Planners Take, 29 October 2026

There is a particular kind of Irish policy that arrives with a fanfare and then waits, like a guest at a wedding who has been seated at the wrong table, for somebody to notice it. The planning exemption for modular homes in back gardens may be turning into one of them. When councillors in Tipperary asked this month how the new rules were being received, a senior planner told them that the council had received eleven notifications in all, and that not one commencement notice had yet followed. In a county of Tipperary's size, eleven is not so much a trickle as a rumour.

It is worth recalling what the exemption actually offers, because the detail matters more than the headline. A homeowner may place a standalone unit of up to 45 square metres in the back garden of their principal residence without seeking permission, provided they notify the council in advance and lodge a commencement notice. The unit can house a family member or a long-term tenant, but it cannot be sold off separately or let to tourists. It is, in other words, a carefully fenced concession, designed to let an ageing parent live close by or to give an adult child a door of their own, without opening the gate to a back-garden property market.

The temptation is to read the Tipperary figure as proof that the idea has failed, and some will. That would be premature. The rules only came in over the summer, households do not commission a second dwelling on a whim, and the costs of a well-built unit, together with connections to water and drainage, are not trivial for a family already carrying a mortgage. Building regulations still apply in full, as the council was careful to point out, and that alone gives pause to people who imagined something closer to a garden shed with a kettle.

There is also a quieter difficulty, which the same meeting brought into the open. The exemption does not reach back in time. Anyone who installed a modular unit before the rules changed is still, in the language of the planning code, unauthorised, and must seek retention permission even if the unit would now satisfy every condition. One councillor feared that people might treat the exemption as a free-for-all, skip the notification and leave themselves open to warning letters or enforcement; there is a related risk that households who acted in good faith before the rules arrived find themselves in the enforcement queue while their neighbours proceed lawfully under a notification form.

None of this is a reason to abandon the measure. For councils, a modest uptake carries modest administrative burden, and a light-touch route for genuine family housing is a reasonable thing for the State to offer. For communities wary of piecemeal backland building, the size limit, the ban on separate sale and the principal-residence test are real protections rather than decoration. And for housing delivery, the honest answer is that garden units were never going to move the national figures much; the same week brought Cabinet approval for a bill allowing Home Building Finance Ireland to lend to smaller builders for zoned land before permission, a reminder that the larger levers lie elsewhere.

What the Tipperary figure does suggest is that an exemption is only as useful as the public's understanding of it. Clear guidance from councils, a straightforward path for those caught on the wrong side of the start date, and some patience before anyone declares victory or defeat would serve applicants and neighbours alike. Eleven households have taken the first step. It would be no bad thing to find out, in a year's time, how many of them got to the end.

Irish Town Planner Planning News Roundup, 29 October 2026

Here is today's round-up of town planning news from around Ireland, covering 91 new homes for central Bray, a refused oral hearing on the large housing appeal beside Cú Chulainn's Castle in Dundalk, a hotel permission for Rosslare Harbour, a slow start for garden modular homes in Tipperary, three townhouses to replace a derelict Nenagh pub and Cabinet approval for State land finance for smaller builders.

91 homes approved off Vevay Road, Bray

Wicklow County Council has granted conditional permission to Lisava Ventures Limited for 91 homes on 1.56 hectares of former Pembroke Estate land between Vevay Road, Church Road and Churchlands Road in Bray, following a further information request. The scheme comprises 42 apartments in a four- and five-storey block, 28 duplexes and 21 three-storey houses, with 120 car parking spaces, almost 3,000 sq m of public open space and works to a protected stone boundary wall on Church Road. The decision, dated 21 October, was made despite concerns raised over the loss of trees on the site.

Source, Irish Independent, 29 October 2026: https://www.independent.ie/county/wicklow/green-light-for-91-home-development-in-the-heart-of-north-wicklow-despite-concerns-over-loss-of-trees/a/163512105.html

No oral hearing for Dundalk housing appeal beside Cú Chulainn's Castle

An Coimisiún Pleanála has refused a request from the Save Cú Chulainn's Castle group for an oral hearing into appeals against Grandspect Limited's large-scale residential development of more than 1,000 homes on about 96 acres at Castletown Road, Dundalk, which Louth County Council granted in July. The appeals, lodged by ten parties including local councillors, An Taisce and the County Louth Archaeological and Historical Society, raise concerns about the setting of the monument, archaeology and landscape. The case will now be decided on the written submissions, with the Commission previously indicating a decision date of 1 December.

Source, Irish Independent, 28 October 2026: https://www.independent.ie/county/louth/oral-hearing-denied-as-appeal-continues-for-objectors-to-housing-plan-near-cu-chulainns-castle/a/163664757.html

Hotel use approved for former Great Southern in Rosslare Harbour

An Coimisiún Pleanála has upheld Wexford County Council's permission for alterations to the former Great Southern Hotel in Rosslare Harbour, including roof repairs and an increase from 102 to 107 rooms, on condition that it is used as a hotel. Ceann Comhairle Verona Murphy had appealed, arguing that the implemented nursing home permission meant a return to hotel use needed a new application, but the inspector found hotel use acceptable in principle under the settlement plan. The inspector raised concerns that kitchen pods on each floor made the layout more akin to a hostel, and recommended a condition tying the permission to hotel use; the owner says full works will begin in 2027.

Source, Irish Independent, 28 October 2026: https://www.independent.ie/county/wexford/planning-authority-grants-permission-for-new-hotel-in-rosslare-harbour-as-developer-confirms-full-development-works-will-commence-in-2027/a/163523637.html

Only 11 garden modular home notifications in Tipperary

Tipperary County Council has received just 11 notifications from homeowners intending to install a modular home of up to 45 sq m in their back garden under the planning exemption introduced over the summer, and no commencement notices have yet been lodged. The units may house family members or long-term tenants but cannot be sold separately or used for short-term letting, and the council must be notified before works begin. A senior planner told councillors that the exemption does not regularise units already installed, which would need retention permission.

Source, Irish Independent, 29 October 2026: https://www.independent.ie/county/tipperary/just-11-tipperary-homeowners-notify-council-of-plans-for-modular-homes-under-new-rules/a/162968346.html

Derelict Nenagh pub to make way for three townhouses

Tipperary County Council has decided to grant permission, subject to 12 conditions, for the demolition of the derelict former Malthouse pub at 7 and 8 McDonagh Street, Nenagh, and its replacement with three two-storey terraced houses. The site originally held three terraced houses, and the design was revised to lower the buildings on Rossa Place and keep a shopfront appearance on McDonagh Street; the applicant said rising construction costs made three homes the only viable option. The decision, issued on 22 October, remains open to appeal.

Source, Tipperary Live, 28 October 2026: https://www.tipperarylive.ie/news/nenagh/tipperary-pub-to-be-demolished-as-permission-is-granted-for-three-new-houses-9315828

Cabinet approves bill on State finance for zoned land

Following reports earlier in the week, the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance, Simon Harris, has secured Cabinet approval to draft the Home Building Finance Ireland (Amendment) Bill 2026. The bill would allow HBFI to lend for the purchase of residentially zoned land before planning permission is secured, a gap the Department of Finance says weighs particularly on smaller builders who lack the equity to buy and advance several sites at once.

Source, gov.ie (Department of Finance), 28 October 2026: https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-finance/press-releases/t%C3%A1naiste-simon-harris-moves-to-unlock-finance-for-small-builders-to-purchase-zoned-land/

Data Centres in Ireland: A Debate That Deserves Better

A personal discussion piece by Brendan Buck. It is not the opinion of BPS Planning.

I am a town planner, and if a developer or a community asked me to act for them on a data centre I would do so, and do it properly for either. My interest here is narrower than that. I would like the argument, when it is had, to be had fairly: without jibes, without insults and without misinformation from either side.

A word about Brexit

It is a peculiar feature of Irish public life that a planning dispute can go from the technical to the tribal in about a week. The latest turn came on 24 October, when The Journal reported on an interview with Ronan Kelly, chief executive of the lobby group Digital Infrastructure Ireland. Those who stop data centres, he suggested, resemble the crowds who cheered the Brexit vote. The opposition, he said, is fuelled by disinformation that has blown across from American politics. The AI industry, he told the paper, is like water: it will always find its way, and if Ireland's grid is the obstacle, it will simply flow to the next country.

There is something in this, and it deserves to be said first. Investment does move, and it moves quickly. Mr Kelly also concedes that his own sector has been too secretive and is preparing materials to explain itself to the communities beside which it builds. He says that 107 Irish data centres already use closed-loop cooling, which, if true, bears directly on the water question. It is his figure, and it would be worth having it tested independently.

The difficulty lies in the other claim. The Journal's report offers no evidence that foreign money is stirring up Irish objectors, and it records that some 300 people had objected to the Kilmeaden proposal a year earlier, which is hard to put down to a rumour from Virginia. A Brexit comparison is a handy thing to reach for, since it tells the audience what to think of people before it has heard a word they say. It does not help the industry, and it does nothing for the people who will live next door to its buildings.

What the larger argument is about

The debate here is not happening in a vacuum. It sits inside a much bigger argument about technology, power and who gets to decide, and Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor's work on what they call end times fascism, which I have read in detail, is one contribution to it. Their Guardian essay of September 2026 is adapted from their book of the same name. It is concerned with American politics and the tech billionaires. It does not mention Ireland, it touches on data centres only in passing, including the people who have defended their air and water against the sprawling ones, and it nowhere suggests that someone who supports a data centre is an extremist. Nobody should say so on its behalf.

What I take from it is a question that supporters and objectors can both ask, which is who gets the benefit and who is left with the bill. I want a better world, and in my book that means one in which people have a real say in what is built beside them, and in which the gains and the costs of progress are shared fairly.

