Residents up in arms over bid to loosen planning curbs on Mervue land

Residents have vowed to heap pressure on Galway City Councillors to resist proposals to loosen planning restrictions on the vacant Crown Square site in Mervue.

The Mervue Residents Association and Monivea Residents Association are uniting against a proposal to remove the 20% residential cap that exists on that site.

The draft City Development Plan 2017-2023 says: “any residential component, either houses or apartments, shall comprise no more than 20% of the overall floor area of the development.”

But joint receivers, Kieran Wallace and Patrick Horkan, acting for the National Assets Management Agency, want this 20% residential cap removed.

The plan has restrictions inserted that deny access to the site from the Monivea Road but the receivers want this removed.

Existing height restrictions stipulate that buildings on the Monivea Road side cannot exceed two-levels over-ground; and the highest buildings on the other side of the site should not exceed four levels over-ground. The receivers have submitted that this restriction should be removed, also.

However, locals want the height, access and residential cap restrictions to remain.

Around two dozen people attended a meeting in Flannery’s Hotel on the Dublin Road on Tuesday evening where locals agreed to put pressure on elected members to vote against the receivers’ proposed amendments.

For more on this story, see this week’s Galway City Tribune