Former president Michael D Higgins and his family have become caught up in a planning dispute over proposals to build dozens of homes immediately beside their Galway residence, the Irish Mail on Sunday has learned.
If approved, the scheme for 39 houses would surround the Higgins family home in a horseshoe-shaped development.
In a detailed objection, the 84-year-old former president accused the local authority of unnecessarily rezoning land for residential use and putting new development ahead of road safety. Mr Higgins previously heightened political tensions with the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael-led government when he described Ireland’s housing crisis as a ‘disaster’ and the State’s ‘great, great, great failure’.
The two-term president returned to his Galway city home last November after spending 14 years at Áras an Uachtaráin in the expansive surroundings of Dublin’s Phoenix Park.
His wife, former first lady Sabina Higgins, and their three sons, John, Daniel and Michael, have also submitted objections outlining their concerns about the proposed housing project.
The Higgins family are among 32 local residents who have raised objections to plans for two apartment blocks, along with a row of detached and semi-detached houses, on Galway’s Circular Road.
Mr Higgins and his family stressed that they are not against new homes being built beside their property.
Their objection centres instead on the condition of nearby roads, which they say are already dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers. They argue that the proposed development would worsen existing road safety concerns.
The former Labour Party councillor, who later became a Galway TD and served as Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht in the Fianna Fáil–Labour coalition led by Taoiseach Albert Reynolds before joining John Bruton’s Rainbow Coalition, has lived in Rahoon with his family since President Catherine Connolly was inaugurated as the country’s First Citizen last November.
In his four-page submission to Galway City Council, Mr Higgins refers to his political career but does not mention his two terms as president.
‘BUILDING HOMES IS WHAT MATTERS’: What Michael D said when he went off-script while President
Then President Michael D Higgins delivers his passionate speech about Ireland’s housing ‘disaster’
In June 2022, while opening a new facility for young homeless people near Naas, Co. Kildare, former president Michael D Higgins described the housing crisis as a ‘disaster’ and the State’s ‘great, great, great failure’. The following is a condensed version of the off-script speech that made national headlines.
‘I often ask myself, how republican is what we created, and isn’t it sometimes very much closer to the poor law system that we thought we were departing from?
‘I have taken to speaking ever more frankly in relation to housing, because I think it is our great, great, great failure. It isn’t a crisis anymore. It is a disaster. And I think that we have to really think about meeting the basic needs of people in a republic: food and shelter and education.
‘Building homes is what is important. It is not to be a star performer for the speculative sector internationally, or anything else.
‘When you walk through our cities, and within 200 yards, using the old measurements, you see so many derelict buildings, so many abandoned buildings, when you look at half-empty villages, when you look at villages and towns from which the banks have fled because they’ve taken their profits and now operate differently – why can’t we, in fact, achieve the kind of results that we are celebrating here today?
‘And I think this is very, very, very important, not just for young people, important for where older people can stay part of their community with dignity, and it is all about dignity.
‘Older people are not parcels, and younger people are not objects. And if we say we live in a republic, well let’s be republican in our behavior with each other in terms of meeting all the basic needs of society. Then we can hold our heads up, rather than saying, “We adjusted the poor law system that we inherited, and we tried to put a harp on it.” The fact of the matter is, let’s house our people, let’s educate our people, let’s show that no one is going hungry. Let’s show that there is no one excluded from any part of our society.
‘That’s what we should be celebrating 100 years on from the time we got the opportunity to be an independent people.
‘There is a powerful word: home. Home. Home is about the outpouring of intimacies and emotions. Sometimes it is only a very simple thing, but it is where personalities develop, where relationships with others are developed. It is a place to come back to, a place to depart from, and this is what our great day today is: offering opportunities of home in the fullest sense of expressing yourself to people that you are offering.
‘I think it’s very good that we opened our hearts and our homes to the people who are here from Ukraine, who are suffering the illegal occupation of their land.
‘But we shouldn’t have to wait for that to open our hearts and homes, and more important, our policies, local and national, to look after the people we have neglected. How many buildings are there? How many spaces are there? How many are all those houses from which people left 100 years ago?
‘Why not breathe life into it by saying… the best life we can breathe is the life of an inclusive republic that values the right to shelter and home.’
Instead, he refers to the great welcome he and his wife received after leaving the area ‘14 years ago’ before accusing Galway City Council of serious planning failures.
Mr Higgins’ submission reads: ‘So many people in Galway have sought to make us feel welcome.
‘It is with a heavy heart, however, that I have to report the experience of a deterioration in even the most basic elements of safety on the road where we and our neighbours live.
‘Circular Road, a narrow country road, as is the neighbouring Letteragh Road, is currently not safe for use by pedestrians, cyclists or users of motor vehicles.
‘There has been a vast increase in the volume of traffic which, when combined with a massive increase in speed on a road that has a school at one end that I know sought to be part of an attempt to encourage non car-dependent attendance at school.’