The case for

The supporters have a real case, and it should be heard in full. The Government says that firms operating data centres here employ about 21,000 people directly, within an ICT sector of more than 180,000. Local authorities benefit as well. The Journal has estimated that councils collect around €62.5 million a year in commercial rates from data centres, about a fifth of South Dublin's rates income. The Maynooth geographer Patrick Bresnihan warned in the same piece that a deepening dependence on that money is risky, which is a fair thing to say and not an argument against the jobs.

Nor is it all bad news on the ground. In Tallaght, waste heat from an Amazon Web Services data centre now warms public buildings and a university, with affordable apartments to follow, through a not-for-profit utility owned by the council. The council estimates it saves more than 1,500 tonnes of carbon a year. Well designed, a nuisance can be turned into an asset.

The case against

Those who object have specific complaints, and the first is about the grid, where the figures are stark. The CSO says that data centres used 23 per cent of the country's metered electricity in 2025, up from 5 per cent in 2015. The SEAI, in Energy in Ireland 2026, puts the figure at 22.5 per cent and attributes 78 per cent of the net rise in electricity demand since 2015 to them, while recording that the European Commission puts data centres at roughly 3 per cent of demand across the Union. EirGrid says the greater Dublin region is now fully constrained for new connections, that the headroom is largely gone, and that a further six gigawatts of interest would double the peak on the system. One does not need an engineering degree to see why a householder, looking at a small island grid and a large industrial customer, begins to wonder about the bill.

Then there is what it feels like on the ground. Kildare County Council voted in September, by 22 to 11 with seven abstentions, against reviewing land zoned exclusively for data centres at Naas. Cllr Bill Clear, who had backed the zoning in 2021, said he had since learned that data centres were not all they were cracked up to be, having visited a site in Clondalkin where the noise and the smell had shocked him. Residents spoke of noise, air pollution and water.

In Kilmeaden, outside Waterford, more than 500 people objected to a campus covering more than a square kilometre. RTÉ reported three large ICT buildings, 16 gas turbines, and more than 300 people taking part in a slow-drive protest. The council refused permission earlier this month, citing traffic and the pressure on water and electricity. The developers had said that the scheme met regulatory guidelines and involved community consultation, and nothing in the reports suggests otherwise. But compliance is a low bar when you are a village of some 300 people being told, as one resident put it, to prepare for ten years of construction.

And in Killala, in Mayo, the council granted permission for a €1.5 billion scheme which An Coimisiún Pleanála then overturned on appeal, saying that the applicant had not shown consistency with the Climate Action Plan and had produced no evidence of a renewable power purchase agreement. The Irish Times found mixed feelings: relief in some quarters, and in another a Fine Gael councillor frustrated after more than seven years of work. One resident complained that developers put these things up "without explaining anything to the local people". That sentence could stand as a summary of most planning rows in the history of the State.

Elsewhere

None of this is peculiarly Irish. In Virginia, the Prince William Digital Gateway, a plan for 23 million square feet of data centres, ended in July after the courts found that the county had failed to follow its own public notice rules in rezoning the land. Whatever one thinks of the project, it died of a procedural failure, which is the most avoidable way for anything to die. In Tucson, the council rejected Project Blue unanimously in 2025, one member observing that giant corporations prefer to operate in the shadows. And across the 13 American states served by the PJM grid, the independent market monitor says data centres accounted for $6.3 billion of the $16.4 billion in the latest capacity auction charges, costs that find their way onto bills.

There are places that have found a middle road. Amsterdam paused new data centres in 2019 and then restarted growth in designated clusters, with caps on power and space. Singapore lifted its pause in 2022 but promised to be more selective in future.

What we have, and what we lack

Ireland is not starting from nothing, though it can sometimes look that way. The Government's 2022 statement on data centres still stands, and the regulator's December 2025 connection policy requires new data centres to bring matching generation or storage and to meet at least 80 per cent of their annual demand from additional Irish renewables. The same notice says that the regulator would prefer a State-led approach, with spatial planning and development targets. In January the Government published its Large Energy User Action Plan, a "plan-led" approach built around green energy parks beside renewable supply.

Last week, however, a Minister told the Dáil that none of the plan's 17 actions is yet complete. The plan names no sites, and the National Planning Statement that would set the criteria is promised only "before the end of this year". Nor does the plan prevent projects being proposed elsewhere. As far as can be found, there are no national planning guidelines dedicated to data centres, which leaves councils and An Coimisiún Pleanála to decide, case by case, what a plan ought to have settled beforehand. It is an old Irish habit to build the thing first and the policy afterwards.

A fair fight

There are two sides to this argument, and both are honest. The supporters see jobs, investment and the digital infrastructure that a modern economy needs. The objectors see a grid, a water supply and a landscape being committed to a single industry without their say. Neither side is helped by calling the other a conspiracy, a mob or a lobby.

The answer is not a ban, and it is not a free-for-all. It is what we have been slow to supply in so many areas, a system. That means national guidelines on siting, scale, noise, water and emissions, in place before the next application and not after it. It means development plans that say plainly where large energy users may go, tied to grid and renewable capacity, so that zoning land means what it says. It means binding standards on water use and heat reuse, with Tallaght as the benchmark. It means community benefit agreed at the start and not offered as an afterthought, and it means independent, published monitoring of power, water and noise once a facility is running.

With clear rules, developers get certainty, communities get a fair hearing, and the decisions can be argued on the facts. People rarely fight what they trust to have been well planned.

Further reading

• Irish data centre chief says critics are like Brexiteers (The Journal, 24 October 2026): https://www.thejournal.ie/irish-data-centre-brexiteers-7028896-Oct2026/
• Calls for moratorium as Kilmeaden development refused (The Journal): https://www.thejournal.ie/kilmeaden-data-centre-planning-refused-7195702-Oct2026/
• Planning permission for Kilmeaden data centre refused (RTÉ): https://www.rte.ie/news/regional/2026/1015/1595561-data-centre-waterford/
• Few regrets in Mayo over data centre refusal (The Irish Times): https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2026/10/06/few-regrets-in-co-mayo-over-data-centre-planning-refusal/
• Data centre protesters vow to fight on in Kildare (The Irish Times): https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026/09/29/data-centre-protesters-vow-to-fight-on-as-kildare-county-council-rejects-zoning-motions/
• Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2025 (CSO): https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-dcmec/datacentresmeteredelectricityconsumption2025/keyfindings/
• Energy in Ireland 2026 (SEAI): https://www.seai.ie/sites/default/files/publications/Energy-in-Ireland-2026-Part-1.pdf
• Data Centre Constrained Area Overview (EirGrid): https://www.eirgrid.ie/sites/default/files/publications/Data-Centre-Constrained-Area-Overview-May-2026.pdf
• New electricity connection policy for data centres (CRU): https://www.cru.ie/en-ie/about-us/news/the-cru-publishes-its-decision-on-new-electricity-connection-policy-for-data-centres/
• Large Energy User Action Plan (Department of Enterprise): https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-enterprise-tourism-and-employment/press-releases/government-publishes-large-energy-user-action-plan-leap-laying-the-foundation-for-future-investments-in-energy-intensive-sectors/
• Dáil answer on the Large Energy User Action Plan, 22 October 2026: https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/question/2026-10-22/249/
• Councils earn an estimated €62m each year from data centres (The Journal): https://www.thejournal.ie/investigates-data-centre-commercial-rates-6796749-Sep2025/
• Tallaght District Heating Network (South Dublin County Council): https://www.sdcc.ie/en/news/tallaght-district-heating-network-and-energy-centre-officially-opened.html
• Prince William Digital Gateway project officially dies (Virginia Business): https://virginiabusiness.com/prince-william-digital-gateway-data-center-project-officially-dies/
• Bye, Bye, Project Blue (AZPM): https://news.azpm.org/p/azgovtnews/2025/8/6/225888-bye-bye-project-blue/
• Data centers drove $6.3B in PJM capacity auction costs (Utility Dive): https://www.utilitydive.com/news/pjm-data-centers-capacity-auction-imm-bowring/825626/
• Amsterdam resumes data center building (DCD): https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/amsterdam-resumes-data-center-building-after-years-moratorium/
• Singapore lifts data center moratorium (DCD): https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/singapore-lifts-data-center-moratorium-but-sets-conditions/
• Klein and Taylor, Guardian essay, 13 September 2026: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/sep/13/end-times-fascists-essay
• End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World (Klein and Taylor): https://naomiklein.org/end-times-fascism/

Planners Take, 28 October 2026

There is a particular kind of planning rule that exists mainly on paper. Since 2019, anyone letting a home for short stays in a rent pressure zone has generally needed planning permission to do so. Seven years on, the Department of Housing's own figures say that only about 1.3 per cent of short-term lets have ever applied. That is not a regulatory regime; it is an honour system that most of the people it covers have chosen to ignore. The Government's Short-Term Letting and Tourism Bill is meant to change that, but one feature of it risks turning seven years of non-compliance into a qualification.

The broad shape of the proposal is sensible. Planning permission for short-term letting would be restricted in 25 areas with populations of more than 20,000, including Dublin, Cork and Limerick. A national register, run by Fáilte Ireland, would require hosts to sign up from 1 December, which for the first time would give councils a reliable picture of where these lets actually are. Anyone who has tried to run an enforcement case on a short-term let knows that the hardest part is often proving the use exists at all; a register goes a long way towards fixing that.

The difficulty lies in the draft national planning statement that sits alongside the Bill. For short-term lets that have been operating for seven years, regardless of where they are, it proposes a presumption in favour of granting permission, provided the property has been in continuous short-term use and has not been the subject of enforcement action. Hosts in areas with fewer than 20,000 people would also have two years to apply.

