‘Simply baffling’: Galway city mayor criticises An Bord Pleanála housing decisions

Recent decisions by An Bord Pleanála to refuse planning permission for housing developments in Galway have been described as “simply baffling” by the city’s mayor.

Clodagh Higgins has called for a meeting between senior Government representatives and city officials following the planning body’s rejection of a number of residential applications over the last few months.

The council’s chief executive Brendan McGrath earlier this week said he intended to write to the Department of Housing to outline a projected shortfall in the delivery of new social houses for Galway this year, next year and in 2025.

[ Galway City Council will not meet social housing needs for ‘foreseeable future’, meeting hears ]

Planning permission granted for 71 social homes on the Ballymoneen Road was overturned by the board last month, after it found the site was “without city services” and has “no public bus services and no footpaths”.

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A proposed development on the Headford Road, comprising social housing and Traveller accommodation, was also refused as it was deemed to be overly reliant on cars.

There are some 4,500 people on the city’s social housing waiting list at present.

Twenty-minute walk

Ms Higgins told Newstalk Breakfast on Wednesday that the Headford Road site was “a 20-minute walk from the city centre” and that she found the recent decisions by An Bord Pleanála to be “simply baffling at the moment”.

“I can’t understand why planning couldn’t be granted with conditions attached, such as upgrading the footpaths, roads and so forth. We all appreciate that the road at Keeraun needed to be upgraded, and there were active plans in place that the upgrade would happen in tandem with housing developments,” the Fine Gael councillor said.

“An Bord Pleanála didn’t give Galway City Council an opportunity to explain that, they just flatly refused the application. When you pare it all back, we have an urgent requirement for housing.”

[ Council plan to build homes on Galway floodplain is blocked ]

Ms Higgins said the council and private developers “are willing to develop sites to meet our housing needs” but yet an independent agency of the State was “essentially working against our collective objective”.

“They could have helped us find a way forward with conditional planning, which would have benefited the community two-fold,” she added.