Clare Councillors have called for changes to planning guidelines in order to ease restrictions on the owners of rural homes in Clare, as well as stimulating the county’s construction sector.
Local representatives are set to amend the County Development plan, after hearing that so-called sterilisation agreements are preventing construction activity, and in some cases leading to people abandoning their homes.
Houses built in some rural areas have had conditions attached whereby the person living in the home cannot sell for a number of years after construction, while development is also prohibited on other parcels of land as a result of a planning condition.
Lissycasey Fianna Fail Councillor PJ Kelly feels the measures may have been appropriate when the construction sector was booming, but feels they’re unnecessary and unfair now.