Darragh Nolan

This is an Irish Independent Podcast.

a wind farm off the coast of Galway and Clare, and would have cost €1.4 billion, so quite a big development for 30 what were described as Eiffel Tower-sized turbines off the coast there in the west.

He described the development as a monstrosity, which would put an atomic bomb under the conservation area as we should see it.

That's just not feasible for people when we do live in a housing crisis and there is such a demand there that isn't being met by the level of supply that we have.

So on this site, the Montebello House site, which is right in the middle of Killiney Village, what they're proposing is a 32 unit apartment block.

and that would be in three storeys.

So it's a pretty simple ask in one way.

The development is just 32 units, three storeys, there's the apartment block and there you go.

But where the objection comes in is Ali Hewson of U2 fame, Bono's wife, is arguing that the development of a large block of apartments on this site of such a scale, density and design goes against the natural character of the surrounding area.

So one of those objections cites

specific development and saying this goes against the character of what's there already.

And also there's a bit of an amenity concern, a bit of a resources concern as well.

So another element of Ali Hughes's objection, due to the significant demands that this type of development places on the capacity of existing highly constrained road and drainage infrastructure, an apartment block will have a very negative impact on the residential amenity of the area.

So two aspects to the objection.

One goes against the character of the area and the other

that this is going to actually have an impact in terms of traffic and also in terms of things like drainage as well.

No, it's not.

And I suppose it is important to stress as well that in this instance with the apartment block, there have been more than 20 apartments.

local objectors and in this previous instance there were actually 37 so the previous development that was proposed again by the same developers by Covello was for four very large two story four bedroom flat roofed houses and that is on the same site and there was another U2 element to all of this alongside Ali Houston as well

Morrie Steinberg, who's the wife of The Edge, also lodged an objection at the time.