CITY TRIBUNE

Residents fear large-scale housing plan being ‘resurrected’

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From this week’s Galway City Tribune – Fears are rising among residents in Rosshill on the eastern side of the city that a large-scale housing development that was turned down for planning permission is making a return in the guise of a phased project.

A previous application to build 342 units on the former Rosshill Par 3 golf course was branded a ‘substandard’ form of development by An Bord Pleanála and was refused permission in May 2020.

However, a new application for 102 residential units on the site owned by the Comer Brothers has been lodged with the Board and is set to be decided on by April 12.

A spokesperson for Rosshill Residents’ Association told the Galway City Tribune this week that residents in the 50 or so houses in Rosshill were on tenterhooks as they awaited Alber’s application, and expressed concern that the Strategic Housing Development (SHD) process would make coordinating an objection incredibly difficult.

The largely rural area, which was a peninsula with only one road in and out, was totally unsuited to this form of development, she said.

“They are again trying to open a greenfield site in an environmentally-sensitive area of the east side of the city. The issue with the SHD process is that this is developer-led and is undermining the democratically-agreed City Development Plan, obstructing local participation in planning.

“To allow these SHDs when we are in a Level 5 lockdown is especially undemocratic. Residents will have just five weeks to mount a response to a development in their area which the developer has spent perhaps a year putting together,” said the residents’ spokesperson.

(Image: the previous planning application for Rosshill was turned down).

This is a shortened preview version of this article. To read the rest of the story, see this week’s Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.

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