The planning submission continues: ‘Since I left Letteragh 14 years ago, the failure to achieve a continuous footpath for the road, the failure to initiate a traffic management plan, joined with the absence of a public transport option is an issue so urgent that I cannot understand why planning for safety is not taking precedence in the City Council’s plans.’
In 2022, the then-President Higgins publicly declared that the chronic housing shortage was not just a crisis, but a social disaster.
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Government figures at the time criticised Mr Higgins’s intervention. Some claimed he had ‘overstepped the mark’ given the non-partisan, ceremonial nature of the presidency, but senior figures including then Tánaiste Leo Varadkar acknowledged affordability and housing pressures posed significant challenges.
However, in his planning submission, the former president said that housing – ‘so badly needed by so many’ – should not come at the cost of road safety.
Mr Higgins wrote: ‘I believe that land use planning, including making provisions for housing, so badly needed by so many, should not come at the cost of safe movement on our roads or sustainable planning which has public support.
‘We are not condemned to a binary choice between providing for necessary housing and engaging in appropriate planning.
‘I suggest that the issues of safe usage and preservation of shared amenity space for the future must be given due to the urgency of the safety issue a prior precedence in planning decisions rather than be made an afterthought of development.’
In a separate 28-page submission, Sabina Higgins said that the family and local residents ‘share a serious concern in relation to the lack of road safety and sustainable transport’ around the site of the proposed development.
It is unclear whether Ms Higgins authored the extensive and professional-looking report herself, or used the services of a planning consultant.
The former first lady’s submission reads: ‘I am also one of the many residents of Circular Road who share a serious concern in relation to the lack of road safety and sustainable transport on that road.
‘For a number of years, members of the public have been calling for action to address road safety on Circular Road and highlighting the need for proper sustainable transport infrastructure including provision for pedestrians, cyclists and a bus route.
‘Because there are no footpaths outside my home or along the road on either side of me and because the yellow line comes up to the edge of the road, I, like many neighbours, cannot leave my home and walk to the left or right.
‘It is extremely challenging to just safely access the small park directly across the road from me due to speeding traffic and, even if there was enough break in speeding traffic and I succeeded in crossing the road, I cannot walk to the right to reach the footpath above Carn Ard or go to a shop in Westside as old sheds that are part of the farm whose land in (sic) the subject of the planning application block the way.’
After carrying out a report on the city’s transport and road problems, Galway City Council has secured funding from the Department of Transport and the National Transport Authority to come up with a detailed plan to improve road safety issues.
It is expected this plan will be ready by the end of the year.
The former president lodged his submission with the council in July, a month after Kenny Developments Galway Limited applied for planning permission to build 39 homes on a site beside his family home. Under the plans, 22 of the new homes would be contained in two blocks, with a further 17 detached and semi-detached houses.
The company applied for planning permission three weeks after local councillors voted unanimously to rezone large tracts of land in Galway city to allow for the construction of up 5,000 new homes.
The plot of land earmarked for the 39 new houses next to Mr Higgins’s family home was not included in the plan as it was already zoned residential.
But neighbouring sites in the Circular Road/Letteragh area were rezoned against the advice of the Planning Regulator.
In a letter sent to the local authority last April, the Office of the Planning Regulator stated: ‘The Office does however have concerns in relation to two newly proposed residential zonings at the Merlin Lands and Circular Road East sites.
‘In particular, the Office considers that the proposed changes from Natural Heritage and Recreation and Amenity zoning would result in the loss of significant strategic open space, without sufficient evidence of need or clear strategic justification.
‘Accordingly, the Office recommends that neither site be zoned for new residential development through this variation process.’
However, the council disagreed with the Planning Regulator and instead recommended that land close to Mr Higgins’s home be rezoned for housing because it is ‘inaccessible to the public’ and is not suitable for ‘active recreation or sports pitches’ because of ‘granite close to the surface’.
Rezonings can be overturned by the Housing Minister on the advice of the Planning Regulator.
In a separate 28-page submission, Michael D’s wife Sabina Higgins said that the family and local residents ‘share a serious concern in relation to the lack of road safety and sustainable transport’ around the site of the proposed development
The Mail has received no response to attempts to contact former President Higgins through a spokesperson.
Galway City Council this weekend confirmed it had not been asked to reverse its recent rezonings. A spokeswoman told the MoS: ‘To date we have had no correspondence from the OPR [Office of the Planning Regulator] or the Minister in relation to the Elected Members reserved function to adopt Variation Number 3.’
The local authority claimed that it would not be appropriate to comment on the former president’s criticisms of how the council handles planning and road safety issues.
Meanwhile, the Office of the Planning Regulator confirmed it no longer has concerns about the rezoning of land close to Mr Higgins’ home.
A spokeswoman said: ‘As part of the statutory process, the OPR considers the planning authority’s response to its recommendations.
‘Having reviewed that response, the OPR is satisfied with the variation to the plan as adopted.’