Seven years is not an arbitrary number to a planner. It echoes the period after which, under our existing law, a council generally loses the ability to bring enforcement proceedings against unauthorised development. Read in that light, the presumption looks less like a loophole and more like an attempt to be consistent with a principle that already runs through the system: after a certain time, the State accepts that the moment for enforcement has passed. There is also a fairness argument. Councils did not have the information or the resources to pursue these uses, and some operators will have invested in good faith on the strength of that inaction.

But the comparison does not hold up well. The seven-year enforcement limit was designed to give certainty about physical development, not to reward a commercial use that was unlawful from the first night it operated and that has a direct, measurable effect on housing supply. The condition that no enforcement action has been taken is close to meaningless when enforcement has been so thin on the ground. Threshold has put the point plainly: permission has always been a legal requirement, and those who operated outside it should not be rewarded with longer transition periods. Sinn Féin has gone further, arguing that the restrictions would be among the weakest anywhere in Europe or the United States.

The stakes are not trivial. Analysis by the Housing Agency, cited in the planning statement, suggests that almost 17,000 properties are being used entirely for short-term letting in areas of high housing demand, and that somewhere between 5,500 and 9,500 could return to long-term use. In a year when councils, the Department and the industry are arguing over every possible lever to increase supply, that is a significant number of homes that already exist, are already serviced and need no new planning permission to be lived in.

My own view is that the register and the restriction in the larger urban areas should be welcomed and brought in without delay. The presumption for long-standing lets, however, should be dropped or narrowed sharply, perhaps limited to lets in areas where there is no evidence of housing pressure. Seven years of non-compliance should be treated as a problem to be solved, not as a track record.

Irish Town Planner Planning News Roundup, 28 October 2026

Here is today's round-up of town planning news from around Ireland, covering criticism of the Government's short-term letting proposals, 85 homes in Tralee cleared on appeal, more apartments for Waterford's North Quays, a new civic park for Sandyford, a housing refusal in Longford over wastewater capacity and a withdrawn apartment scheme in Waterford city.

Short-term letting proposals criticised as too weak

Threshold and Sinn Féin have criticised the Government's Short-Term Letting and Tourism Bill, which would restrict planning permission for short-term lets in 25 areas with populations over 20,000, including Dublin, Cork and Limerick. Critics object to a draft national planning statement's presumption in favour of permission for lets that have operated continuously for seven years without enforcement action, and to a two-year window for hosts in smaller areas to apply for permission; a national register run by Fáilte Ireland is due to open on 1 December. The Department of Housing says only about 1.3% of short-term lets have applied for planning permission since it became a requirement, and that around 43.6% of those applications were approved.

Source: Irish Examiner (27 October 2026)

85 homes in Tralee granted on appeal

An Coimisiún Pleanála has granted permission on appeal for 85 homes and a crèche on a 3.3-hectare site at Caherslee, Mounthawk and Carrigeendaniel in Tralee, upholding Kerry County Council's grant of June 2026 despite local objections. The scheme is a mix of detached, semi-detached and terraced houses, duplexes and apartments, with access and a pedestrian and cycle path off Caherslee Road (R551) and a new wastewater pumping station.

Source: Irish Independent (28 October 2026)

Waterford's North Quays approved for 80 more apartments

Revised plans for six residential blocks at Waterford's North Quays regeneration scheme have been approved, raising the number of apartments in Blocks C to H from 350 to 430 while keeping the permitted footprints and heights of eight and nine storeys. One-bedroom units rise from 106 to 228, the 37 previously approved three-bedroom apartments are dropped, and ground-floor retail and commercial space is slightly reduced.

Source: Waterford News & Star (26 October 2026)

Councillors approve Sandyford civic park

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown councillors have approved the council's Part 8 proposal for a 0.96-hectare civic park on Corrig Road at the junction with Carmanhall Road in Sandyford, with 37 votes at the October meeting. Almost 60% of the 275 consultation submissions opposed the plan, mainly over the displacement of businesses and organisations from the site, and councillors were given assurances that efforts would be made to help tenants relocate within the Sandyford Business District.

Source: Irish Independent (27 October 2026)

Longford housing scheme refused over wastewater concerns

Longford County Council has refused permission for 30 houses at Silver Birches, Dunbeggan, Stonepark, which would have been reached through the existing estate's roads and connected to its foul sewer, surface water and water networks. Residents of the estate had opposed the plans over concerns about the capacity of the wastewater system; the decision issued on 20 October after further information was sought.

Source: Irish Independent (October 2026)

Keanes Road apartment plan withdrawn in Waterford

An application by Norris Real Estate Holdings Limited for 40 apartments at Tycor on Keanes Road in Waterford city was withdrawn on 27 October, according to council records. Residents of The Willows had objected to the proposed access through their cul-de-sac, citing traffic, road safety and the character of the estate; no reason for the withdrawal is given.

Source: WLR (27 October 2026)

Planners Take, 27 October 2026

Zoning land for housing has never been the same thing as building homes on it. Every planner who has worked on a county development plan knows the gap between the two: the residential zoning that sits on a map for years, serviced or not, while the landowner waits, the builder cannot raise the money and the council's core strategy figures quietly fail to materialise. The Government's latest proposal is aimed squarely at one part of that gap, and it deserves a careful welcome.

Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris is due to bring a memo to Cabinet on Wednesday on a Bill to widen the remit of Home Building Finance Ireland, the State-backed lender to smaller builders. At present a builder can only borrow from HBFI once it has a site with planning permission. Under the proposal, HBFI would be able to lend for the purchase of land already zoned for residential use before permission is granted. Larger developers would not be able to use it. If approved, a general scheme will be published and sent for pre-legislative scrutiny, and there are suggestions the Government wants it passed quickly.

The case for the change rests on the structure of the industry. A report for HBFI found that more than nine in ten Irish home-builders deliver fewer than 50 homes a year, and that only 11 consistently deliver more than 300. That is a fragmented sector, and it is the small and medium firms that build the infill schemes, the edge-of-town estates and the village developments that make up much of what we see on weekly lists outside the cities. For those firms the hardest money to find is the earliest money: buying a site and carrying it through design, surveys, pre-application consultation and a planning process that can run for well over a year, all on their own capital. Easing that step should, in principle, bring more zoned land into active use.

From a planning perspective, there is a further benefit. A builder who owns its site outright can put more into the quality of its application. In my experience, many weak applications are weak because the applicant is trying to keep pre-planning costs to a minimum, skimping on ecology, drainage or design work that a council will inevitably ask for later by way of further information. Better-funded applicants tend to produce better-prepared files, and better-prepared files are decided faster.

There are reasonable objections. Lending against land without permission is riskier than lending against land with it, and the State is taking that risk. Zoned land is not always serviceable land, and no amount of finance will overcome a lack of water or wastewater capacity. There is also a danger that cheaper finance simply pushes up the price of zoned sites, transferring the benefit to landowners rather than to buyers. And it does nothing about the capacity of planning authorities themselves, which remain stretched, with the commencement of the remaining parts of the Planning and Development Act 2024 paused because of the work-to-rule.

None of these objections is a reason not to proceed, but they are reasons to design the scheme well. Lending should be tied to land that is genuinely serviceable or has a credible servicing plan, and drawdown should be linked to progress towards a planning application so that the measure activates land rather than funding speculation. HBFI and local authorities should share information so that councils know which zoned sites are moving.

My view is that this is a sensible, modest reform that addresses a real bottleneck. It will not on its own deliver the scale of housing the country needs, and the Government does not claim it will. But it treats small builders as the backbone of delivery that they are, and it recognises that the planning system works best when applicants arrive properly prepared.

Irish Town Planner Planning News Roundup, 27 October 2026

Here is today's round-up of town planning news from around Ireland, covering proposed State loans for small builders to buy zoned land before planning permission, a 73-home mixed-use scheme in Clonlara, new homes permitted in Dundalk, a town-centre housing application in Clonmel, concern over the concentration of solar farms in mid-Waterford and a request for further information on the Oriel offshore wind farm.

Small builders could get State loans to buy zoned land before planning permission

Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris is to bring proposals to Cabinet on Wednesday that would allow Home Building Finance Ireland (HBFI) to lend small builders money to buy land already zoned for housing before planning permission is granted; at present HBFI finance is available only once a site has permission. Research for HBFI found that more than 90% of home-builders deliver fewer than 50 homes a year, and only 11 consistently deliver more than 300. If approved, a general scheme of the Bill will be published and sent for pre-legislative scrutiny.

Source: The Irish Times (27 October 2026)

73-home mixed-use scheme proposed in Clonlara, Co Clare

Plans have been lodged with Clare County Council for a mixed-use development of 73 homes in the village of Clonlara, made up of 67 houses and six first-floor apartments, together with three commercial units including a shop and a new paved plaza. The 4.13-hectare application, received on 20 October and accompanied by a Natura Impact Statement, also provides for land to be prepared for a public park and playground for the local authority. Observations can be made until 23 November, with a decision due by 14 December.

Source: Irish Independent (27 October 2026)

46 homes permitted on the Long Avenue, Dundalk

Louth County Council has granted Pangreen Limited permission, subject to 16 conditions, for 46 homes in a three- to four-storey development at the corner of The Long Avenue and Tom Bellew Avenue in Dundalk. The scheme is a mix of apartments and duplexes, with 47 parking spaces, a new cycle lane on Tom Bellew Avenue and pedestrian links. The application included a masterplan for the wider lands to the north, where a discount foodstore has previously been permitted.

