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Irish Examiner
2 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Priest and residents' group in planning row over retention of floodlights at church in Limerick
A planning row has broken out between a priest and a residents' group over the seeking of retrospective planning permission for changes to a church in a Limerick village. Residents have lodged an appeal with An Coimisiún Pleanála against a decision of Limerick City and County Council to grant retention permission to Fr Tim Wrenn, the parish priest of Kilcornan, Co Limerick for floodlights installed at the village's Catholic church. Stonehall-Kilcornan & District Residents' Group claims that the council's decision to grant retention permission for the floodlights is 'legally flawed' and 'contrary to proper planning'. The group claims the council failed to comply with national and EU wildlife legislation over the failure to require surveys of bats and other protected species to be carried out. The residents have also complained that the floodlights illuminate rooms in a neighbouring property and have an overbearing impact while its occupants have experienced sleep disturbance and a loss of residential amenity, especially privacy. However, a consultant engineer representing Fr Wrenn says the floodlights have been in existence for more than 16 years. Council planners said the floodlighting at the church, which consists of four sets of lights approximately four metres in height, was 'relatively small in scale' and does not detract from the setting/character of the protected structure. The objection by Stonehall-Kilcornan & District Residents' arose as a result of an application by Fr Wrenn for retention permission for several works carried out within the church grounds, including an opening in a drystone boundary wall. The parish priest has also sought approval for the retention of the floodlight and a concrete base behind the church as well as permission to complete an associated meeting room. Meeting room Fr Wrenn told Limerick City and County Council there was no adequate space within the confines of the church building for private meetings with him. The priest claimed the location of the detached meeting room behind the church had been decided as the best area. He explained it would only ever be available for use in the presence of the local parish priest or his representative and would not be open to the public on an ongoing basis. In a split decision, however, the council rejected such proposals and only gave permission for the floodlights to be retained. Council planners described the design of the proposed meeting room as being 'of low architectural quality' and having 'the appearance of a small mobile home'. They recommended that a revised design was necessary because the existing design was considered inappropriate in a setting adjacent to a protected structure. Council planners noted that no details had been provided which indicated the works already undertaken had been carried out under the supervision 'of a qualified professional with specialised conservation expertise". A council conservation officer also suggested that the stone wall should be reinstated. Kilcornan Catholic Church, which was constructed in 1828, is a protected structure and is described as 'a fine example of early 19th Century Gothic Revival architecture". Unauthorised works The planning application for retention permission was made by Fr Wrenn after the council issued a warning letter to the Limerick Diocesan Office in March 2025 over unauthorised works within the church grounds. The residents' group claimed the changes raised significant concerns about the protection of built heritage and biodiversity as well as compliance with planning policy. It also questioned the authority of the parish priest to lodge the planning application on behalf of the beneficial owners of the church which they claim is the Diocese of Limerick. They noted Fr Wrenn — a member of the Salesian order who returned to Ireland in 2024 after spending 37 years working in South Africa — had indicated in planning application forms that he was the owner of the building. The opponents claim there was further unauthorised development of bathroom/washroom facilities with an associated septic tank in a small shed within the grounds of the church for which there is no record of planning permission. Similarly, the group allege that an unauthorised boundary structure was erected on a commonage area located to the east of the church in early autumn 2023. The group's secretary, Patrick Fleming, claimed it removed established rights of way for residents as well as representing a potential hazard for road users. They took issue with claims by the parish priest's consultant engineer that the commonage area had been acquired from an unnamed landowner as a gift to alleviate parking on the public road. Dr Fleming claimed the unauthorised lighting degraded 'the tranquillity and aesthetic values of this heritage asset' and its intensity was likely to negatively impact on nocturnal wildlife. A ruling by An Coimisiún Pleanála on the appeal is expected in early December.
Irish Examiner
a day ago
- Irish Examiner
What are nurdles and why are they polluting our oceans?
