Galway council votes for new city plan

Galway city's new development plan was carried by a strong majority of councillors last night.

Earlier, the city manager, Mr Joe Gavin, rejected charges that the public had not been adequately consulted.

City councillors attending the final vote last night were petitioned by members of the Labour Party's Galway Living City Group, who staged a demonstration outside city hall. The group's chairman, Mr Kieran Duffy, appealed to the councillors to support deferral of a vote until adequate time was given to consider submissions from many groups and residents' associations.

"It is in nobody's interest that a plan which will determine the shape of the city over the next five years will be rushed through," Mr Duffy said in an open letter. Galway Corporation had made "a mockery of participation", he claimed.

Mr Gavin, who addressed last night's meeting, told The Irish Times that there had been two years of consultation with the public.

"Unusually, we even invited submissions before the draft plan was published, when we embarked on this exercise in 1997," Mr Gavin said. Some 157 submissions were received before the draft, and corporation officials then met residents' groups, business associations and various interests, and granted oral hearings to 65 applicants. In all, 492 submissions were received, he said.

"On publication of the draft, the council devoted 27 full meetings to reviewing the plan," Mr Gavin said.

"This plan is geared to facilitating the constructive development of Galway over the next five years, taking economic, social, environmental and cultural considerations into account, and it seeks to ensure the correct balance between these critical elements," he said.

The city was under pressure to review its plan every five years, and it had been seven years since the last plan was published. The provisions on housing were in accordance with the recent Bacon Report and with Government policy, Mr Gavin stressed.

Further plans had been commissioned by the corporation, including a study on land use and transportation, three local area action plans, and a new heritage plan. There was no reason to defer the vote further at this stage, he said.