Industry leaders in the Midwest have been told that if the Government was to propose the Ardnacrusha hydro power station today, it would take 25 years to get through the planning process.
At a Shannon Chamber of Commerce luncheon at Dromoland Castle Hotel, Mayor of Clare, Councillor Alan O’Callaghan hit out at the current bottle-necks in the planning system that are delaying decisions.
Mayor O’Callaghan instanced the case of Pat McDonagh’s planned Supermacs plaza for a site off the M18 outside Ennis a short distance from Dromoland Castle as an example of planning applications stalled by planning and legal hurdles.
Last September, the High Court cleared the way for the €10m project ten years after plans were first lodged with Clare Co Council with CEO Pat McDonagh stating last year that his firm had spent €1.5m on professional and legal fees.
Cllr O’Callaghan said: “This week they broke ground for the Supermacs plaza down the road from us here and it took 10 years to get planning for that. Are we gone backwards altogether?”
The CEO of Fine Grain Property, Colin MacDonald, told the luncheon that Ardnacrusha hydro power station built in 1929 supplied 87% of the country’s energy needs at the time.
Mayor O’Callaghan told industry leaders: “If you had to do Ardnacrusha today, it would take 25 years to get planning or get someone to make a decision on it”.
“As regards planning and a little common sense, we are gone way behind,” he stated.
Guest speaker at the event, the chief executive of IDA Ireland, Michael Lohan, told Mayor O’Callaghan that he could not disagree with his comments and they are a fair reflection of problems in the planning system.
“The pace at which decisions are made are too slow,” the IDA CEO said.
“We as citizens of our State need to really have a reflection on ourselves and there are many, many projects that are national projects of national need that must get through the planning process,” he said.
He said that we must get to a point of collective progress as opposed to an individual’s concern in the planning system.
“We need to bring a lot more agility into our planning process,” he added.
“If we seriously want to uncap our offshore wind, our onshore wind and solar and if we want to bring water and wastewater capacity to sustain this economy we are going to have to make long term planning decisions which will be for the betterment of our State,” he stated.
Ahead of President Donald Trump’s Liberation Day announcement later today on tariffs, Mr Lohan said that getting into a tit for tat traffic is not going to be to anyone’s advantage.
“Europe has to prepare a response and the response has to be proportionate and it is equally important we allow a period for negotiation,” he said.
He said that tariffs are counter-productive in every shape and form and are not a good idea.
Reporting by Gordon Deegan
