Locals are victims of housing blitz
Having littered the county with one-off houses, the vast majority of which are second homes or for sale, the council now seems intent on destroying small villages, the heartbeat of the rural community, by swamping them with hundreds of holiday homes.
Permission is no longer sought for a single house as it’s likely to be turned down. Instead, apply to build 20, 30 or 50 houses in a village and the council will approve.
All over Kerry, tiny villages, some consisting of just a few houses, are being deluged with applications to build hundreds of holiday houses. This is basically the urbanising of the rural landscape with large estates of holiday houses that will lie vacant for 90% of the year.
The county council has record waiting lists of local people seeking to be housed while hundreds of houses approved by the same council lie vacant catering only for the odd holidaymaker. The vast holiday housing schemes bring little or no benefit to the local community. Their occupants’ children don’t go to school locally or join local clubs.
Conversely, they put major pressure on an already fraught infrastructure that’s unable to cater for the extra traffic, water use and sewage. Incredibly, a lot of the villages don’t even have a sewerage scheme in the first place. Local hotels and B&Bs also suffer a severe loss of business from these holiday homes. And who benefits from all of this? Not the village. It’s the speculators, mostly from outside the area, who make vast profits.
Most of this speculation is driven by tax avoidance schemes. They don’t even have to present a plan to the village. Neither does the council.
If local people want to find out what is ‘planned’ for their village, they have to make a round trip of up to 120 miles to the council offices to view the relevant files tucked away there.
What a system! Ironically, Kerry county council bemoan the fact that they can never get land for social housing, hence the record waiting lists. Hardly surprising as they pursue policies that encourage rampant speculation.
Obviously the landowner will sell to the speculator for a far higher sum than the council can offer. Even worse, few locals can now afford to buy a site or a house due to the effects of speculation.
So there you have it. If you are a local looking to live and build on your own land every obstacle will be put in your way. If you are an outside speculator looking to make a massive profit by building scores of unwanted and under-used holiday houses, then everything will be done to facilitate you by the council.
When it comes planning, Kerry county council have completely lost the plot.
Tony O’Shea
Caherdaniel
Iveragh
Co Kerry
