NEW High Court procedures to speed up inordinate and expensive delays in planning cases will soon be introduced, Environment Minister Dick Roche indicated yesterday.

CONTROVERSIAL ex-minister Ivor Callely may be forced to reconvert back into a garage a guest room development at his plush countryside holiday home in West Cork.

BRIAN HANRATTY (Irish Examiner letters, November 3) is incorrect in his statement that Indaver Ireland’s municipal waste incinerator in Co Meath will “pose a new threat” to the heritage of the Boyne valley.

ATHLONE Town Council will decide today if it is to give the green light to a major €150 million development that has met with strong local objection.

NOBODY wants to live beside an incinerator or a dump. Yet, there is growing pressure on local authorities to provide such controversial facilities as Ireland struggles to cope with a mountain of toxic, commercial and domestic waste.

PLANS for a second private hospital in Waterford have been thrown into doubt by a sole objection which could delay the project.

A UCC PLAN to create an outreach university has been rejected by An Bord Pleanála.

ENVIRONMENT Minister Dick Roche yesterday warned local authorities that it will be unacceptable to increase charges to the public in order to fund pay increases due next year under benchmarking and national wage agreements.

WORK on the building of a new pier in Cromane, a well-known fishing and seaside area of Co Kerry, could also help resolve an age-old erosion problem in the area.

IF Mary O’Leary ever runs short of reasons to be cynical about the planning system, she casts her mind back to January 2004 to restock.

DANCER Michael Flatley has been rebuked again by Cork County Council for carrying out work on his €30 million Fermoy mansion without planning permission.

WHILE it still hasn’t been confirmed officially, the re-opening of the Midleton to Cork rail line could be announced within the next 10 days, in advance of the local elections.

DOWN near Gobby Strand in Ringaskiddy yesterday, people nervously laughed when they heard Indaver general manager John Ahern say on radio that incinerators don’t harm your health.

A CONSORTIUM of investors won out when the sale of the Wilton Shopping Centre, owned by Tesco, went to best bids last Tuesday.

OUR prosperous times have caused a quandary for Limerick County Council’s planning department.

AN €8.5 million plan to make the Great Blasket island a national historic park is in “grave jeopardy” following the refusal of An Bord Pleanála to give planning permission for a café, the biggest landowner on the island warned yesterday.

IT’S time to cry halt to the building of apartments in Killarney, one of the town’s longest-serving councillors urged yesterday.

A WEST CORK mother yesterday pleaded with ESB Networks not to erect overhead cables, linking a private wind farm, near her home.

THE LARGEST office development ever proposed for Cork city received the go-ahead from the city council yesterday.