Kenmare Municipal District councillors were warned they are knowingly going into a straight-up battle with the planning regulator over the draft development plan for the area.
The warning was delivered by Kerry County Council’s Director of Services and Kenmare MD Manager, Martin O’Donoghue, during an eleven-hour meeting about the draft plan.
The Kenmare Draft Local Area Plan 2023-2029 had gone out to public consultation and received submissions from the public.
Councillors reviewed 230 submissions made on the plan, many of which related to the zoning of individual plots of land as residential.
Senior Planner for the council, Damian Ginty, told the elected members that the Office of the Planning Regulator had made recommendations on the plan.
It followed a meeting between council management and the regulator over what lands it would be allowed to zone residential as part of this draft area plan.
Mr Ginty said the OPR’s focus was on zoning lands in town and village centres, and then working out sequentially, to avoid zoning of peripheral lands.
He said the regulator specifically asked the council to reduce the amount of zoned land in Killorglin, Kenmare, and Waterville, and effectively said it must work with the least amount of zoned land it could.
Dozens of submissions made on the draft area plan requested that certain lands be zoned residential, and councillors repeatedly requested the council to zone these lands.
Mr Ginty repeatedly told councillors he strongly advised against zoning extra lands, as it was going against the regulator’s recommendations and this would have consequences.
Mr Ginty also told the meeting that the amount of land originally zoned residential across the MD was enough to cater for the expected population increase over the lifetime of the plan.
Following representations by councillors, the amount of land in Kenmare town zoned as residential increased from 11.6 hectares to 20 hectares over the course of the meeting.
MD Manager Mr O’Donoghue told councillors they are knowingly walking into a straight-up battle with the regulator over this increase, and the regulator will not engage the way they were going.
All material changes made to the draft plan yesterday, including zoning or re-zoning, will now go out to public consultation again.
