CITY TRIBUNE
Frustration boils over as Galway City housing plans keep getting knocked back
From the Galway City Tribune – Three Government ministers are to be invited to talks with Galway City Council to work out how to develop more housing after two major schemes were rejected by An Bord Pleanála despite years of hard work by the planning department.
Galway City Councillors voiced their abject frustration over the failure to secure 165 homes for various reasons for local authority tenants.
Chief Executive Brendan McGrath said the refusals impacted on the Council’s housing targets for the next three years up to 2025 and on the land the local authority was trying to acquire into the future to build social and affordable housing.
Planning permission or the construction of 71 social housing units at Keeraun on the Ballymoneen Road in Galway (pictured) was rejected by An Bord Pleanála last month.
The board considered the development to be piecemeal, with inadequate provision of social and physical infrastructure and excessively car-dependent.
The Council had spent over €10 million to purchase the site. The development included eight Traveller-specific accommodation units which were to be used to rehouse those living in the Cúl Trá site in Salthill owned by the Catholic Diocese for which the lease has expired.
They also rejected a social housing scheme in Castlegar on the Headford Road to build three Traveller-appropriate houses and 21 apartments on a 2.2-acre field north of a van hire business, citing the lack of pedestrian, cycle and bus connections.
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Mr McGrath said the most frustrating aspect of the Keeraun development was that it had been with the board for a year and a half as it was not subject to statutory timelines. It had taken three and a half years of work to prepare the application. Three business cases were required before it was submitted.
“Yes, the Ballymoneen Road needs upgrading. The bus network in the city is being developed on the basis of planned development… the project on the Headford Road – which is a 20-minute walk from Eyre Square – was rejected because it was not served by a bus.
“Both projects were to meet the urgent and crying need of the Traveller community. I’m deeply concerned over the refusals.”
He had drafted a letter to the Department of Housing and the Galway Housing Taskforce outlining his concerns about the Council’s inability to meet housing targets.
A third development of 58 social housing units in Ballybane was also way behind schedule after the Council dismissed the original contractor over the slow pace of work.
Mr McGrath said he believed the Garraí Beag scheme which began in early 2020 was only 20 per cent completed; it had been due to be finished in October 2021.
A new tender would be awarded for a second contractor to finish the work, but this was a difficult process as the work already done had to be assessed. There was also court action in relation to the scheme.
“We’re now waiting to get a contractor in to finish the scheme,” he stated.
In a further blow to those languishing on the social housing list, it was revealed that a housing scheme in Knocknacarra due to be purchased by the housing body Respond and earmarked for Council tenants was off the shelf after the developer decided to sell the twelve units privately.
Director of Services, Brian Barrett, said the tenants had been given pre-tenancy training, but no contracts had yet been signed.
Mayor Clodagh Higgins said councillors were all demoralised by the housing decisions.
“We’ve zoned land and can’t get housing on it. Someone has to listen to the nonsense taking place…can we revisit housing height if we can’t get housing granted outside the city centre?”
She tabled a motion calling for an “urgent meeting” to take place between Galway City Council and the Minister for Housing, Darragh O’Brien, the Minister for Transport, Eamon Ryan, and Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Kieran O’Donnell to address the crisis.
Independent Councillor Donal Lyons said the ABP decisions indicated that housing would only be granted beside other developments already serviced.
Cllr Niall McNelis (Lab) said he knew of families who had given notice on their tenancies after being offered a home in the Respond development.
Housing targets were already 140 units behind last year and almost all that came on stream were delivered by private bodies such as Clúid or Respond, Cllr Alan Cheevers (FF) pointed out.
Cllr Michael Crowe (FF) described ABP’s decision for the Headford Road development as “one of the most ridiculous” planning decisions he had read in his 20 years on the Council.
“It’s typical of the nonsense that’s going on in the world. It’s discrimination against private cars,” he fumed.
Cllr Colette Connolly (Ind) said the board’s decisions underlined years of little investment in public transport and footpaths.
“They raise very, very significant issues,” she stressed. “I welcome the decisions on the basis we have to have sustainable development.”
