Land values in certain areas of Ballina could dramatically rise due to variations in the town development plan.
At a meeting of Ballina Town Council on Wednesday night councillors were angered that certain areas of land would be sterilised until phase one houses, which are currently vacant, are occupied, and selected areas of lands which are included in phase one zoning are developed, thus pushing up the value of the land in that phase.
Cllr Mary Kelly feared that by “forcing people into the town to vacant houses of developers, some lands would be devalued and then there would be other parcels of land which, in a few years, when things turn around, will go up massively in value and people won’t be able to buy houses in them”.
Fellow independent councillor Gerry Ginty agreed. “The areas that have been prioritised in this plan will become premium properties,” he said. “This document will completely distort the market in this town. I think we should tell the Minister to go and stew on this, because it’s a plan that will go and force people to live in what will become the slums of the future.”
The Ballina councillors were briefed on proposed variations to the town development plan by Mayo County Council engineer Brendan Munnelly. Under the 2010 Planning and Development Act, a new core strategy has to be implement and variations to current development plans made by October of this year. The variations to the plan will see a number of areas of land which had previously been zoned for residential development have the zoning changed so they can only be developed on a phased basis, or the zoning could be changed to agricultural use.
Mr Munnelly explained to the members that, under the variation, there would be parcels of land which had been zoned for residential that would be changed to phase one zoning and phase two zoning, with other areas being rezoned from residential to agriculture. The areas that would retain their status for residential zoning would see the lands with phase two status remain undeveloped until the majority of the land in the phase one area had been already developed. He went on to explain that lands which had live planning permissions on them, or where there were developments that were currently unfinished, would be given preference to phase one status.
Fianna Fáil councillor Johnny O’Malley was not in favour of the plan either. “I always thought that this was a bad plan, even under the last government,” Cllr O’Malley said. “Why could we not wait for the new census figures as a valid starting off point for a plan like this? I think this is a very unfair plan which will punish some people and then force the value of land up for others.”
The members were angered that the variation included information from the 2006 census to come up with expected population figures for the town up until 2015.
“It’s a five year old figure that is being used, is there any need to go ahead with this until we have the new figures from the census that we filled out only a couple of weeks ago,” Fine Gael councillor Mark Winters told the meeting. “I think we could be underestimating the need.”
Mr Munnelly told the meeting: “The reality is that we were given a set of figures for this and we had to make it fit as best we could.” However Mr Munnelly said the planners agreed that the new census figures should be used but advised members that the plan will be reviewed in two years’ time.
The plan will now go out for public submissions for a month and for a manager’s report to be complied on those submissions, before the council meets again to discuss the submissions and the plan before giving their approval for it or making amendments to the plan.
