Peaceful village ‘desolate’

A HUGE road side sign beckoned: “Clarina Village. Announcing development of Retirement Homes in Peaceful Setting.”

The development, seven miles west of Limerick city on the N69 to Foynes, also proposed exclusive detached homes, semi detached houses, a hotel, supermarket and health centre.

Euro lottery winner Dolores McNamara spent €500,000 to buy a house for one of her daughters. To date, about 60 houses have been bought.

But the scheme has just about lived up to one claim in that big roadside sign. It is peaceful, but very desolate.

The retirement village consists of eight terraced houses – five occupied – looking onto a high bleak hoarding which screens it off from a tumbledown site. Protruding concrete pillars form the only aspect of the proposed hotel.

Parts of the estate have no street lighting. The proposed supermarket lies vacant with an “open soon” sign.

The roundabout planked on the middle of the N69 as the main access is now a traffic hazard leading to nowhere.

No lighting was erected at the roundabout, through which 25,000 vehicles pass each day. After a number of nighttime accidents, the NRA placed a huge flashing sign warning of the obstruction.

Clarina had welcomed the development with open arms. But now it is an unsightly blight on a rural community.

Willie O’Gorman, chairman of the community council, said: “Its state of incompleteness means it is a degenerating eyesore. We have the skeletal frame of the hotel which came to abrupt halt. The site deforms the whole place.”

He said it is hard to find out who is responsible for what, as parts of the property had been sold on to various developers. As no management company was formed, nobody wants to take a handle on the state of the property.

A water pumping station was not completed to the required specifications, and Limerick County Council could not move in due to legal implications.

Local businessman, Mike McElligott, 49, bought a detached house for €245,000 five years ago.

Now chairman of the residents group, he finds himself helpless in trying to tackle ongoing problems.

“When a street light does out, the ESB refer you back to the developer who is uncontactable. Even the shrubs which had been planted in one of the courtyards were removed by the landscape company because they hadn’t been paid. There is no shop and the people who bought houses in the retirement village are left without any medical centre and have to travel into the city if they want medical care. There are only five houses occupied there and they care and help each other and they are depending on their neighbours.”

Local TD, Niall Collins, has been in ongoing contact with the beleaguered residents.

“The proposed development was to quadruple the size of Clarina village, but the locals are against that; they have now been left with an ugly, large incomplete building site.”