Tribunal may probe golfing hotel

THE Flood Tribunal will examine a call to investigate planning permission granted for a hotel at a controversial €16m golf course development.

Doonbeg Golf Club Limited (DGCL) was granted permission by Clare Co Council last May to build a 33-bedroom hotel and 48 houses close to the Greg Norman-designed links course at Doonbeg.

However, the official stamp-date on the planning file was altered which has resulted in one objector to the development calling for a full investigation into the file.

David McNamara of Parteen, Co Clare, lodged an objection on May 9, but this was not inside the required five-week period and was invalid.

While the application from Doonbeg Golf Course Ltd was date-stamped April 16 2002, the county council insists it was received on April 4. If the application was received on April 16, Mr McNamara’s submission would have been valid.

A solicitor working with the Flood investigation into planning matters has passed on information, supplied by Mr McNamara, to the members of the tribunal.

“It’s a matter for the judges to decide whether this falls within the tribunal’s terms of reference,” solicitor Susan Gilvarry said.

Both the council and the company said they have receipts that prove the document was submitted on April 4. A spokesman for the council said an error was made in not stamping the application the day it arrived.

“When this was brought to the planning department’s attention by another department internally, the file was stamped but inadvertently with the date at the time, April 16.

“The official fee-receipting system, which is a separate computerised system, will show the receipt as having been issued long before April 16,” the spokesman said.

“My rights as a citizen to oppose this were not upheld. If the date wasn’t altered then the objection would definitely have been looked at,” Mr McNamara said.

The council admitted Mr McNamara was given incorrect information when he phoned twice on April 9 and April 12. He was told at the time the application hadn’t come in.

Mr McNamara, who suffers from a disability didn’t contact the council again until May 9 because he had been in hospital.

He said that he had no axe to grind with DGCL, but he is involved in a legal dispute with the company over his alleged ownership of a half-acre of land on the course.

Doonbeg was opened last July by former world number one golfer, Greg Norman.

More than €3m from the European Regional Development Fund was allocated to finance the west Clare course.

Already there were lengthy planning delays at Doonbeg after parts of the natural environment had to be protected by the course designers. These included the Vertigo Angustior, a rare 2mm-size snail, and acres of grey sand dunes.