The controversy over planing permission for new houses in Co Kerry, particularly for holiday homes, erupted again at a meeting yesterday.
County councillors again tried to go against the advice of their planners and give the go-ahead for one-off houses in rural areas in contravention of recent amendments to the county development plan. Planning continues to be a hugely controversial issue in the council with some members insisting that rural landowners' children are not being given planning permission, despite amendments to the county development plan designed to favour the local population.
However, much of the argument is because farmers want to sell sites in scenic areas as holiday homes, Mr Tom Sheehy, senior engineer in the planning department, said.
Most of those applications refused permission were for speculative development, he said. One motion yesterday called for the scrapping of the council's rural settlement and holiday homes policies, brought in over the past 18 months to help locals get precedence in planning. The rural settlement policy, for instance, requires the applicant to establish a need to live in the area prior to the granting of permission.
Under the policy family relatives who reside in Dublin and elsewhere are prevented from building a second or holiday home on the land. The policies specifically do not accommodate people who want to speculate by selling sites for holiday homes and ultimately they are designed to make sites cheaper for local people, the meeting was told.
But Mr Michael Healy-Rae said councillors were being forced to put down motions to over-rule planners who refused permission for houses, because the policies were not working. "If you owned 100 acres in Sneem right now you can't get planning for houses, you can't plant forestry because of the new nitrate recommendations," Mr Healy-Rae said.
Mr Jimmy Deenihan TD said planning in the county was not frozen. There was not an embargo on building in rural areas.
The rural settlement policy was working well - it restricted speculative development and made sites more affordable for locals, Mr Sheehy said.