Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

Around 400 of Ireland’s finest planning brains gathered in Galway for a four-day National Planning Conference that started last Wednesday week in Salthill.

Wouldn’t it have been mighty if a few of them – architects, engineers, planners – headed down the road to Westside instead.

For inside Westside Community Centre on the same night, 70-plus concerned residents gathered at a public meeting and wondered how the hell a 240-bed high-rise student flats complex got planning permission in the car park of their local shopping centre.

As Chief Executive of Galway City Council Leonard Cleary waxed lyrical at the “prestigious” planning conference about “principles of sustainable urbanism”, the people of Westside expressed real fears that their shopping centre – a hub of an established, tight-knit community – might not be viable once this student-cum-tourist development is built.

And........

© Connacht Tribune