Returning emigrant's Connemara planning nightmare

ENVIRONMENT Minister John Gormley has been told that his Department is guilty of “appalling” treatment of a member of the “Irish Disapora” who wants to set up home in Connemara.Fine Gael local election candidate Eileen Mannion has said there is a real chance that an appeal from Minister Gormley’s own Department will ruin the chances of a Ballyconneely native from building a house in her homeland.The appeal from a section of the Environment Department states that the site in question is 'dominated’ by the European Dry Heaths habitat directive. Eileen Mannion has told the Environment Minister that dry heath is to be found in tens of thousands of acres in the Ballyconneely peninsula and that dry heath should not have “a status superior to that on an applicant for planning permission who has an essential housing need.”Ms Mannion has told Minister Gormley that the woman in question left Ireland in the late sixties and returned three years ago believing that she and her husband could build their home and live in Ballyconneely.Ms Mannion says that she was justified in that belief because of...