*Leo Varadkar, TD. Photograph: Paul Corey
A priority on housing developments in urban areas is to continue, the Tánaiste has said but he acknowledged that efforts will need to be made to ensure rural areas can continued to increase their population.
Two thirds of the towns and villages in Co Clare are set to be hindered from housing developments if the upcoming County Development Plan is approved.
Absence of adequate wastewater treatment plans will lead to lands in 52 of the 85 towns and villages in the counties being dezoned and thus stopping the potential for population growth and fuelling the fear of an increased loss in services such as schools, community groups and sporting organisations.
At the launch of the Ennis 2040 Economic and Spatial Strategy, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar (FG) urged Clare councillors to continue working on housing. “Our housing shortage is very acute,” he stated. The Minister for Trade, Enterprise and Employment recalled that 400 new homes were built in Clare last year, “600 or 700 homes in the county is where we’d like to get to,” he said of targets for new builds.
When questioned by The Clare Echo on how realistic such a target was considering the prospect of 52 towns being unable to build developments, the Fine Gael leader replied, “We’re aiming for compact urban growth, most new developments happen in our towns because that is where the infrastructure is and it makes much more sense from a climate point of view because people will be commuting less when they are living and working in the same town.
“I think most of the new housing developments should happen in or around Ennis but every town and village should have some capacity to grow, a big cap on that is wastewater infrastructure and water infrastructure, we have increased the budget for Irish Water which will help but we need to look at that into the future because I don’t think there should be a ban on development into the future, every town and village should have capacity to increase population, we need to make sure we have the services in place to do that”.
He refuted a suggestion that the future was bright but that the lights may need to be turned off in rural Clare. “If you look at our spatial strategy we look at 2,000 more people living in rural Ireland by 2040, the population decline reversed a long time ago, we see a lot more people living and working in rural Ireland in the last couple of years than was the case, remote working and the National Broadband Plan enables that but we need to make sure housing development is possible in towns and villages and not just cities and big towns like Ennis”.
