Cowboy planning culture

Last Friday, RTEs Five Seven Live programme reported on the “Cowboy culture’ that passes for good planning in Ireland.

Apparently, the vast majority of illegal developments are granted retrospective planning by local authorities. In the last four years Dublin City Council has given retrospective planning permission to 85% of those who couldn’t be bothered applying before they started building. The figures for Waterford and Galway are 83% and 82% respectively.

A significant number of offenders are developers, who are very familiar with planning laws, rampaging around the country, building hundreds of houses and then looking for, and getting, planning permission.

But then again, they are taking their example from our so-called leaders. In today’s Irish Times we read that former Fianna Fail minister of state, Ivor Calley is in breach of planning laws for converting a garage into a house next to his family’s holiday home which (hilariously) was also built without permission.

We can only guess what future generations will make of the massive damage done by this rampant gombeenism.