Source: Louth Live (26 October 2026)

Permission sought for 45 homes in Clonmel town centre

Ormonde Homes Ltd has lodged an application with Tipperary County Council for 27 houses and 18 apartments on a 2.09-hectare site off Davis Road, behind Lidl in Clonmel, the first phase of a scheme that would eventually bring 99 homes to the area. Nine of the units would be social housing, and an archaeological exclusion zone has been built into the layout following site investigations. A second phase is expected to be lodged in the coming weeks.

Source: Tipperary Live (26 October 2026)

Councillors question scale of solar farm applications in mid-Waterford

Councillors in the Comeragh area of Co Waterford have raised concerns about the number of large solar farm applications on agricultural land around Clonea-Power, Stradbally, Portlaw and Kilmeaden. A senior planner at Waterford City and County Council said that, in the absence of national guidelines, each application has to be assessed on its own merits, and that the council has long called for such guidelines. One councillor intends to table a motion seeking a pause on further data centre permissions in the county pending a national assessment of their impacts.

Source: Waterford News & Star (26 October 2026)

Further information sought on Oriel offshore wind farm

An Coimisiún Pleanála issued a further-information request on 13 October on the planning application for the proposed 375MW Oriel offshore wind farm off Co Louth, covering matters including marine archaeology at the Dunany Point landfall, tourism impacts and bat surveys. The developer has until 14 January 2027 to respond, and consideration of the application is paused in the meantime. Separately, Oriel Windfarm Limited has applied to the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority to extend its route-to-market deadline to the end of 2028.

Source: Afloat (24 October 2026)

Planners Take, 26 October 2026

Ireland's planning system has spent two years in a strange half-state, governed partly by the law it is leaving behind and partly by the one it is moving towards. That limbo has just been extended. The Department of Housing has confirmed that further commencement of the Planning and Development Act 2024 is on hold, with 24 parts of the Act still to be switched on, because of the work-to-rule by council staff. The Department describes the delay as being due to circumstances beyond its control and says it will name a new date as soon as it can.

Some context is useful. The 2024 Act was sold as the biggest reform of planning law in a generation. It brought decades of amendments into a single statute, turned An Bord Pleanála into An Coimisiún Pleanála, introduced mandatory timelines for decisions and reformed the rules on judicial review. It has been brought in piece by piece since then, which was always going to be awkward, but the expectation across the profession was that the remaining parts would follow in an orderly way. The pause comes after Fórsa instructed members working in local authorities to withdraw cooperation from any restructuring and from new or changed work practices, following the breakdown of pay talks over the summer. Strike action planned for last Wednesday was suspended after fresh talks at the Workplace Relations Commission, but the work-to-rule remains.

Why should this matter beyond the circle of planners and lawyers who follow commencement orders? Because a planning system is, above all, a set of procedures that people rely on to be predictable. An applicant preparing a large housing scheme needs to know which timelines, which appeal rules and which forms will apply when the application is lodged, and again when it reaches a decision. A community group considering an objection or a legal challenge needs the same certainty. When parts of a new code are live and others are not, every planning department and every consultant has to keep two rulebooks open, and the risk of procedural error rises. In a system where judicial review is already a familiar feature of major projects, procedural uncertainty is not a small thing.

There is a fair argument on the other side. Commencing new procedures means new forms, new software, new public notices and retrained staff, and that is precisely the sort of change in work practices a work-to-rule is designed to withhold. Bringing provisions into force in council offices that are not cooperating with the changes would risk a messier transition than a short delay. The Department says it is keeping the councils and the commission in an advanced state of readiness, and if the dispute is settled quickly, little lasting harm may be done. Workers are entitled to press their case, and the Government cannot reasonably expect councils to absorb a major legal overhaul while the pay question is unresolved.

Still, the episode exposes a weakness in how we reform planning. The Act was drafted with ambition, but its delivery depends on local authority planning departments that have been stretched for years, and the transition has been designed as a long series of separate commencement decisions rather than one clear switchover. That spreads the work out, but it also leaves the reform exposed to any interruption, whether industrial, technical or political.

My view is that the delay itself is less damaging than the uncertainty around it. The Department should publish a clear, dated sequence for the remaining 24 parts as soon as the dispute allows, and give planning authorities and practitioners a reasonable lead-in before each one takes effect. It should also make sure that transitional arrangements for applications and appeals already in the system are spelt out plainly. Planning reform was meant to make the system faster and more certain. A reform stuck halfway does the opposite, and the sooner it is finished, the better for applicants, communities and councils alike.

Irish Town Planner Planning News Roundup, 26 October 2026

Here is today's round-up of town planning news from around Ireland, covering a pause in commencing the Planning and Development Act, a reported curb on new homes from leading housing providers, a 70-home scheme at a protected former convent in Donnybrook, a large housing application near Blarney, a third-party appeal against 174 homes in Portlaoise and planning enforcement on O'Connell Street.

Work-to-rule pauses commencement of the Planning and Development Act

Further commencement of the Planning and Development Act 2024 has been paused because of the work-to-rule by council staff, with 24 parts of the Act still to be brought into force. The Department of Housing confirmed the pause is due to “circumstances beyond its control”, after Fórsa told members in local authorities to withdraw cooperation from restructuring and new work practices. The Department says it will keep working with planning authorities and An Coimisiún Pleanála to stay ready, and will give a new commencement date as soon as possible.

Source: Irish Examiner (26 October 2026)

Housing providers reportedly told to limit number of new homes

The Irish Independent reports that providers of thousands of new homes have been quietly told by the Government to stop building more houses and apartments. Sinn Féin has described the directive as “ludicrous”, amid fears that middle earners will be hit hardest.

Source: Irish Independent (25 October 2026)

70 homes proposed at former Dominican convent in Donnybrook

Muckross Park Developments has applied to Dublin City Council for up to 70 homes on the former Dominican convent and chapel site at Marlborough Road, Donnybrook, beside Muckross Park College. The plans include a new five-storey block of 29 apartments, partial demolition and refurbishment of Muckross Park House, a protected structure, for 25 apartments, conversion of the former chapel into 10 apartments and six houses in the walled garden. The site was sold by the Dominican Sisters for a total of €8.4 million in 2021.

Source: The Irish Times (26 October 2026)

Kilmoney Homes seeks permission for 319 homes near Blarney

Kilmoney Homes Ltd has applied to Cork City Council for a large-scale residential development of 319 homes on a 10.6-hectare site at Dromasmole, about 2.5km from Tower, made up of 237 houses and 82 duplex and simplex units, with a two-storey childcare facility for up to 110 children. Access would be from a new entrance on the Bawnafinny Road. Submissions are accepted until 19 November, with a decision due by 10 December.

Source: The Echo (25 October 2026)

Appeal lodged against 174 homes at Dargan Woods, Portlaoise

A Forest Park resident has appealed to An Coimisiún Pleanála against Laois County Council's grant of permission for 160 houses, 14 apartments and a 67-place crèche extending the Dargan Woods estate off the Borris Road in Portlaoise. The appeal targets a proposed pedestrian and cycle link next to Forest Park, raising noise, environmental and anti-social behaviour concerns; the council had granted permission with 26 conditions after finding the developer's justification for the links acceptable.

Source: Laois Live (25 October 2026)

Planning enforcement steps up on O'Connell Street

Dublin City Council has taken more than a dozen planning enforcement cases over unauthorised shopfronts and advertising on O'Connell Street, following complaints from the new Dublin City Development Company led by Robert Watt, and a new restaurant on the street has been permitted on condition that it has no takeaway element. In an editorial, The Irish Times welcomed the moves as early signs of revival but said investment around the former Hammerson site, MetroLink and the GPO must be brought together in a coherent plan.

Source: The Irish Times (editorial) (25 October 2026)

The Thick Father Problem: Following a Parent into a Degree

A personal Sunday discussion piece by Brendan Buck. It is not the opinion of BPS Planning.

A confession at the kitchen table

I did geography as part of my degree in Trinity. My son is now studying geography and statistics in UCD. In most families that would be a touching bit of heritage, a map folded and passed across the table. In ours it comes with a complication. He had a Leaving Cert points total that, as I understand the CAO, opens most of the doors in the building. He could have studied almost anything. He walked past the corridors with the brass plates and chose the one with the maps in it. Then he added statistics, which I am told is where you have to be right rather than merely interesting.

I have therefore concluded that I am the thick father. If the cleverest option available is the subject Dad did, what does that say about Dad? It is a joke, mostly. But it set me wondering about something I had never properly asked. How often do children actually follow a parent into a field of study, and why?

What the research says about following in footsteps

The first thing to say is that the numbers are bigger than I expected. A Swedish working paper by Adam Altmejd, published through the IFAU research institute in 2023, reports that university graduates are more than three times as likely to hold a degree in the field their parent graduated in. Three times is a big family resemblance, and the sort of figure that should make anyone suspicious, because families share a great deal besides a surname: schools, neighbourhoods, bookshelves and expectations.

The clever part of Altmejd's paper is that it tries to separate the resemblance from the cause. He looked at Swedes who applied to university programmes between 1977 and 1992, and compared parents who only just got into a field with parents who only just missed it and ended up studying something else. Since the two groups were otherwise much alike, the difference in what their children later studied is a fair estimate of the parent's own influence. That influence is real. Children became about 50 per cent more likely to graduate in a field if their parent had enrolled in it. In the paper's main estimate that works out at roughly two percentage points. It was far larger in some fields. For technology, engineering, medicine and business, parental enrollment raised a child's chances by between 2.0 and 12.8 percentage points.

Two details struck me. The first is that the effect is not about passing on skills. The paper finds no sign that a parent's field raises the child's grades in that subject, and little evidence of a comparative advantage. What seems to matter is that the parent makes a path visible. Children were more likely to follow a parent of the same gender, and less likely to follow a parent whose field had weak labour market prospects. Altmejd calls this the parent as role model, and cautions that his data cannot fully settle the question. The second detail is a mild comfort. On average 28 years separate a parent's university application from a child's, so children are following less what the parent studied than what the parent did with it.

