Killashee scheme appealedNaas residents have challenged a proposal by racehorse trainer Dermot Weld to build a golf, residential and educational development at Pipers Hill in Killashee, Co Kildare.
The proposal by Weld and County Kildare Vocational Education Committee (VEC) includes an 18-hole golf course and clubhouse, driving range, 96 golf villas and 173 residential units in a mix of apartments and four and five-bed detached and semi-detached houses. It also comprises a 7.6-hectare education campus, which will eventually have up to three post-primary schools, a third-level facility, playing pitches, as well as a site reserved for a future primary school.
However, the decisions of both Naas Town Council and Kildare County Council to grant permission for the scheme have been appealed to An Bord Pleanála. Kildare County Council has received six third party appeals while Naas Town Council has received four.
Killashee View Residents Association says the grant of permission is "fundamentally and fatally flawed". It claims the planning decision "has been politically influenced by inter alia, the gift of land to Kildare VEC for a planned educational campus. We contend that this has created a political imperative for the planning authorities to approve zoning and subsequent planning permission for a very large, ill-considered, premature and unsustainable developer-led application."
Another residents' group from Old Killashee says the lands should not be developed in advance of major infrastructural works outlined in the local development plan.
Council rejects Blackrock plan
The Anglesea Partnership has been turned down by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to knock Anglesea House, an office building at 63 Carysfort Avenue in Blackrock and replace it with an apartment block of 11 units.
The local authority said that, given the height, scale, design and bulk of the proposed development on a prominent corner site, it would constitute overdevelopment of the site, would have a significant discordant visual impact on the existing streetscape and seriously injure the residential and visual amenities of the area and of dwellings in the vicinity.
It also said that substandard private open space would provide an inadequate level of amenity for residents.
