Dominic Hannigan's blog

I had a phone call after the big storms to alert me to the fact that the Laytown Pitch & Putt club had once again suffered damage. The club is one of the few local facilities in in the Laytown and Bettystown area and has a membership of over 100 people. Because of its location (at the edge of the beach) it suffers from coastal erosion.


The grass now lying on the beach was part of the course fairway!

One of the major enviornmental issues for the country, and not just Meath, is that there appears to be no defined planning strategy for how we deal with coastal erosion. With the advent of global warming the worry is that these storms will increase in frequency, leading to further damages to facilities along our coastline. I told Environment Minister John Gormley about this when he appeared in the Senate on Wednesday.

I also spoke on a number of other issues, including the high costs of mobile phones in Ireland, the new Motor Tax Bill which encourages people to use more emission friendly engines, and a debate on the draft guidelines for new residential housing estates.

As someone who working in the Planning Department of a local authority (the London Boroiugh of Camden) and as someone who actually lives in a newly built housing estate, I was particularly keen to make some points to the Minister. There are so many lessons that can be learned from the last ten years of house building. The need for new playgrounds, community facilities, schools, shops etc. to be put in place at the same time as the houses. I think everyone realises this now, and so the next generation of new homes should benefit from past mistakes. However, it´s not clear how we are going to retrofit badly-needed facilities on the residential areas that currently don´t have them.

And finally, thanks to those people who have left comments on myblog. Unfortunately, I have not been able to publish all of them. Even though some of them were very funny, and I might share the views expressed, I cannot allow anything up on the site that could be libellous. Otherwise, I´d be taken to the cleaners! So if you leave a comment, please omit any bits that could get me in trouble :) Thanks for your understanding.