists, whether they’re Irish people or people from abroad, to stay for a night or two, then move on again and tour our beautiful country,” Mr Carmody told the Limerick Post.
“I put down aggregate in my own field behind my house and I opened up stands for motorhomes to park. I did that without the consultation of planning or councils because, at the end of the day, it was just my land and it was aggregate, it wasn’t like concrete or tarmacadam or whatever.”
Mr Carmody took the decision to open his own campsite, he said, due to the lack of serviced spaces for motorhome tourists to park in Ireland, which he claims is making people decide against visiting the country.
The campsite owner, who is also head of the Irish Motorhome Working Group, claims that planning officials in Limerick City and County Council refused his application outright without giving him a chance to meet with them at a pre-planning meeting.
He also says that his appointed representative on the planning application, Councillor Liam Galvin, wasn’t invited into the planning department to have his say on the application, which he stated is standard procedure for planning applications.
“They (Council planners) make a decision every Tuesday or Thursday, the councillors are invited, they put their tuppence in, and Liam Galvin said that it would have been given planning if he was there because he would not have allowed that not to pass. He says it’s badly, badly, badly needed in County Limerick,” Mr Carmody told this newspaper.
Since setting up the campsite, Jason said he has put over €100,000 of his own money into the business, and is now almost certainly looking at having to shut up shop.
Mr Carmody estimates that an appeal to An Bord Pleanála would cost in the region of a further €10,000 to €15,000, which he says he’s not willing to pay.
“I’m a working man. I have five children, three with disabilities. I’m at the end of the road I think,” he said.
Councillor Liam Galvin told the Limerick Post that he was “very disappointed” that Mr Carmody’s planning application was turned down.
“I’m living on the N21 myself and I see camper vans and caravans passing every day from the Kingdom of Kerry, which is Ireland’s tourism capital,” Cllr Galvin said.
He said that when a local councillor is named in a planning file, usually they will be notified by the planning department if the application is not going to be granted.
“This is the second time in 21 years that I haven’t been notified by the planners that an application isn’t going to go through,” he claimed.
“I know it’s silly season and people are on holidays, but this seems to have fallen between two barstools,” Cllr Galvin said.
“I would like to get this sorted for him (Mr Carmody), because he’s solving an issue that the local authority can’t solve. We need more of these camper van and caravan parks across our county.”
Cllr Galvin said that he will seek to arrange a meeting with Mr Carmody, as well as planning officials to see if a solution can be reached that benefits all parties.
Limerick City and County Council said that it doesn’t comment on live planning applications.