Cllr Mike Cubbard (Ind) said it was a cop out to blame ABP instead of the local authority focusing on its failure to deliver essential facilities for housing development.
Greens Cllr Martina O’Connor said the Council owned 627 pieces of land in the city.
“With this one sweeping brush, we’re told we can’t develop them.”
A total of 243 properties had been allocated to new tenants last year, Mr Barrett revealed. That made a very small dent in the social housing waiting list, which has almost 4,500 names.
The Mayor’s motion was carried unanimously.
(Image: the Keeraun development on the Ballymoneen Road which was refused permission by An Bord Pleanála).
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
The new Salmon Weir pedestrian and cycle bridge will be officially opened to the public next Friday, May 26.
Work on the €10 million bridge got underway in April 2022, before the main structure was hoisted into place in early December.
A lunchtime tape-cutting ceremony will take place on Friday, as the first pedestrians and cyclists traverse the as-yet-unnamed bridge.
The Chief Executive of Galway City Council, Brendan McGrath, previously said the bridge, once opened, would remove existing conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and traffic “as well as facilitating the Cross-City Link public transport corridor over the existing 200-year-old bridge”.
The naming of the new bridge has been under discussion by the Council’s Civic Commemorations Committee since late last year.
One name that has been in the mix for some time is that of the first woman in Europe to graduate with an engineering degree – Alice Perry.
Ms Perry, who was from Wellpark, graduated from Queen’s College Galway (now University of Galway) in 1906. The university’s engineering building is named in her honour.
The bridge was built by Jons Civil Engineering firm in County Meath and was assembled off-site before being transported to Galway. Funding for the project was provided in full by the National Transport Authority and the European Regional Development Fund.
(Photo: Sheila Gallagher captured the city’s new pedestrian footbridge being raised on the south side of the Salmon Weir Bridge in December. It will officially open next Friday, May 26).
From the Galway City Tribune – Minister of State for Local Government and Planning, Kieran O’Donnell was labelled a “disgrace” for overturning councillors’ decisions to rezone land in the new City Development Plan.
Minister O’Donnell (pictured) confirmed in a letter to Council Chief Executive Brendan McGrath last week that he was reversing 25 material alternations made by councillors to the CDP 2023-29. He made the decision on the advice of Office of Planning Regulator (OPR).
Minister O’Donnell directed that 14 land parcels that were subject to land-use zoning changes by councillors as part of the Material Alterations to the Draft CDP should be reversed.
He directed that a further 11 land parcels in the city should become “unzoned”.
The Minister found that the CDP had not been made in a manner consistent with recommendations of the OPR, which required specific changes to the plan to ensure consistency with the national planning laws and guidelines.
At last week’s Council meeting Cllr Eddie Hoare (FG) asked for clarity on the process by which councillors could rezone the lands that had been changed by the Minister’s direction.
Cllr Declan McDonnell said, “What he [Minister O’Donnell] has done is an absolute disgrace”.
And he asked: “Do we have to have another development plan meeting to deal with it?”
Both Cllrs Hoare and McDonnell wondered what would become of the lands that were rezoned or unzoned by the ministerial direction.
Mr McGrath said the Council had put forward an argument in favour of retaining the material alterations in the plan, but ultimately the Minister sided with OPR.
He said if councillors want to make alterations to the new plan, they could go through the process of making a material alteration but this was lengthy.
The Save Roscam Peninsula campaign welcomed the Minister’s decision.
In a statement to the Galway City Tribune, it said the direction would mean the Roscam village area on the Roscam Peninsula will be unzoned and a number of land parcels would revert back to agriculture/high amenity.
A spokesperson for the campaign said: “the material alterations made by city councillors following lobbying by developers continued the long-standing practice of councillors facilitating a developer-led plan rather than an evidence- and policy-based plan that meets the needs of the city.
“The Minister’s direction is an important step in restoring confidence in the planning system. It is clear from the City Council’s own evidence on future housing projections that there was no requirement to zone these lands for residential purposes in order to meet the needs of the targeted population increase up to 2029,” the spokesperson added.
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