An Bord Pleanála has ruled that a housing development in the north Galway village of Claregalway must comply with Irish language conditions, even though the developer argued that only a small percentage of residents spoke Irish daily.
The developer, Walter King, had received planning permission in December 2004 for a housing and apartment development in the village. The planning approval was subject to the Galway County Development Plan's linguistic and cultural heritage provisions for Gaeltacht areas.
Under the provisions, the developer was required to agree with the local authority on the proportion of dwellings which should be occupied by competent or fluent Irish speakers.
Mr King agreed that 12 of the homes constructed would be sold under the language conditions, but applied last June to Galway County Council for change of use which would effectively waive the Irish language clause.
The council refused permission last August on the grounds that such a move would adversely affect the linguistic and cultural heritage of the Gaeltacht and would establish a precedent. The local authority's decision has now been upheld by An Bord Pleanála on procedural grounds.
The appeals board has adopted a consistent policy in relation to housing developments in Gaeltacht villages in the past year, and has applied this to a number of schemes in the Connemara and Kerry Gaeltacht areas. It has drawn on census figures for daily Irish language use in relation to the number of housing units which must be sold or rented to Irish language speakers in these areas.
In late 2004, the appeals board did find that Galway County Council had adopted an "excessively punitive" approach to language conditions in Claregalway, when it deleted Irish language conditions imposed by the local authority on an extension of a supermarket and construction of apartments in the village.
Appeals board inspector Breda Gannon found that census data showed that Claregalway compared poorly to other Gaeltacht areas in terms of everyday use of Irish.
Last year, a Law Society report found that Irish language proficiency conditions attached to planning approval in Gaeltacht areas were constitutional, but those which discriminated against people without family connections to the area were not.
The report by the society's law reform committee, which has been submitted to the Department of the Environment, said that planning authorities and An Bord Pleanála should be "slow" to impose language conditions uniformly over a large area.