Bartra to appeal decision in ‘badger’ planning row

The nursing home and ‘badger’ planning battle between broadcaster, Pat Kenny and developers in Dalkey is to continue.

This follows Bartra Capital’s decision to appeal to An Bord Pleanála the decision by Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council to refuse planning permission for a two to five storey nursing home on a site beside the Dalkey home of the Newstalk presenter, Pat Kenny.

Commenting on the Bartra move to appeal the council’s decision with regard to the proposed 104 bedroom nursing home, Mr Kenny said on Friday: “The issues outlined in Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council’s refusal should be very difficult to overcome.”

This is the second time that Bartra has appealed a council decision to refuse planning permission for the nursing home at Harbour Rd, Bulloch Harbour.

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The developers appealed a previous refusal on March 19th last only to withdraw the appeal on March 26th and put the application before the Council once more.

“Quite frankly, we are perplexed as to why they withdrew their last appeal, only to lodge a virtually identical proposal,” said Mr Kenny.

The scheme involved the demolition of Maple Tree House, Harbour Rd, Bulloch Harbour.

Bartra purchased the property on just under an acre for €3.17 million in July 2018. A new entry into the Property Price Register shows that Maple House was sold for €1.95 million on May 7th this year.

However, a spokeswoman for Bartra confirmed on Friday: “Bartra Group is the sole owner of all of the subject lands.”

The Council refused planning permission for the 104 bedroom nursing home across a number of grounds last month after Pat and Kathy Kenny along with other households in the area lodged objections.

Protected species

The fate of the local badgers, a wild protected species, is set to play a crucial element in the row before An Bord Pleanála.

This followed a Government heritage watchdog in the planning area, the Development Applications Unit (DAU) lodging a comprehensive submission with the Council where it endorsed the fears of the Kennys for the underground home of the local badger family if the nursing home scheme does go ahead.

In their submission, Pat and Kathy Kenny claimed that the “straightforward commercially driven enterprise cannot justify killing the badgers of Bulloch Harbour”.

Last month, Mr Kenny commented: “A lot of the time when you read about these objections, you say ‘this is Nimbyism — a snail or a seagull or whatever’ but this is real and that is why we are delighted that this has been writ large by the DAU.”

As part of preparation in lodging the application, Bartra submitted a Badger Conservation Plan which stated that once proposed mitigation measures have been implemented for the local badgers, the proposed nursing home “will not have a significant impact on the (badger) sett structure”.

However, the Kennys disagreed with the conclusion of the Badger Conservation Plan and instead claimed in their objection that “what is proposed by the applicants as mitigation (of the badger sett) will result in extermination”.

The Kennys stated that any destruction of the badger sett would be “cruel and unconscionable.”

Bartra already has planning permission for an apartment scheme on the nursing home site and can advance that scheme if the company doesn’t secure planning permission for the nursing home.