Pizarro Refused Permission for Bray Development

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Pizarro Refused Permission for Bray Development

Wednesday, April 11 2007

Yesterday An Bord Pleanala posted on their web site at http://www.pleanala.ie/DCT/217/S217906.DOC their decision to refuse permission to Pizarro Developments to build on the Dargle floodplain at the old Bray Golf Club lands in Co. Wicklow.

Local community group, SWAP, who have campaigned for two years to have the high density construction building planned for the floodplain downriver from their homes 'swapped' with the park and playing field proposed for the high ground above the floodplain, welcomed the Board's decision as "common sense", which "isn't so common".

Bray is home to the Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, and the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Liz McManus, whose constituency office is located at the mouth of the controversial proposed development. Both Fianna Fail and Labour party representatives, and the sole Fine Gael representative on Bray Town Council, voted in December 2005 to zone this part of the Dargle floodplain as Town Centre. Three newly elected Green Party representatives and one Sinn Fein councillor steadfastly held out against the amended zoning. Two of those councillors - Deirdre deBurca of the Green Party and John Brady of Sinn Fein - are standing in the forthcoming General Election.

SWAP say that they will be meeting with Minister Roche next Monday, 16th April, where the funding of flood defence works, promised to this community for over twenty years and which the OPW now admit are very urgent, will be discussed. They also say that they accept that the eight councillors who voted to rezone the floodplain for high density construction may have acted in good faith, believing that this was the only way to obtain the necessary flood protection works. At an Oral Hearing held last October into appeals against Bray Town Council's decision to grant planning permission to Pizarro, despite a clear proviso in Bray's Development Plan stating that no permission shall be granted unless adequate flood protection works are already in place, it emerged that Pizarro had, in fact, not committed in writing to any contribution to flood defence works.

Residents of Little Bray and Seapoint Court - the two communities most directly affected by the threat of flooding - say that they expect councillors to now demonstrate their good faith by revoking the amended zoning, and returning it to its original Open Space category via a Variation on Bray's Development Plan. They also appeal that an Emergency Plan be put in place by the Council to ensure that the very vulnerable communities that would be affected by potentially lethal flooding, which is predicted by both sides in this debate, will be at least warned before river defences are breached.

There are over 700 homes in the Dargle floodplain, and more than 100 of them are one-storey houses, mostly purpose built for Bray Town Council to house elderly people and those confined to wheelchairs. There are also two residential homes for people with special needs, close to the river, and a creche.

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