Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

Around 400 of Ireland’s finest planning brains gathered in Galway for a four-day National Planning Conference that started last Wednesday week in Salthill.

Wouldn’t it have been mighty if a few of them – architects, engineers, planners – headed down the road to Westside instead.

For inside Westside Community Centre on the same night, 70-plus concerned residents gathered at a public meeting and wondered how the hell a 240-bed high-rise student flats complex got planning permission in the car park of their local shopping centre.

As Chief Executive of Galway City Council Leonard Cleary waxed lyrical at the “prestigious” planning conference about “principles of sustainable urbanism”, the people of Westside expressed real fears that their shopping centre – a hub of an established, tight-knit community – might not be viable once this student-cum-tourist development is built.

And as planning experts prepared to talk about proper planning and heard calls from Cleary for councillors to take responsibility for “difficult decisions required to build a better city”, the residents of working-class Westside met to respond to the real-life consequences of bad planning.

And this student complex off Seamus Quirke Road is a prime example of bad planning. Even the Council’s own planners said it was contrary to the City Development Plan, Galway’s planning bible — and they urged An Bord Pleanála in 2022 to reject it.

The planners said it was a “substandard development”; its height and scale were “excessive and overwhelming”. It was “inappropriate”, “unacceptable”, “visually obtrusive” and “contrary to the proper planning and sustainable development” of the area.

And still An Bord Pleanála granted it as a Strategic Housing Development, a new but flawed route that was introduced by Government to speed up delivery of “strategic” developments.

It’s true, opponents of the project made strategic errors. Firstly, residents didn’t make sufficient noise about it – only Councillor Mike Cubbard (Ind), and Franck Martinaud of Claremont Residents Association made submissions to ABP. Objectors also missed the deadline to lodge a judicial review to overturn the grant of planning permission.

But they were let down by the Council, too. Ordinary residents are not planning experts.

They assumed those who are – in City Hall – would fight to uphold the City Development Plan. Why, for example, did the Council not seek a judicial review against this development, in defence of its planning blueprint?

As whistleblower Julie Grace’s excellent book, ‘Abuse of Power: Because Councils Can’, demonstrated, Galway City Council was often willing to splash the cash to crush ordinary citizens.

But when it came to standing up for ordinary Joes and Josephines, they didn’t stump up cash to fight ABP’s grant of planning permission that their planners believed was ‘out of character’.

Galway City Council paid €15,000 to sponsor the conference where proper planning ideals were discussed. But it baulked when it had a chance to demonstrate its commitment to good planning – by funding a judicial review against this development.

At the very least, residents expected the Council to ensure conditions of planning were complied with.

What’s even more despicable is the Council benefitted financially from this poor planning decision. The developer successfully applied for a Development Contribution Waiver Scheme, meaning the Government – with taxpayers’ money – paid €718,974 levies to the Council on behalf of the developer.

The moral? Bad planning pays.

Pictured: Some of the 50 residents of Westside outside City Hall last week, protesting against the seven-storey 240-bed student apartment development in the car park of the Westside Shopping Centre.