Planning free-for-all a threat to tourism

DESPITE claims that it’s impossible to get planning permission to build in the countryside, the reality in Kerry and Cork is that between 80% and 90% of applications are approved.

In fact, in 2006 in Kerry we built 10 times more houses than the local population needed. Yet vested interests continue to exaggerate the difficulties of getting planning permission.

What’s really happening here is that particular interests want to sell land at real estate prices and fill the countryside with houses, regardless of the impact on scenery, water quality, agricultural land prices, car dependency, proper public transport and the wider public interest.

Planning is not just about building houses. Politicians would do better to take a more objective view rather than follow the populist, but selfish, notions of people who believe they have a right to build anywhere they want.

We need a comprehensive national landscape policy to regulate the way we use land so that we build sustainably and protect some of our greatest assets, such as our countryside. This is the foundation of our tourism industry, which employs hundreds of thousand of people. At the moment our planning is a free-for-all. This lack of regulation will inevitably lead to an implosion in tourism, in the same way as the lack of foresight in building and banking led to an implosion in those industries. And don’t say we didn’t see it coming.

Seán Brosnan

Dingle Sustainable

Development Group

Strand Street

Dingle

Co Kerry