From this week’s Galway City Tribune – An Bord Pleanála has ignored the concerns of one of its own senior inspectors about traffic congestion and public safety and given the go ahead for more than 140 new homes on Letteragh Road in Rahoon.

Senior Planning inspector Irené McCormack said the existing road network does not have the capacity to cater for the increased demand generated by plans for a ten-acre site on the southern side of Letteragh Road, which surrounds the Breacán estate.

She said the development of 144 houses and apartments on the site had the potential to “give rise to traffic congestion and would endanger public safety by reason of traffic hazard and obstruction to road users” because of the lack of a continuous footpath and cycle connection from north of the site towards the city.

Ms McCormack recommended to the Board proper that permission be refused for the development, but this was ignored in the decision by board member Mary Henchy, who said in her decision to give the green light that Letteragh Road is already “in transition”.

Cairn, one of the biggest homebuilders in the country, was refused permission by Galway City Council last October for the new homes – because it would be “a substandard form of residential development”.

The Board said it decided not to accept Ms McCormack’s recommendation and it noted that the Council, in principle, considered it appropriate to provide vehicular access onto Letteragh Road and that “the applicant proposed cycle and pedestrian routes connecting the development to Bóthar Dhiarmada, linking the development with adjoining residential development, the bus corridor on Rahoon Road and employment lands”.
This is a shortened preview version of this story. To read the rest of the article, see the March 29 edition of the Galway City Tribune. You can support our journalism and buy a digital edition HERE.