On the same-gender point, I should record that a father and a son are the pairing the research says is most likely to repeat itself. I claim no credit. I merely note it for the file.

Other studies, other professions

The wider literature points the same way. A study of Swedish adoptees by Matthew Lindquist, Joeri Sol and Mirjam Van Praag found that parental entrepreneurship raises a child's chances of becoming an entrepreneur by about 60 per cent. Because some of the children were adopted, the authors could separate what comes from birth parents from what comes from the people who raised them. Post-birth factors accounted for about twice as much as pre-birth ones, and the evidence pointed, suggestively, to role modelling. In plain English, it is largely about what you see done at home.

Entrepreneurship is not a degree, but the pattern recurs in Hans Hvide and Paul Oyer's Norwegian paper on "dinner table human capital". Using Norwegian register data, they found that a majority of male entrepreneurs start a firm in the same or a closely related industry as their fathers' employment, and that those who do tend to outperform others in the sector. They also found that higher-IQ entrepreneurs were less likely to follow their fathers. I mention that for balance. It concerns firms and not degrees, and my son appears to have ignored it anyway.

For degrees themselves, a Norwegian register study of everyone born between 1955 and 1980 found that children often reproduce their parents' fields, most of all where parents are professionals with master's degrees or higher. Even children who chose differently tended to choose something close. A Swedish thesis by Helen Dryler found a "same-sector" effect on choice of upper-secondary programme, somewhat stronger for fathers and sons. Xiaoyu Xia suggests one practical mechanism: students learn what a major might pay from the wages of parents and older siblings.

There is also the sibling effect. A study across Chile, Croatia, Sweden and the United States in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that a meaningful portion of younger siblings follow an older sibling to the same college or college-major combination. The effect disappears if the older sibling drops out, which suggests that it is the experience and not the brochure that persuades.

What the research cannot tell me

I should be honest about what I did not find. I could find no study of whether the children of geographers become geographers, so I cannot tell you whether geography passes down more or less than medicine or engineering. Altmejd's strongest results are for technology, engineering, medicine and business, and he does not single out geography. Most of the best evidence is Scandinavian, Altmejd's paper is a working paper rather than a journal article, and I found no Irish study of the question. Some of the resemblance is simply families passing on advantages and tastes, and the causal studies can only strip that out for the groups, country and period they study.

A three-fold resemblance is a statement about averages, and my son is not an average. A fairer reading is that a parent in a field makes that field more thinkable, not inevitable. Nor would I take the finding that children avoid parental fields with weak earnings prospects as a verdict on geography. The papers do not test it, and I choose to treat his choice as a vote of confidence in the subject.

Why he chose well

Which brings me to the part where I stop apologising and start boasting. UCD's School of Geography describes its degree as combining data collection, analysis and interpretation, spatial analysis and fieldwork, with Geographical Information Systems, or GIS, among the skills it says employers value. On its course page the programme lists an Introduction to GIS for the Social Sciences in second year and an Applied GIS module later on. Pair that with statistics and he is training in two things the modern economy keeps asking for: where things are, and how sure we can be about them. I do not know the module list for his combination, but I have drawn enough maps without confidence intervals to see the point.

Then there is where it leads. UCD says its geography graduates have found work as GIS specialists with local government agencies and private industry, as researchers and policy analysts with Teagasc, ESRI, NGOs and government departments, and as planners in local government and consultancies, and that many go on to master's degrees in social sciences, spatial analysis, planning, law or business. Trinity's page lists urban and regional planning, environmental consultancy, research and teaching, financial services and foreign affairs among its graduates' careers. In the UK, the Royal Geographical Society's data on graduate destinations puts environment professionals first among the jobs held by human geography graduates, followed by a category that includes planning officers and consultants.

The demand for spatial skills seems real. A TU Dublin presentation to a European mapping body lists a significant deficit of qualified geospatial professionals in Ireland. Tailte Éireann, the State's mapping and land agency, put out a tender notice in March 2026 for a four-year framework, estimated at €2 million, for GIS specialists and development work on its GeoHive and MapGenie services. And a voluntary 2024 salary and skills survey by a GIS recruitment firm found that 79 per cent of respondents held a master's degree or higher, and that people with programming and automation skills such as Python or R commanded higher pay. It was a first-year, self-selected survey, so I would not lean on its salary claims, but a geographer who can code and count looks like a useful creature.

Which is what statistics is for. The Royal Geographical Society argues that geographers combine qualitative and quantitative methods with spatial data analysis, and cites a UK Geospatial Commission estimate of up to £11 billion a year in potential benefit from location data. It is an advocate for the subject, so I take that as an argument and not gospel.

To keep myself honest: geography is not a magic wand. The same RGS figures show that fifteen months after graduating, 7.8 per cent of human geography graduates and 6.0 per cent of physical geography graduates were unemployed, against 6.2 per cent of all first-degree graduates. That is respectable and ordinary, and the "gateway" depends on the skills, the further study and the people you meet on the way.

The planner's bias

I did geography at Trinity as part of my degree and I now work as a town planning consultant, so you may suspect I find geography a natural gateway into planning. The suspicion is fair. In my defence, the Irish Planning Institute's accredited courses are all planning degrees and masters, at TU Dublin, UCD and UCC, so a geography degree is not itself on the list. It is a door and not a destination, but it opens onto the same landscape: land, people, data, and the awkward business of deciding what goes where.

The verdict

So what should a thick father conclude? That children following a parent into a field is real and more common than chance, that the best evidence points to role modelling and information rather than inherited talent, and that none of it tells us about one particular son. He may have chosen geography because of me, in spite of me, or because a teacher once drew a good contour line on a whiteboard. I will never know, and neither will the economists.

What I do know is that he has chosen a subject that teaches you to see the forces behind a place, and another that teaches you to doubt your own conclusions. They are a good pair. If a father's job is to give a son a head start, I will accept the research's most flattering reading: that I made geography seem thinkable. If a son's job is to quietly outdo his father, he has begun well, and he has the statistics to prove it.

One last thing, in the spirit of public service. If anyone at Trinity or UCD, whether a geography society, a department, or a student event, would like a speaker, I am happy to accept the invitation. I would be glad to talk about geography and planning, and, I admit, to embarrass my son in front of his classmates while I am at it. Consider it a standing offer, with baby photographs available on request.

Further reading

• Adam Altmejd, "Inheritance of fields of study", IFAU Working Paper 2023:11: https://www.ifau.se/en/Research/Publications/Working-papers/2023/inheritance-of-fields-of-study/
• Altmejd et al., "O Brother, Where Start Thou? Sibling Spillovers on College and Major Choice in Four Countries", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2021: https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjab006
• Lindquist, Sol and Van Praag, "Why Do Entrepreneurial Parents Have Entrepreneurial Children?", Journal of Labor Economics, 2015: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/678493
• Hvide and Oyer, "Dinner Table Human Capital and Entrepreneurship", NBER Working Paper 24198: https://www.nber.org/papers/w24198
• Helland and Wiborg, "How do parents' educational fields affect the choice of educational field?", British Journal of Sociology, 2019: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12370
• Helen Dryler, "Educational Choice in Sweden", Stockholm University, 1998: https://www.avhandlingar.se/avhandling/3a8d3133f0/
• Xiaoyu Xia, "Forming wage expectations through learning: Evidence from college major choices", Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2016: https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v132y2016ipap176-196.html
• UCD School of Geography, undergraduate programmes: https://www.ucd.ie/geography/study/undergraduateprogrammes/
• UCD Geography course page: https://hub.ucd.ie/usis/!W_HU_MENU.P_PUBLISH?AUDIENCE=&MAJR=GGJ1&p_tag=COURSE
• Trinity College Dublin, Geography (Joint Honours): https://www.tcd.ie/courses/undergraduate/courses/geography-jh/
• Royal Geographical Society, data on geography at university: https://www.rgs.org/research/higher-education-resources/data-on-geography-at-university
• Royal Geographical Society, why geographers are employable: https://www.rgs.org/choose-geography/choose-a-career-with-geography/why-geographers-are-employable
• TU Dublin, "Geospatial Surveying HR Challenges in Ireland" (EuroSDR presentation): https://www.eurosdr.net/sites/default/files/images/inline/02-05_martin_geospatial_hr_challenges_in_ireland.pdf
• Tailte Éireann GIS professional services tender notice, March 2026: https://www.etenders.gov.ie/epps/cft/downloadNoticeForAdvSearch.do?resourceId=7730442
• Final Draft Mapping, Geospatial Salary and Skills Survey Ireland 2024: https://jobs.finaldraftmapping.com/geospatial-salary-skill-survey-ireland-2024/
• Irish Planning Institute, accredited courses: https://ipi.ie/become-a-planner/accredited-courses/

The Cottage on the Bend: A Travelling Planner in Glencoe

A Sunday travel and discussion piece by Brendan Buck. It is not the opinion of BPS Planning, and it does not draw on any project BPS Planning has worked on or is working on.

The drive past

Last weekend I walked Ben Nevis with my daughter, and on the way through Glencoe I drove past a building that used to be one of the signature images of the Highlands. Andy Wightman, writing in The National, described it as "a small white house tucked into the hillside where the A82 sweeps left to face the full majesty of the Three Sisters". I lived in Edinburgh for years in my twenties, and I will say plainly that they were some of the happiest years of my life. Those years are inscribed in my memory, and the Highlands are part of that inscription. I must have passed that bend dozens of times. I had a clear picture of it: whitewash, a pitched roof, a wall to the road, and a great deal of mountain behind.

