Goatstown LAP
The Goatstown Local Area Plan (LAP) has been officially scrapped by the Council. What is an LAP? LAPs are the furthest down the chain in the hierarchy of development plans used by the government/ Councils to determine planning rules/ guidelines in Ireland. There used to be one for the Goatstown area, however after rolling it over without updating it four years ago, the time had come, apparently, to completely scrap it. When questioned about this at our recent yearly deputation meeting with the Council, we were told some provision has been made within the County Development Plan in respect of Goatstown – in particular the inclusion of a Specific Local Objective (SLO) to designate The Goat area as more of a village centre, rather than just purely residential. So that’s it basically, our very own LAP distilled down to an SLO on a map.
The Goatstown LAP had been pretty much useless in recent years (with national legislation trumping even County Development Plans), but it was a nice dream to have while it lasted, i.e. that local development plans might actually influence development and planning in local areas. If you think this is a backward step, we recommend you contact the County Councillors.
