Planning consultant slams hospital proposal

CLARE County Council has come under fire for giving the go-ahead to contentious plans for a €40 million hospital in Ennis.

In his closing submission at a Bord Pleanála oral hearing into the 100-bed hospital proposal, planning consultant Brendan McGrath said the council’s interpretation of its own development plan “amounts to a judgment that a 100-bed hospital could be located on any land zoned for development within the settlement boundary of the town”.

“The council appears to treat a hospital as an intensive form of land use that could go anywhere in the greater Ennis area,” he told the hearing at the Temple Gate Hotel in Ennis. “Such an approach does not accord with broader principles of urban design and sustainable settlement planning.”

Last year, councillors voted 28-3 in favour of the rezoning of lands at Woodstock in Ennis to give the developers, John Stack and Pat Bonner, the green light for the plan. However, local residents appealed the decision to An Bord Pleanála.

Mr McGrath said with the exception of the Hermitage in Dublin, all hospitals have been built on or beside a regional or national road.

He said that the developer “has not demonstrated satisfactorily that there will not be a significant adverse impact on residential amenity as a result of the development. In my opinion at the town and regional scales of impact, in terms of accessibility and visibility, the appeal site is the wrong place for an important public building.”

A decision is due on the plan later this year.