What I saw this time did not match the picture. To my eye it was a ruin. The paperwork says, more prosaically, that the cottage was bulldozed this spring and that a replacement house has planning permission, the BBC reported. Both can be true of the same roadside: a ruin in the eye, a building site in the file. Either way, a landmark I had stored in my head was gone.

The cottage was Allt-na-Reigh, and for about thirteen years from 1998 it belonged to Jimmy Savile. I will say as little about him as I can. The BBC describes him as one of Britain's most prolific sex offenders, and that is enough for a planning discussion. The questions are the ones a planner asks of any building. What is its history? What can the system do? Did the council do the right thing?

A house older than its notoriety

The notoriety is the shortest chapter of the building's life. According to Wightman's research, the house dates from around 1890, built as accommodation for a roadman and his family on a few hectares of croft land. A Glencoe Estate stalker lived there later, then Rob Downie until the 1960s. The outbuilding, Downie's barn, became a climbers' howff in the 1930s.

In 1961 the house was sold for £1,000 to the mountaineer Hamish MacInnes, who lived there until 1987. In the outbuilding he developed the first all-metal ice axe and early versions of the folding stretcher still used by mountain rescue teams worldwide. One detail is a gift to a planner: in 1975 the National Trust for Scotland acquired a right of pre-emption over the house, first refusal on any sale. When MacInnes sold in 1987, the Trust declined to use it. Savile bought in 1998.

Reports differ on whether anything happened at the cottage itself: Wightman says there is no evidence of it, while the Press and Journal in March 2026 wrote that it is "thought" so. I cannot settle that, and my argument does not depend on it.

After his death in 2011 the cottage was sold at auction in 2013 for £212,000, more than double its £100,000 guide price, the BBC reported. It was repeatedly vandalised, with graffiti, smashed windows and a bicycle wheel thrown on the roof. In 2021 it was bought by Glencoe Cottage Ltd, a company in the Glenshire Group, which the press links to Harris Aslam and his family.

The planning history

I have read the officer's report. In 2021 the new owners applied (21/05434/FUL) to demolish and rebuild. Mountaineering Scotland objected to the design, saying it made the building appear to be "standing proud in the landscape", though it accepted that rebuilding a cottage there was fine in principle. That application was withdrawn in 2023. In December 2023 the National Trust for Scotland objected to the revised scheme, saying the state of the building had to be addressed but that a "deliberate contemporary styling" would "distract and detract" from the glen.

Highland Council's South Planning Applications Committee considered the next application, 2305261/FUL, on 18 June 2024. It proposed demolishing the cottage, building a four-bedroom house on an overlapping footprint, and converting the outbuilding to ancillary accommodation. The site is in the Ben Nevis and Glen Coe National Scenic Area. NatureScot advised that, since the proposal improved a derelict dwelling, it would not harm the integrity of the designation. Officers found it complied with the replacement-house provision of National Planning Framework 4, Policy 17, and noted the new ridge would be about two metres above the old. Councillors approved it unanimously.

Three things in that report struck me.

First, the representations raised landscape, scale, materials, road safety and the National Scenic Area, and one person would have preferred the site "returned to nature". The community council did not object and asked for demolition as soon as possible, as the building was a risk to health and safety.

Second, the former owner barely appears. The site description refers to vandalism "directed towards a former owner/occupier" and to "negativity arising from the former owner/occupier". The appraisal concludes: "There are no other material considerations". The architects, according to the BBC, called him only a "disgraced previous owner". The planning system had the most notorious name in the building's history in front of it and, correctly, could not use it.

Third, the cottage was not a listed building, which matters. Listing is the one mechanism that lets a planning authority resist demolition on heritage grounds, and without it the council had no statutory protection to fall back on. A reputation, however dark, is not a heritage designation, and neither is its absence.

What happened next

Demolition began in March 2025 but stopped, because a building warrant and other approvals were not in place, the BBC reported. A fire damaged part of the outbuilding that February. Early in 2026 Councillor Andrew Baxter called on the council to serve an Amenity Notice, describing the ruin as a "selfie-hotspot". A council spokeswoman replied that permission already allowed demolition, that an Amenity Notice was a "potential route", and that officers were assessing "the appropriate steps", the Herald reported. The demolition warrant was approved on 24 February 2026. By 26 March the BBC reported that preliminary demolition was complete and a new house was to follow. I do not know whether construction has started.

Baxter said he had been calling for demolition for twelve years and that locals were "delighted that it's finally gone". I understand that.

What can planners actually do?

Planning control. An application is decided on the development plan and other material considerations, and those must relate to the use and development of land. A former owner's reputation is not one. That is not squeamishness. If the system could refuse permission because of who once lived somewhere, it would hold a moral veto that nobody wants used on their own street.

Section 179. Where the condition of land adversely affects the amenity of an area, the planning authority may serve a notice requiring "such steps for abating the adverse effect as may be specified" (section 179). Highland Council itself named this route. In a National Scenic Area, with a derelict building beside a trunk road, I think the case for it was strong once the fire had happened, though I do not know where the delay really lay.

Dangerous buildings. Under sections 29 and 30 of the Building (Scotland) Act 2003, where a building endangers the public a council must act to prevent access and protect people, including by demolition if necessary, and can recover its costs from the owner (sections 29 and 30). Highland Council says it may act where an owner does not, its website says. I found no sign that it did here.

Compulsory purchase. Under section 189 of the 1997 Act a local authority, with the Scottish Ministers' authorisation, can acquire land compulsorily where it is suitable for and required to secure development, redevelopment or improvement, or is needed for a purpose in the interests of the proper planning of the area (section 189). I found no record of anyone proposing a CPO for Allt-na-Reigh. I think that was right: the owners wanted to demolish, they had permission, and a CPO against a willing developer would have been hard to justify. The body best placed to buy it by agreement, the National Trust for Scotland, held its pre-emption right in 1987 and declined.

Compulsory sale. As far as I can establish, Scotland has no compulsory sale order for derelict property. A Scottish Government consultation analysis in August 2026 reports 69 per cent support, with calls for safeguards (analysis report), but its programme, as I read it, is to modernise compulsory purchase first.

Revocation. Section 65 lets an authority revoke or modify a permission, but only before the operations are carried out (section 65). As far as I can see, there is no mechanism for "de-planning" an existing home.

The Irish mirror

I know the Derelict Sites Act 1990 better. It defines a derelict site by its effect on neighbouring amenity, character and appearance, through ruinous, derelict or dangerous structures or neglected land. It lets a local authority serve notice requiring measures, acquire a site compulsorily by vesting order, and, in urban areas, charge a levy now set at up to 7 per cent of market value (Derelict Sites Act 1990). The test is the condition of the land, not its history, and that is the Act's virtue. A council using it on a notorious house would ask whether the site is derelict and detracting, not whether the owner was a bad man.

How others have handled it

In Gloucester the city council bought 25 Cromwell Street and its neighbour in 1996 and had them demolished, the rubble ground up or burned to deter souvenir hunters. It consulted the bereaved and residents on the cleared land, which became a walkway (BBC; Local Government Chronicle). Soham's 5 College Close followed in 2004. Those were crime scenes, and the councils acted with the families in mind.

The Fritzl house in Amstetten went the other way. It was sold in 2016 and converted to flats, the cellar long since filled with concrete, and its new owner said neighbours were relieved the "sarcophagus" was gone (ORF, in German).

Braunau am Inn shows what a state does when a private owner will not act. Austria's parliament passed a law in December 2016 to expropriate Hitler's birthplace after about five years of failed negotiation (Guardian); the compensation dispute ran until 2019 (Deutsche Welle). In July 2026 the house reopened as a police station. An expert commission had warned that a museum could keep drawing extremists, and that demolition would obscure a chapter of local history (Guardian). Austria needed a special law. Glencoe never needed one.

The literature has a name for this. Sharon Macdonald calls "difficult heritage" "a past that is recognised as meaningful in the present but that is also contested and awkward for public reconciliation with a positive, self-affirming contemporary identity" (Macdonald, Difficult Heritage).

My view, for what it is worth

Should an offender's home be removed? I do not think there can be a rule. Glencoe fits none of the neat categories. On most accounts it was not a crime scene. It was an ordinary house with a layered past, and the man who lent it notoriety is dead.

On the council, my verdict is mixed but mostly fair. It was right not to turn a moral judgement into a planning ground and to decide the application on landscape, design and policy. Where I would press it is on speed and enforcement. A derelict building stood beside the A82 for years in one of Scotland's best-known glens, and officers weighed an amenity notice only after a councillor called for one in public. Section 179 exists for slow decay of exactly this kind. I would also question a replacement that is larger and higher than the cottage, as several people who love the glen did at the time.

I am wary of erasure. An authority that demolishes what it dislikes sets a precedent I would not want in the hands of a future council with different dislikes. I am equally wary of the shrine. Wightman argued that the house's long history should be celebrated rather than "contaminated" by a short association. A friend of MacInnes of sixty years told the Press and Journal that he wished the site returned to nature. The owners say they will create a commemoration of him. I could not see a condition securing that in the officers' recommended list, and I would have wanted one. I found no published view from survivors about the cottage, and I will not speak for them.

I had always thought a mental map was fixed, and the map of those Scottish years is one I guard closely, because it holds some of the happiest time I have known. It turns out to be a planning document, subject to revision, and none of us gets consulted on every change. Being reminded that the Scotland in my head is a place I lived in and loved, and that it has moved on without me, is not a comfortable feeling, but it is an honest one.

This is a Sunday travel and discussion piece by Brendan Buck. It is not the opinion of BPS Planning, and it does not draw on any project BPS Planning has worked on or is working on. Facts are drawn from the sources below, and where I could not confirm something I have said so.

