Marion Schulz and her partner, Michael Guiheen, took out a credit union loan in 1996 to buy a two-and-a-quarter acre site half a mile from Mountshannon, in Co Clare.
It was their intention to build their first home there and raise their two children. But the outcome of their plan became uncertain when an application for outline planning permission to the county council resulted in a request for further information. After their case became public, the council policy was described as racist and planning apartheid by the South African-born former Clare TD, Dr Moosajee Bhamjee. The Clare Champion said the council was "sipping from the same pot" as the Austrian anti-immigration Freedom Party and wanted to carry out "a purge of non-indigenous Clare people".
The council's questions came under its policy of constraining building in areas under development pressure and in "visually vulnerable" and open countryside areas, by refusing planning permission to non-locals with no connection to an area. The questions rankled with Ms Schulz. "I did feel they were personal - questions relating to work and how long we were here and our connection with the area."
She grew up in the German city of Herne, in the Ruhr valley, but has been in rented accommodation with her Kerryborn partner, a part-time teacher, in Co Clare since 1993 and in the Dingle area since 1981.
They also applied to build a second dwelling on the same site, initially to sell it on, but now to allow Ms Schulz's mother and stepfather in Germany to move to the area.
The county manager, Mr Willie Moloney, says the planning policy has been misinterpreted. "It is by no means racist or apartheid or anything else."
In fact the planning laws were more restrictive under the old county development plan because it constrained locals, including returned emigrants, who were not landowners or their sons or daughters to build in the sensitive areas. Overall, the strategy is aimed at repopulating areas in decline, in particular the small towns and villages where the council has invested in infrastructure. "We want to try to sustain the development of those areas in order to protect the local school, the local post office, the Garda station, the places that are in danger of closing down if we do not maintain the population."
A person residing in an area for 10 years is regarded as local but Mr Moloney says there is flexibility in assessing cases. The Fianna Fail council chairman, Sean Hillery, says that after the policy was thrashed out last year with council officials, the 31 councillors were unanimous in passing it. "We are not keeping people out. We never intended that. All we wanted was some form of plan to control the ribbon development that was going on . . ." he says. Senator Madeleine TaylorQuinn, of Fine Gael, says places under development pressure, such as Ennis, Shannon, Lahinch and the Lough Derg area, are in danger of being too expensive for middle-income locals to settle there.
"If a locality loses its native people and its native workforce, then it really loses the very sense of what it is," she says. One loophole for prospective
developers to the country is the liberal attitude being taken on refurbishing derelict houses, no matter how scenic or isolated the area is.
Meanwhile, Ms Schulz is waiting for a reply from the council. She concedes that some policy on planning is necessary but when she sees the scale of holiday home development, she feels she is being unfairly treated.
In certain low-pressure areas, developers can build a maximum of 10 holiday homes in a "cluster" to keep the development sustainable.
"It just seems to me if you have lots of money and you can afford to build 10 or 20 houses, you can build them and make a profit," Ms Schultz says. For Jim Connolly, a Clareman whose Rural Resettlement Programme has settled 400 families in urban local authority houses in homes in the country, every holiday home in an area is "a nail in the coffin".
The policy on non-locals, he says, goes against the trend of the global development in movement of people and establishes a precedent of deciding who one's neighbour should be. "It is only a matter of degree between bringing in local authority rules and enforcing them at the point of a gun. That may sound dramatic but you do not have to go very far to see it."