Darragh Nolan

He objected to the application and he said that the development overlooked the kitchen in the house there.

Now, ultimately, there was planning permission granted for these units to be built.

But when this kind of drummed up a little bit of attention, I suppose the other interesting thing about it as well is that we were in the throes of the 2024 general election campaign as well when this happened.

hit the headlines in November of 2024.

But his own party leader, Roderick O'Gorman, did defend him.

He described the objection that Francis Noel Duffy put in as a legitimate one.

And he said that in this situation, the inspector from on board Panola actually agreed to the position that the homes proposed was in breach of the local area plan.

Now, the objection didn't succeed initially.

There was planning permission granted, but there was a later High Court ruling then that overturned

that planning permission.

So ultimately, that particular proposed development did not go ahead.

I think that platform does have to exist.

And even if we acknowledge that we are and quite obviously are in the middle of a housing crisis and we need to build a lot more housing much quicker at a much larger scale, that is absolutely the case.

I don't think we can have a runaway train either, because if you just grant planning permission left, right and center for whatever development it is, you are going to have situations where you do lose the character of an area or the character of an area changes so rapidly and changes beyond recognition.

So I think that line exists somewhere in the planning process.

But I do think...

Not necessarily any of these individual cases in a vacuum, but I think just the wider issue of objections being lodged to planning and things being delayed.

We live in a system now whereby from

acquisition of a site to complete construction, that could take more than three years.

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.