Further reading

Links sit behind the words in the text above. These are the main sources in full:

• Highland Council, South Planning Applications Committee report PLS/36/24, application 2305261/FUL, 18 June 2024: https://www.highland.gov.uk/download/meetings/id/83446/Item%206.3%20-%20Glencoe%20Cottage%20Ltd%20%282305261FUL%29%20%28PLS3624%29
• BBC News, "Jimmy Savile's Highland cottage demolished 15 years after his death", 26 March 2026: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg4pe5l346o
• BBC News, "Demolition of former Jimmy Savile cottage resumes", 5 March 2026: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gqqv17v1vo
• BBC News, "Councillors asked to approve Savile cottage demolition", 10 June 2024: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5113p3mn3zo
• BBC News, "Landscape charity opposes Savile cottage plan", 12 December 2023: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2j23pmvk5zo
• Andy Wightman, "The fascinating history of Glen Coe's Allt-na-Reigh", The National: https://www.thenational.scot/politics/19903851.andy-wightman-fascinating-history-glen-coes-allt-na-reigh/
• Press and Journal, "The Jimmy Savile house: timeline of events", 16 February 2025: https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/highlands-islands/6693156/jimmy-savile-house-glencoe-history/
• Press and Journal, "What next for Savile's eyesore Highland cottage as permission to demolish finally granted", 4 March 2026: https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/highlands-islands/6969581/savile-cottage-to-finally-be-demolished-after-building-warrant-approved/
• The Herald, "Developers 'committed' to demolition of Savile cottage" (early 2026): https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25865935.developers-committed-demolition-savile-cottage/
• Mountaineering Scotland, "Controversial plans for iconic Glen Coe cottage", 19 January 2022: https://www.mountaineering.scot/news/controversial-plans-for-iconic-glen-coe-cottage
• BBC News, "Jimmy Savile cottage in Glencoe sells for £212,000", 2013: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-22713282
• Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997, section 179: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1997/8/section/179
• Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997, section 189: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1997/8/section/189
• Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997, section 65: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1997/8/section/65
• Building (Scotland) Act 2003, sections 29 and 30: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2003/8/section/29
• Highland Council, "Report a dangerous building": https://www.highland.gov.uk/building-standards/dangerous-defective-buildings
• Scottish Government, Compulsory sale and lease orders: consultation analysis report, August 2026: https://www.gov.scot/publications/compulsory-sale-lease-orders-consultation-analysis-report/
• Scottish Government, "Modernising compulsory purchase orders": https://www.gov.scot/news/modernising-compulsory-purchase-orders/
• Derelict Sites Act 1990 (revised), Law Reform Commission: https://revisedacts.lawreform.ie/eli/1990/act/14/revised/en/html
• BBC News Online, "What happens to the houses of horror?", 5 April 2004: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3593137.stm
• Local Government Chronicle, "Gloucester begins demolition of 'house of horrors'", 11 October 1996: https://www.lgcplus.com/archive/gloucester-begins-demolition-of-house-of-horrors-11-10-1996/
• The Guardian, "Austrian politicians pass law to seize house where Hitler was born", 15 December 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/15/austrian-politicians-pass-law-to-seize-house-where-hitler-was-born
• Deutsche Welle, "Hitler's birthplace: legal battle finally ends", 5 August 2019: https://www.dw.com/en/hitlers-birthplace-legal-battle-finally-ends/a-49903082
• The Guardian, "Austria opens police station at Hitler birthplace to deter neo-Nazi tourists", 22 July 2026: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/22/austria-opens-police-station-at-hitler-birthplace-to-deter-neo-nazi-tourists
• noe.ORF.at, "15 Jahre nach Inzestfall ist Tatort saniert" (in German): https://noe.orf.at/stories/3197751/
• Sharon Macdonald, Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond (Routledge, 2009), introduction excerpt: https://www.york.ac.uk/media/sociology/difficult%20heritage_excerpts.pdf

The Need for Reasons to Say Yes to Solar Farms

Note: This is a Sunday discussion article. It is not the opinion of BPS Planning. 

 Irish solar farms are mostly approved and almost always opposed by someone. Australia has spent a decade learning that neighbours told a project is "good for the country" want to know what is in it for the townland. The evidence that sharing the proceeds wins people over is thinner than its advocates claim. The case for trying is still stronger than the case for hoping.

 BPS Planning has worked on both sides of the fence, for those promoting schemes and for the communities and landowners living with them. This article does not draw on any project BPS Planning has worked on or is currently working on. It argues for the community side: local people who are asked to accept schemes that may affect their area, their property and their land values need to be given real reasons to say yes. 

 On 30 September, Galway County Council refused permission for a 239-hectare solar farm near the villages of Monivea and Abbeyknockmoy. The applicant, Heron Solar, had asked to operate for forty years. More than 350 submissions came in, and many objectors pointed to the size of the thing and its closeness to their houses. The council gave eleven reasons for refusing: the integrity of the Lough Corrib Special Area of Conservation, the road network under the grid-connection works, flood risk, and a glint-and-glare assessment it found wanting. 

 Reading such a list is like reading a very long, very polite "no". What it cannot contain is an answer to the question that planning law is not built to hear: what do we get? The application had been put together with agreements from several landowners, so some people in the parish had already been given a reason to say yes. Most had not. 

 The other side of the world 

 Consider a different parish, in northern Victoria, around Kerang and Boort. The Meering West Wind Farm is wind, not solar, and it is only a proposal. But its developers' website reads like a case study in giving people reasons. Households within ten kilometres of a proposed turbine can sign up to a two-year trial in which the project pays A$50 a month off their electricity bill, with no change of supplier. The trial runs to 30 June 2027. The page says there are "no expectations of project support" attached, and recipients may still object. 

 The sponsorship list is a small-town census: Boort Football Club, the Kerang Museum, the Kerang Pony Club. If the wind farm is approved and built, the promises grow. A yearly A$8,000 goes to dwellings 2 to 2.5 kilometres from a turbine, falling by A$1,000 for every additional 500 metres. The bill discount continues for homes six to ten kilometres away. A grant fund receives A$4,000 per turbine per year, and about A$2.1 million a year goes to two shires in lieu of rates. The developers say the terms may change. 

 The scheme is unusual only in its specificity. And it is worth being straight about what Australia does, because the folk version, in which hosts get a profit share and free power, is not quite the real one. 

 What Australia actually does 

 The backbone is a levy, not a dividend. New South Wales expects large solar projects to set aside A$850 per megawatt per year, indexed to inflation, for the life of the project. That is A$1,050 for wind. On a 100 MW solar farm, that comes to A$85,000 a year. The state says more than A$127 million has been committed since the guideline began in November 2024. The same guideline lists "energy discounts or free connections" and co-ownership as things a developer may offer, not must. Some developers worried that the final text turns those rates into a ceiling. 

 Victoria pays hosts of new transmission lines A$8,000 per kilometre per year for 25 years, on top of statutory compensation. Queensland has legislated: major projects must reach binding community benefit agreements with councils before they can lodge an application, though the state sets no sum. Some developers go further than any rule. ENGIE promises up to A$1,000 a year in bill rebates to nearby households for the life of future assets. Squadron Energy's Clarke Creek wind pilot offers A$1,000 a year to homes within 20 kilometres. Windlab has proposed annual payments of A$10,000 to A$75,000 to neighbours of its Bungaban wind farm, which it says do not restrict objections. 

 Why the rush? Because the gap between hosts and neighbours is what turns villages against each other. The Clean Energy Council and Farmers for Climate Action estimate that over 25 years large wind and solar projects will pay landholders between A$7.7 billion and A$9.7 billion, against about A$1.9 billion to regional communities and councils. Those who sign leases are paid. Those who look at the panels over the hedge are not. 

 Ownership is rarer. The Haystacks Solar Garden at Grong Grong, in the Riverina, is a 1.5 MW farm where people locked out of rooftop solar buy "plots" through a cooperative and receive credits on their bills. It has 407 members and 149 plot holders, and its development application drew no objections. It is tiny, and the nearest Australian example to "a share of the profits". 

 And the "free power" in the headlines? Australia's Solar Sharer Offer, in force since 1 July 2026, gives eligible smart-meter households in New South Wales, South Australia and south-east Queensland three free midday hours, up to 24 kilowatt-hours a day. It is a retail rule that applies to everyone on the plan, not a reward for hosting a solar farm. The host-community equivalent is the bill-credit pilots above. 

 What the evidence says, and what it does not 

 Here the honest answer is humbler than the policy documents. The best-known review of North American wind research, by Joseph Rand and Ben Hoen, found "NIMBY" an invalid explanation for opposition, socioeconomic impacts strongly tied to acceptance, and fairness, participation and trust influential too. A 2025 systematic review of 212 studies found financial capital the most frequently cited factor, with process fairness close behind. That rests on how often money is mentioned, not on a test of whether paying people changes the outcome. 

 On ownership, a Scottish survey found residents of communities with some ownership more accepting of their local wind farm, and a co-operative did as well as full community ownership. Belgian co-operative members held warmer attitudes than non-members, though members chose to join. These are attitude surveys, not trials of what a payment does to a planning outcome. 

 The strongest warnings come from elsewhere. In a Swiss survey about a nuclear waste repository, acceptance fell from 50.8 per cent to 24.6 per cent when compensation was offered, which the authors read as civic duty crowded out by self-interest. That was nuclear waste and a hypothetical. A German study found that financial benefits won over residents with weak views and did nothing for opponents. A 2025 review of European schemes by the Technical University of Denmark concluded that compensation without procedural justice is "likely insufficient", and that mandatory schemes can raise acceptance more than voluntary ones, which can look like bribes. An experiment on a hypothetical offshore wind farm found that telling people benefits were legally required raised support. 

