Sir, – Backyards are given an unfair rap by David McWilliams (“Nimbyism is adding to the housing crisis”, Opinion, March 30th), which is surprising as a week earlier he was extolling the merits of local decisions (“Ireland needs a dose of Protestant pragmatism”, March 23rd). In the case of Ireland’s planning system, he is focusing on symptoms rather than the underlying disease.
The disease is a dysfunctional planning process that few have faith in, and that appears to be rife with abuse as it lacks proper enforcement. This leaves ordinary people with little alternative but to protect their interests by lodging objections and resorting to the courts, if they can afford it.
In the architectural conservation area where I live, an out-of-place modern house was granted planning permission, despite local objections, and was described by its designer as “sensitive infill” for the tiny, crowded area it now inhabits. So sensitive is its owner that he has had the house built substantially larger than he was granted permission for, posing even greater concerns for the neighbours that his unauthorised picture windows overlook.
Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council has done nothing so far to enforce the conditions it imposed, and is now considering an application from the owner for “retention” to which neighbours are objecting. Must this be seen, to borrow David McWilliams’s question-begging phrase, as “legitimate development”?
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A non-residential example is the “Dublin Array” of offshore wind farms proposed for the Kish and Bray banks 9km to 10km out to sea. Here the Government has sidestepped EU requirements for environmental assessments and the designation of marine protected areas, and has exempted the development from the provisions of its own new Maritime Area Planning Act. This evasion of proper procedure virtually guarantees that the developers’ applications this summer to An Bord Pleanála will get stuck in the courts. Just Nimbyism, or might it reflect State failure? – Yours, etc,
BILL EMMOTT,
Killiney,
Co Dublin.