Leitrim County Council recently devoted an entire Council session to the issue of planning.

The debate that took place is interesting in that it yet again demonstrates that the elected members of Leitrim County Council don’t understand the basic principles of proper planning.

They appear to be stuck in some sort of pre-1964 Twilight Zone* in which issues like rural transport, waste management, water quality, road saftey, education, economic development and protection of the environment are a load of old nonsense made up by people in Dublin to keep themselves busy and have no meaning anywhere west of the M50.

Some of the utterances of the Councillors are worth repeating here (in some cases paraphrased) . I’ve added my own comments too. I haven’t noted the Party membership of the Councillors, given that there isn’t any distinction between them.

Cllr. Tony Ferguson (Manorhamilton):

“If we get a house built in Leitrim, its 5 jobs.”

Cllr. Ferguson would appear to be suggesting that we just keep building housing to keep people in jobs. I’m not sure how many houses Cllr. Ferguson thinks this would involve, or what we should do when there aren’t any more houses left to build. Perhaps we could knock them down and re-build them?

Cllr. Sean McGowan (Carrick on Shannon):

“I would ask the Council to look favourably on any planning application along the N4.”

Hopefully, at some future Council session, Cllr. McGowan can suggest a ways in which the N4 can be widened, if, as he hopes, it is lined with housing development.

Cllr. Michael Colreavy (Manorhamilton):

“I propose a reduction in site line requirements along the various roads in the County”.

Its hard to understand how an elected representative could publically call for a change in planning policy that would make our roads more dangerous.

Cllr. Enda McGloin (Dromahair):

“The 7 year Occupancy Clause needs to be removed from grants of planning permission.”

Where a grant of planning permission is made is an area which is experiencing development pressure, the Council will sometimes require the applicant to live in the house for 7 years. This is to ensure that valuable sites are used by people who want to live in the area and not by speculators.

The clause is very rarely used by Leitrim County Council, and where it is, it is never enforced. This had led to a situation in which up to 15% of houses for sale in Leitrim today are new builds that nobody has ever lived in.

I can’t understand why the Councillors want this removed. Given that suitable sites are becoming increasingly scarce in Leitrim, I would have thought that the Council should be doing everything it can to preserve these sites for people who want to live in Leitrim.
This might not be in the interests of speculators, builders and estate agents, but somehow I don’t think they’ll starve.

*Planning first became a legal concept in 1964