Councillors ignore warnings to vote for more re-zoning

DESPITE warnings from a top official that Dingle is ‘vastly over-zoned’ for housing, local councillors have voted to rezone more land for holiday homes.

Enough land has already been zoned to house more than 2,000 people - the equivalent of more than doubling the Kerry town’s current population.

Udaras na Gaeltachta has also warned that too many holiday homes are having a detrimental effect on the Irish language and has called for a moratorium on the zoning of further lands for holiday homes.

Kerry County Council senior planning engineer Tom Sheehy said housing estates were currently being created in the countryside outside Dingle and he was not in favour of “sporadic uncoordinated” development.

During a debate on a new development plan for Dingle, he said 171 acres had been zoned for housing - enough land to build 685 houses with an average occupancy of three people.

“That’s 2,055 people, more than doubling the population which currently stands at 1,826, over the six-year period of the plan,” Mr Sheehy pointed out.

The huge expansion in holiday home development in Dingle and the scenic area west of the town has led to criticism from tourism interests and environmental groups, who claim the scenic landscape has been seriously damaged.

Another issue is that demand for holiday home has inflated building land prices, with the result that many young local people wishing to build houses for themselves cannot compete when it comes to purchasing sites.