HOUSING was a heated issue at the April full meeting of Limerick City and County Council as councillors hit out that young people in Adare are being “blaggarded” from setting up home in the area.
Fine Gael councillor John Sheahan took the view that Limerick was at odds nationally, specifically in relation to housing policy. Housing targets, he opined, were not being met.
Cllr Sheahan was also of the opinion that a review of the Limerick Development Plan 2022-2028 is needed to expedite the development of housing.
“I’m a member of a party that’s in government, and every day we hear about ramping up the housing delivery. But I can see every day as a councillor when I bring people in for planning, or I look at the local towns and villages, where the blockages are,” he said.
Cllr Sheahan hit out at the Office of the Planning Regulator for taking a knife to zoned land and cutting it out of every county development plan.
“They gave us these sustained growth figures which are totally out of sync. If you have a situation where there’s land zoned and Paddy won’t build in it because he doesn’t want to build on that land and you can’t go into the next field because it isn’t zoned. That’s what’s happening around the country, it is a ludicrous situation,” he declared.
Fianna Fáil councillor Bridie Collins had a similar motion calling for the Limerick Development Plan to be amended to allow for a positive planning application for a one-off rural house outside a development, and that the absence of affordable dwellings to purchase within a settlement be included as qualifying criteria where a housing need is demonstrated.
“I live in a tier four settlement, the village of Adare, and this has only become apparent through planning applications that somebody who is born and raised in a tier four settlement is precluded from getting permission to build outside the settlement,” Cllr Collins told Council members.
“I’m looking for affordable dwellings and I’m not looking for cheap houses. What I’m actually looking for is the actual affordability schemes to be delivered within the settlement. If they do not exist, and somebody can procure a site outside the settlement, they should be allowed to build because they have a housing need,” she insisted.
Cllr Collins cited one case in particular of a “young widow with young children. Two of those children have hearing problems. She grew up in the village and now because she’s a widow she has returned back with her children.”
“She wants to build a house outside the village and she is not allowed to get permission. This is constantly happening with our young people who are trying to live within the community.”
Fine Gael councillor Stephen Keary also had a motion on the agenda relating to the Limerick Development Plan, calling for the Council’s Planning Authority to commence a review to amend planning policies as well as a review of protected structures.
“The young people of Adare have been blaggarded in a big way, deprived of getting a site to build a house because, firstly, under the terms of the current plan, they’re precluded from buying a site outside the loop, outside of the tier four settlement zone,” he said.
Cllr Keary deemed this unconstitutional and pointed to major problems within the current plan.
“As recently as last week, I had a young couple who had purchased a site at a reasonable cost on the outskirts of Rathkeale only to be told that it was a substandard road. To me, it doesn’t look substandard, but that’s what they are saying,” he insisted.
“These young people should be given every chance and encouragement to try and get a family home in the rural countryside where they were born and reared.”
Vincent Murray, Director of Planning, Environment, and Place-Making at Limerick City and County Council, told councillors that the local authority is currently in the process of initiating a review of the development plan. Several reports and studies must be carried out first, he said, before the statutory process can begin.
“There’s eight or nine months’ work before we press the button on the statutory part, which takes two years,” he concluded.
