Council to consider revoking office planning permission

Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council will this evening consider a motion to formally revoke a decision made by its own officials to grant planning permission for a contentious office development in Monkstown.

But the county manager, Mr Derek Brady, will argue that such a motion would be ultra vires as the case is currently before An Bord Pleanala. He is also expected to warn councillors that they could be personally liable if it is adopted.

The motion has been tabled by Mr Vincent McDowell of the Green Party in response to representations from the Monkstown, Seapoint and Salthill Residents' Association, which was "furious" over the decision to permit a modern office block within sight of the List 1 parish church.

A spokesman for the association said yesterday it was "confident" that councillors from all parties would support the proposed revocation on the grounds that the decision "flew in the face" of important provisions in the county development plan, adopted last year.

The proposed building would be located on the site of car showrooms at the junction of Monkstown Crescent and a link road to Longford Terrace in a conservation area where, according to the county plan, new buildings with higher rooflines are not acceptable.

Last July, at a Bord Pleanala oral hearing on its appeal against the scheme by Corke Abbey Investments Ltd, the residents' association maintained that the three-storey building would be 3.6 metres higher than other mews buildings along the crescent.

Its view has been reinforced by a recent decision to refuse permission for a three-storey apartment block on the nearby site of Searsons wine shop on the grounds that its height was excessive and out of character and scale.

But Mr Bernard McHugh, planning consultant for Corke Abbey Investments Ltd, said the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown planners had taken a different view of his client's scheme because it was located on a corner site, rather than in the middle of the terrace.

He also said that the motion to revoke the decision to approve the scheme, designed by architects Horan Keogan Ryan, was a legal impossibility because the matter was still before An Bord Pleanala.

However, the residents' association maintains that the unelected officials of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council were not entitled to ignore crucial provisions of the county plan.

The association's vice-chairman, Mr Stephen Devany, said the Supreme Court had held in 1991 that a county development plan was an "environmental contract" between the local authority and people of an area, and not "merely a guideline which can be ignored at will".