 Ireland's own research is mixed in a useful way. SEAI's CoWind work, on wind, found that community benefit funds and co-ownership generally help, that the €1,000 minimum for near neighbours is seen as too low, and that amenities did more for acceptance than direct payments. People will invest only small, low-risk sums. For solar specifically, the best study I found is American: a national survey of neighbours of existing large solar farms. Some 43 per cent supported more, 39 per cent were neutral and 18 per cent opposed, and perceived quality of life, landscape and property values mattered far more than distance. Only about 17 per cent knew of the project before it was built, which is the case for earlier engagement in one number. 

 Stated-preference polls are generous to the argument. A YouGov poll commissioned by the company Veolia found 61 per cent of Australians would welcome renewable facilities closer to home if offered bill discounts, while 27 per cent put community-activity funding in their top five incentives. Hypothetical, commissioned, and no measure of behaviour, but a bill credit beats a grant fund by more than two to one. 

 My reading is that the evidence is real but conditional. Nobody has shown that a payment alone moves a project from refusal to consent. Money helps most among the undecided and works best when it is fair, early, mandatory and separate from the planning decision. It does least among committed opponents. 

 Where Ireland stands 

 Ireland has built more of the machinery than it advertises. Every project in the Renewable Electricity Support Scheme must run a Community Benefit Fund at a minimum of €2 per megawatt-hour, held for fifteen years. The fifth auction, which provisionally cleared 860 megawatts of solar and 219 of wind, will deliver about €45 million over the life of the scheme, around €3 million a year. On my arithmetic that is roughly €2,800 per megawatt per year across all that capacity, though solar, which generates fewer megawatt-hours per megawatt than wind, would come out lower. 

 Household payments are the gap. The government page sets €1,000 a year for each home within a kilometre of an onshore wind project, with smaller sums out to two kilometres. I found no equivalent rule for solar. A neighbour of a solar array can watch a community fund go to the hurling club and still receive nothing. A community-ownership route exists: RESS has a preference category for projects of up to 5 MW at least 51 per cent owned by a Renewable Energy Community. In the first auction it was capped at 30 gigawatt-hours a year, about one per cent of potential supported volume. 

 Meanwhile, the planning system is doing something curious. By my count, of 28 solar-farm decisions on An Coimisiún Pleanála's published renewables table since January 2025, it granted 27 and one was withdrawn. In ten of the 27 the planning authority had refused first, in Laois, Kildare, Carlow, Cork and elsewhere. Public opinion is not the enemy: SEAI's 2022 doorstep survey found about 80 per cent of people were positive about solar farms, whether they lived next to one or more than ten kilometres away. 

 Read that together and the story is not a country that hates solar. It is a country where local decisions go one way and national ones go another, and the people in between feel they are being processed. The Planning and Development Act 2024 puts statutory timelines on the Commission, from 18 weeks for smaller appeals to 48 for strategic infrastructure, and rewrites judicial review. Speed will help developers. It will not tell a neighbour why the field next door pays the farmer and not them. 

 The argument 

 The case, then, is not that money buys consent. It is that fairness is part of what consent is made of, and at present the arithmetic of a solar farm is unfair at the hedge. One household is paid. The next, with the same view, is not. A scheme that fixes that does not need to outbid the objectors. It needs to be visible, predictable and independent of whatever the developer thinks of the neighbours. 

 Three things follow. The first is to extend the near-neighbour payment, or a bill credit of the same value, to solar, funded from the existing €2 per megawatt-hour. The second is to make a low-risk stake available to the people nearest, in the style of Denmark, which has required developers to offer at least 20 per cent of new wind projects to local residents since 2009, extended to supported solar in 2018. Shares go first to those within 4.5 kilometres, at cost price, with no profit to the developer. For wind, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania offers a menu: shares, cheaper tariffs, a payment to the municipality, or a savings bond. The third is to say plainly, in law and in the leaflet, that none of this is a condition of consent. England's wind guidance says community benefits cannot be weighed in a planning decision. The aim is not to purchase a "yes". It is to make sure a "no" is not the only way a parish gets heard. 

 The objections 

 The strongest counter is the oldest: pay people and you may corrode what you wanted. Aitken's work found that voluntary, vague payments can be read as bribes, and the Swiss result shows civic-minded people can resent a price tag. The answer is to avoid ambiguity, not payment. Make it mandatory, published and open to everybody, objectors included. Windlab's terms, which it says ask only for a chance to fix problems before they escalate, show how. 

 The second is that process matters more. It does; every serious review says so. A generous cheque after a contemptuous consultation is likely to be taken as an insult, and the 17 per cent awareness figure suggests that in many places the problem is too little warning, not too little money. 

 The third is that Ireland is already approving solar. True, but ten reversed refusals in under two years are ten rounds of objection, appeal and bitterness, each leaving a neighbourhood warier of the next project. A benefit scheme cannot promise to end that. It might shrink the number who feel they are only being told. 

 The fourth is practical. England's guidance warns that bill-discount schemes are administratively heavy, can take up to a year to set up and lose take-up when people must switch supplier. Australia's pilots run for two years and are then reviewed, an admission that nobody yet knows how well they work. 

 What we owe the parish 

 In County Galway more than 350 submissions went to the council. Some will have objected to the panels, some to the roads, and some, one suspects, to the sense that a development of this scale had been decided somewhere else, for someone else. We cannot know which, and a planning file does not ask. 

 A country that wants thousands of hectares of solar should be able to tell a parish, in a sentence, what it gets. Not a pony-club sponsorship and not a cheque for silence. An honest share, clearly stated, that does not change the planning decision, and that shows the sun is meant for the people under it too. 

 Sources 

 1. Galway County Council refusal, RTE News, 30 Sept 2026: https://www.rte.ie/news/connacht/2026/0930/1593565-galway-county-council-refuses-permission-for-solar-farm/ 

2. Meering West Wind Farm, community page: https://meeringwestwindfarm.com.au/community/ 

3. NSW Benefit-Sharing Guideline (Nov 2024): https://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-11/benefit-sharing-guideline.pdf 

4. NSW Government, priority energy projects (A$127m committed): https://www.energy.nsw.gov.au/nsw-plans-and-progress/regulation-and-policy/priority-energy-projects 

5. RenewEconomy on the apparent cap: https://reneweconomy.com.au/renewable-energy-developers-raise-questions-about-apparent-cap-on-community-funds-in-nsw/ 

6. VicGrid, compensation and landholder payments: https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0013/700105/Compensation-and-landholder-payments-factsheet.pdf and https://www.vicgrid.com.au/community/community-benefits 

7. ABC News, wind farm neighbour payments (May 2025): https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-14/wind-farm-neighbour-payments-offered-to-ease-community-tension/105243272 

8. ENGIE rebate: https://engie.com.au/renewablesrebate and Squadron Energy, Clarke Creek bill bonus: https://squadronenergy.com/power-promise-program/clarke-creek-bill-bonus/ 

9. Haystacks Solar Garden, Community Power Agency: https://www.cpagency.org.au/project/haystacks-solar-garden/ 

10. Energy Made Easy, Solar Sharer Offer: https://www.energymadeeasy.gov.au/hot-topics/solar-sharer-offer-what-you-need-to-know 

11. Rand and Hoen (2017), Thirty years of North American wind energy acceptance research: https://eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/30-years-of-wind-acceptance.pdf 

12. Systematic review of 212 studies, Sustainability 2025: https://doi.org/10.3390/su17146623 

13. Scottish ownership study, Energy Policy 2022: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421522004761 

14. Bauwens and Devine-Wright (2018): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2018.03.062 

15. Frey and Oberholzer-Gee (1997): https://www.bsfrey.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/the-cost-of-price-incentives-an-empirical-analysis-of-motivation-crowding-out.pdf 

16. DTU policy brief (2025), summarising Knauf (2022), Walker et al. (2017) and Aitken (2010): https://backend.orbit.dtu.dk/ws/files/426953459/Policy_brief_financial_compensation_and_benefit-sharing_of_renewable_energy_projects.pdf 

17. SEAI CoWind policy brief: https://www.seai.ie/sites/default/files/2026-08/RDD-00281-Policy-Brief-Cowind.pdf and SEAI national survey key findings (2023): https://www.seai.ie/sites/default/files/publications/SEAI-RESS-National-Survey-Key-Findings.pdf 

18. Rand et al. (2025), US large-scale solar neighbours: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-energy-policy/articles/10.3389/fsuep.2025.1579170/full 

19. Veolia/YouGov survey (Apr 2025): https://www.anz.veolia.com/en-au/newsroom/newsroom/aussies-say-we-want-renewables 

20. RESS 5 results: https://gov.ie/en/department-of-climate-energy-and-the-environment/press-releases/minister-obrien-welcomes-results-of-national-auction-for-new-onshore-wind-and-solar-energy-projects/ ; Community Benefit Funds: https://gov.ie/en/department-of-climate-energy-and-the-environment/publications/community-projects-and-benefit-funds-ress/ ; RESS community-led category: https://www.rescoop.eu/uploads/rescoop/downloads/Irish-case-summary.pdf 

21. An Coimisiun Pleanala, renewable energy decisions: https://www.pleanala.ie/en-ie/statistics/renewable-energy-applications-appeals-lodged-by-mo 

22. Planning and Development Act 2024, key reforms: https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-housing-local-government-and-heritage/publications/key-policy-reforms-planning-and-development-act-2024/ 

23. Denmark, Energistyrelsen, purchase-option scheme: https://ens.dk/media/1875/download 24. England, community benefits guidance for onshore wind: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/community-benefits-and-engagement-guidance-for-onshore-wind/community-benefits-guidance-for-onshore-wind-in-england-accessible-webpage