Elected members of Clare County Council have rejected Department of the Environment warnings not to press ahead with a contentious "ad-hoc" rezoning of 70 acres for industry.The move by the council is one a series of snubs that councillors have delivered to Minister for the Environment John Gormley in drawing up the new greater Ennis development plan, according to the Irish Times newspaper.
The councillors ignored departmental pleas to dezone land after it found that there was over-zoning in the greater Ennis area and they loosened the rules on one-off housing. Mr Gormley is now poised to use his executive powers to direct the council to carry out the dezonings and tighten restrictions on one-off housing with the plan now becoming law.
The largest single rezoning that went against the wishes of the council planners was a proposal to rezone 70 acres at Beechpark on the outskirts of Ennis from countryside to industrial to facilitate a business campus. Ennis developer Pádraig Howard is promoting the proposal. He believes it will provide 80 to 100 jobs in the short term and expand to a potential 2,000 jobs in the next 10 to 15 years in a "sustainable enterpreneurship campus".
