'To hell with the countryside': Fears in Galway about impact of proposed cap on one-off housing

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Galway County Council has received a wave of planning applications for one-off housing amid concerns that it will soon be significantly more difficult to build such homes in rural areas.

It comes amid a national move away from one-off housing. File photo. Image: Shutterstock It comes amid a national move away from one-off housing. File photo. Image: Shutterstock GALWAY COUNTY COUNCIL has received a wave of planning applications for one-off housing amid concerns that it will soon be significantly more difficult to build such homes in rural areas.

The plan will dictate planning policy for the entire county with the exception of a 50 square kilometre area around Galway city, which is overseen by the city council. The local authority’s planning portal shows many recent applications for one-off housing marked as ‘incomplete’ and dozens of instances where the council has requested further information from applicants.

The stats for the first three quarters of 2021 also show that 437 one-off homes had already secured permission last year. “If we have a core strategy that says only 900 or thereabouts houses can be built in six years, obviously we’d run into a major problem very shortly,” Fine Gael councillor Joe Byrne told The Journal.In a bid to overcome this potential scenario, an amendment passed by councillors removed the quota, stating that limiting one-off housing is not in compliance with the National Planning Framework objectives.

“There are various stages of development plans. At all the stages our planners assess the development plans, just to make sure that they adhere to national policy,” a spokesperson for the OPR said. In its most recent recommendations to Galway County Council, which were issued last week, the OPR said amendments to the plan were “not consistent with national or regional policies.”

If the Minister decides in our favour, he is essentially committing to change national policy or law… I suspect that the decision will be struck down, and the quota will stand. The vast majority of the remainder focuses on towns and villages and one-off houses are the least-preferred option. “We’re definitely going to decimate rural communities. The GAA will suffer, soccer will suffer, sports will suffer because we just won’t have the population. There will be depopulation in those areas.”Byrne, a construction management consultant, added that a move to develop rural villages will be undermined by a lack of infrastructure in many of these areas.

The south Connemara representative said the only housing option many from the area can afford is building on family land, even if they work 50 kilometres away in Galway city.

 

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Housing crisis and the powers that be are actually trying to stop people building houses in areas where they’d be permitted to build them

But that absolutely *is* happening, to urbanist glee. “It’s shoeboxes or cookie cutter estates or emigration to foreign ones. And if you’ve got a problem with that, there’s a war in Ukraine you can volunteer for & rid us of your surplus population.”

1 off housing has already destroyed society in many areas of life. Unplanned rural development simply cannot be tolerated to continue. build in the village. locate a bus stop. plan for a low energy future. stop stretching resources to breaking point. madness

This is a myth.... in fact the opposite will be the case. Vast majority of settlements do not have potable water or wastewater treatment capacity. Listen back to the famine professor interviewed Sat night by Tommedian 9M population many living in rural clusters.

Peace of rural Ireland should not be denied the right to live locally. There not asking for Luas, dart, 24 hour taxi service as those are the loudest against rural Ireland and enjoy these travel options

Is the opr aware of the housing shortage in this country and are rural areas, esp places like Galway with a lot of gaeltachts doomed to dry up

Its all right Folks, theres a way around everything in Ireland = ✉💶💶💶💶💶💶💶💶 🤝 'Build away' 🏠

Why are we stopping people building houses in most cases on their own land when we have housing crisis and we intend to bring in up to 100k refugees on top of it. This is stupidity by the likes of AnTaisce and the greenparty_ie. fiannafailparty FineGael. Gov needs to wake up

Great, so add another €1B to the National Broadband Plan

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