A prominent businessman and developer in Clonmel is at the centre of a major political row over a proposal to rezone a 29acre land-bank in the town. Mr Michael Woodlock, who owns Flancare, a warehouse and distribution company, claims he is the victim of a personalised campaign. "My commitment to Clonmel has been 100 per cent and I'm getting weary of this," he said yesterday.
He claims if Clonmel Corporation does not reverse its decision and rezone the land at Moangarriff, investment in his company, which employs 250 people, will suffer.
The issue has divided councillors - some claim the rezoning is needed to ensure the town's balanced development, while others say Clonmel already has 360 acres of zoned, undeveloped land and does not need more.
Residents of Moangarriff, on the Waterford side of the town, have mounted a campaign to prevent the rezoning. Mr Woodlock claims their views are not representative and that they have singled him out, although he owned just 12 of the 29 acres concerned. Ten of these have been sold, subject to planning, to a local builder, Mr Michael Morrissey.
Mr Morrissey applied for planning permission to build 105 houses on the land last February. The land was zoned for agricultural use only, but a proposal to rezone it for development was later included in a draft development plan drawn up for Clonmel Corporation.
Yesterday Mr Morrissey said he had not known in advance of the rezoning proposal. He had applied for permission hoping to get a "material contravention", the mechanism whereby councillors can approve a development on land zoned for another purpose.
He said he had every reason to expect such a decision, given that the land was serviced and he had already built 32 houses in the area, also under a material contravention.
A letter to all 12 corporation members, signed by 41 residents of Moangarriff, opposes the development on grounds that include the increased traffic it would generate. They claim there is already increased traffic due to a Flancare warehouse extension which was built without planning permission.
The warehouse is on the only road into Moangarriff from the Waterford-Clonmel road. Mr Woodlock says an error was made. "I thought we were covered. As soon as I realised we did not have planning permission we applied for a retention."
That was in September last year, but little has happened since then. On January 11th Clonmel Corporation wrote to Flancare seeking further information.
On May 10th the town clerk, Mr John Daly, said: "The application cannot be considered further until the additional information is received in full." The planning file suggests nothing has happened since.
Last month Mr Niall Dennehy, a Fianna Fail councillor, wrote to Mr Daly saying he could not believe no further action had been taken. "The inference is that this illegal development can remain in place forever, so long as he does not reply to a request for further information," he wrote.
Mr Woodlock acknowledged the delay in dealing with the matter and said the retention issue could now be sorted out.
Mr Woodlock says he has spent £400,000 putting in sewerage and other services at Moangarriff, and was compelled to do this by the corporation when permission was granted for previous developments, as further development was always envisaged, he claimed.
At a meeting in July, however, councillors voted five to three to have the 29 acres at Moangarriff removed from the draft plan, a framework for development in Clonmel over the next five years.
Mr Dennehy, one of the councillors who opposed the rezoning, said he had concerns about the necessity for that particular rezoning and he had come to a principled decision from which he would not deviate. The mayor, Mr Brian O'Donnell, and his colleagues in the Workers' and Unemployed Action Group, Ms Phil Prendergast and Mr Billy Shoer, and Mr Denis Dunne, Fine Gael, also voted to have Moangarriff removed from the plan. A Fianna Fail councillor, Mr Martin O'Brien, says he is also against the rezoning.
However, the former mayor, Mr Tom Ambrose, Fianna Fail, supports the rezoning and says councillors should take a closer look at it. Ms Vera Hewitt and Mr Ted Boyle, also Fianna Fail, opposed the move to drop the Moangarriff rezoning from the development plan.
Mr Morrissey, who paid £85,000 an acre for the land which, at agricultural prices, is worth an estimated £4,000, questions why councillors support rezoning to the north and west of Clonmel, where considerable land-banks have been zoned for some time but remain undeveloped, but not to the east.
He has made a submission to the corporation urging that the land be included in the final development plan, which is due to be adopted next March.
