Bat prevents diocese from making a killing on land sale
This follows the acting CSO of Clare County Council, Ger Dollard, rejecting a request by the Killaloe Diocesan Trust to rezone a buffer zone to the west of Ennis in the new draft Clare County Development Plan.
The diocese owns a 68-acre site in the Ashline/Beechpark area that contains a number of zonings, including recreation, low-density residential, residential, community, and buffer space.
In a bid to increase the value of the landholding, the diocesan trust argued that “the large parcel of land adjacent to the N85 Beechpark roundabout with the proposed ‘buffer zone’ to be excessive and requests that it is scaled down”.
The trust also requested that an area zoned “recreation” in its landholding be relocated out of the landholding and that a separate parcel of land be rezoned from recreation to “low density residential”.
The diocese said it has been approached by developers looking to acquire some of the proposed residential zoned land.
However, the diocese has failed on all three fronts, with the lesser horseshoe bat the reason why it has failed to have the buffer space zoning overturned.
