Galway County Council is considering three planning applications for developments near Barna Pier which could cause controversy this autumn. They include an application from Mr Michael Molloy to build six bungalows, a waste-water treatment plant and ancillary site developments in a field near the pier. Mr Molloy is a brother of the Progressive Democrats Minister of State for the Environment, Mr Bobby Molloy.
The Minister confirmed to The Irish Times that he was a former owner of the site, and that a previous application by him for planning permission for a single house on the site was refused. He said this had happened many years ago. He had no knowledge of the current application and he did not wish to comment on it.
Mr Michael Molloy was unavailable for comment.
The second planning application, by Ms Bernadette Duffy, of Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, is for four shops and four apartments on a corner site at Barna crossroads, where the Pier Road meets the main Cois Fharraige road which runs west along the coast from the city. It includes provision for car-parking behind the shops, beside a graveyard.
A memorandum from the county council's environmental section is included in the planning file for the application. It is dated July 2nd and says the development is unacceptable as there is not proper provision for the final discharge of treated effluent. "The Barna stream is already seriously polluted and this development will add to the problems," the memo states.
Another memo about the development, from the council's engineering department, says access from the Pier Road to the main road is "flawed" and cannot be improved. "I would not recommend any development which would substantially increase the traffic at this location," the memo says.
The council wrote to the applicant on July 17th, saying the scale of the development was unacceptable. It asked her to omit the fourth shop and apartment unit and provide additional car-parking.
The proposal to build four shops and four apartments has met vigorous local opposition, with 21 residents signing objections on the grounds that the crossroads are already severely congested with traffic, especially during the summer.
In a letter to the council, the residents said the provision of 34 car-parking spaces would aggravate traffic problems in the area. They added that the on-site effluent treatment plant "goes against the tenor of recent planning decisions for Barna, which tend to avoid overloading the local environment before a proposed sewerage pumping system, as well as an integrated residential plan for Seapoint, are fully explored."
It adds: "Barna Pier and the road leading down to it are the prime amenities of the village, and any proposed development within this area should be treated with the utmost caution and sensitivity."
Barna Residents' Association has also expressed reservations about the proposal. "The volume of traffic generated by the development may lead to chaos at the Pier Road/Cois Fharraige Road junction, which is already a busy and dangerous junction," the association said in a letter to the council.
The third planning application, submitted on behalf of CGM Holdings, is for one house, four offices and six retail units on a site on the Galway side of Barna crossroads. The council received the application on the same day as Mr Molloy's application, June 27th.
If the planning applications are successful the combined impact of the developments on Barna village will be considerable.
The rapid growth of Galway city in recent years has turned the formerly Irish-speaking Gaeltacht village into an upmarket suburb, with some of the most expensive residential housing in the country. There has been a corresponding growth in traffic on the Cois Fharraige road, particularly during the summer when numbers are swollen by overseas visitors.
In recent weeks Galway and its environs have experienced severe traffic congestion daily, prompting suggestions in the local media that the county planners should consider a "park and ride" traffic plan, where visitors would park in the city suburb of Renmore and travel to the city centre on a commuter train service using the existing railway line.