By opposing both investigations into planning practices in Galway and the regulation of quarries, Fine Gael has learned “nothing from the excesses of the Celtic Tiger era”.
This is the view of Green senator Niall Ó Brolcháin who has accused Fine Gael senator Fidelma Healy Eames of “irresponsibility”, for seeking to have proposals to regulate quarries dropped from the new planning act.
“Her suggestion that a light touch regulatory approach to quarries is the way to create jobs beggars belief,” he said. “This approach is precisely what led to the housing bubble in the first place.”
He also took a swipe at Fine Gael for criticising the Minister for the Environment John Gormley for putting in place a planning review of the Galway County Council in light of the “relatively high number of planning applications” granted by the council but subsequently turned down by An Bord Pleanála.
“To suggest that planning in Galway County is beyond question ignores the fact that Oranmore, from where Senator Healy Eames comes, is struggling with a chronic lack of community facilities due to bad planning and over zoning by councillors,” he said.
Sen Ó Brolcháin said it is because of county planners, An Bord Pleanála, local residents and community groups, and not county councillors, “that we have any sort of coherence to our planning system in Galway at all”.
