Sailmaker gives up the ghost on expansion plans

The old Church of Ireland just outside Goleen is surrounded by graves, but now a new ghost could be about to join them.

Fastnet Sails has been making sails in this unique setting since 2004, but owner Christophe Houdaille, a 49-year-old originally from Brittany, is about to leave the country and close his business, all because of what he sees as the problem of the Irish planning process.

Singer sewing machines, cutting equipment, and a raised wooden platform occupy the interior of the church where Fastnet have manufactured sails one and a half times the total floor area.

It can be challenging, but the work became less enjoyable when the Frenchman’s attempts to move to larger, custom-built premises not much larger than the church — and on the same site on which he hoped to build a house — hit the buffers.

“There is not enough space. When I cut a sail I have to be on my own,” he said. “We have done sails that are wider and longer than the loft.”

According to his own timeline, in March 2011 he had an agreement in principle to buy a site near Ballydehob on which, planning permission secured, he would have built the industrial premises and his house.

In the middle of that year, Mr Houdaille met with a local planner and there followed a succession of meetings with council officials and local politicians.

By the end of the year, he said, he was told that planning permission would be unlikely as similar proposals had been turned down.

Into 2012, fresh issues surrounding access were raised as possible reasons why the project would be unlikely to get the go-ahead. By May of that year, he had written to the Office of the Ombudsman over what he viewed as delays in dealing with his queries at local level and other issues surrounding the project. This was, said Mr Houdaille, despite increasing orders and more demand.

On May 17, he received a letter of apology from Cork Co Council, through its director of services, John O’Neill, regarding correspondence with the Ombudsman’s Office.

Just a month before that, on Apr 12, county manager Martin Riordan wrote to remind Mr Houdaille the Ombudsman had not found the Frenchman had been treated unfairly and that “a further investigation is unwarranted”.

In another statement, the council noted Mr Houdaille did not apply for planning permission at any stage.

Mr Houdaille said he remains baffled at obstacles he believed were put in the way of his plan.

“I am not staying in Ireland,” he said.

He has sold his home and he now sees a return to the land of his birth as his best option.

“I am stopping my activities by the end of August,” he said. “That’s definite. I am looking for someone to take it over.”

The graves of people such as Norman Keith Barker, William Burchill, and Edith Wilson may soon lose their sailmaking neighbours. Will Mr Houdaille not miss it? “Not for long,” he replied with a laugh.