Killarney apartment buildings will become ‘ghettos’

IT’S time to cry halt to the building of apartments in Killarney, one of the town’s longest-serving councillors urged yesterday.

Hundreds of apartments have been built in the town in the past decade - many driven by tax incentives - and planning applications for many more continue to come before the council.

However, independent councillor Michael Courtney said Killarney already had enough apartments.

“We must definitely stop apartment development because these apartments are going to become tenements and ghettos,” he said.

Mr Courtney claimed that developers wanted to put the biggest number of dwellings into the smallest possible space because of greed and “to hell with the consequences”.

He said when individual apartments were sold, there would be nobody to maintain the buildings they were in. “Management schemes don’t work and the experience elsewhere, in England particularly, is that many apartment buildings become ghettos,” he claimed.

Mr Courtney and Donal Grady (Ind) have lodged an objection with An Bord Pleanála against a decision to grant permission for four apartments and four offices at Lewis Road, a prime residential area.

Killarney town planner Fiona O’Sullivan said most of the apartments were in the town centre and many of the sites were not suitable for housing. “We’re not accepting apartments on green field sites,” she stated.

The council has a waiting list of 400 for housing and other politicians called on the council to discriminate positively in favour of family-type housing.