When a Liberian-flagged container ship, the MSC Elsa 3, capsized and sank 13 miles off the coast of Kerala, in India, on May 25, a state-wide disaster was quickly declared. A long oil slick from the 184-metre vessel, which was carrying hazardous cargo, was partially tackled by aircraft-borne dispersants, while a salvage operation sealed tanks to prevent leaks. But almost three months later, a more insidious and persistent environmental catastrophe is continuing along the ecologically fragile coast of the Arabian Sea. Among the 643 containers onboard were 71,500 sacks of tiny plastic pellets known as 'nurdles'. By July, only 7,920 were reportedly recovered. The wreck of the MSC Elsa 3, which sank about 14 nautical miles off Kerala with 77,000 sacks of nurdles onboard. Photograph: Indian Ministry of Defence Millions of these plastic balls have continued to wash ashore with the fierce monsoon storm surges that demolished a stretch of palm-fringed beach in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala's capital, in June. They lie scattered by the sea-facing Catholic church at Vettukadu and in tide lines on the beach, where giant jute bags of them, gathered by volunteers, await collection. Lightweight, buoyant and almost impossible to recover, they will circulate in moving sand and ocean currents for years, experts say. 'The nurdles haven't just polluted the sea — they've disrupted our entire way of life,' says Ajith Shanghumukham, a fish worker in the town. A fishing ban, imposed after the spill by local authorities in four Kerala districts, has since been lifted but fears over contamination have hit fishing communities already struggling with declining fish populations and the changing climate's intensifying storms. 'Very few people now venture out to sea because the local markets simply aren't buying fish,' says Shanghumukham. Those who do report nets full of nurdles and declining catches. 'People continue to worry about contamination,' Shanghumukham says. While 100,000 fishing families received compensation of 1,000 rupees (€9.78) from the state, this represented less than a week's income for most. 'The crisis has plunged many families into poverty,' he says. Nurdles, a colloquial term for the plastic pellets, are the raw material used for nearly all plastic products. Lentil-sized, at between 1-5mm, and thus potentially classifying as microplastics, or fragments smaller than 5mm, they can be devastating to wildlife, especially fish, shrimps and seabirds that mistake them for food. They also act as 'toxic sponges' attracting so-called forever chemicals such as PCBs and PFAs in seawater on to their surfaces, and also carry harmful bacteria such as E coli. Tiny bits of plastic, known as microplastics, are becoming a massive aquatic problem 'When ingested by marine life, these pellets introduce a cocktail of toxins directly into the food web,' says Joseph Vijayan, an environmental researcher from Thiruvananthapuram. 'Toxins can accumulate in individual animals and increase in concentration up the food chain, ultimately affecting humans who consume seafood.' Microplastics have been found in human blood, brains, breast milk, placentas, semen and bone marrow. Their full impact on human health is unclear, but they have been linked to strokes and heart attacks. The spill's location and timing could not have been worse, Vijayan says. Nearly half of India's seafish are landed in the Malabar upwelling region, where the shipwreck happened. And Kerala's turbulent monsoon season, from June to August, which has hampered clean-up operations, is a time of great marine productivity, when rising nutrient-rich waters bring blooms of plankton, the foundation of the marine food web. Worryingly, following the Keralan spill, there have been reports of nurdles once again washing up on beaches in Sri Lanka, a reminder of the worst recorded plastic pollution spill in history when the X-Press Pearl container ship, carrying chemicals, caught fire and released 1,680 tonnes of nurdles into the sea off Colombo in 2021. The Kerala disaster, the latest in a series of pellet spills, has again exposed huge gaps in accountability, transparency and regulation in the plastics supply chain, environmentalists say. Dharmesh Shah, a Kerala-based plastics campaigner at the Centre for International Environmental Law, says: 'These spills expose the transboundary nature of pellet pollution, affecting countries regardless of their role in plastic production. 'They reveal a chronic lack of enforceable global standards across the supply chain — from production to transport — coupled with inadequate transparency, reporting and accountability.' Sekhar L Kuriakose, of the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority, estimates the clean-up could take up to five years. The state has filed a $1.1bn (£820m) compensation claim against MSC. The container shipping company MSC, which chartered the vessel, along with the owner, have filed a counterclaim, disputing jurisdiction and seeking to limit their liability. But the consequences of nurdle spills are being felt globally. In March, nurdles washed up on Britain's Norfolk coast after a container ship collided with a tanker in the North Sea. In January 2024, millions of pellets washed up on Spain's Galician coast. Communities can wait years for compensation. It took until last month for Sri Lanka's highest court to rule that the X-press Pearl's Singapore-based owners owed $1bn compensation for the 2021 sinking's 'unprecedented devastation to the marine environment' and economic harm. At least 445,000 tonnes of nurdles are estimated to enter the environment annually worldwide; about 59% are terrestrial spills, with the rest at sea. The number of big nurdle spills at sea is increasing, according to Fidra, a Scottish environmental charity. With plastic production expected to triple to more than 1bn tonnes a year by 2060, along with more frequent and intense storms, the threat is expected to grow, with some 2tn nurdles spilling into the environment a year. Yet no international agreements exist on how to package and transport nurdles safely, or even to classify them as hazardous. Over the past week, delegates from more than 170 countries met at the UN's plastic pollution talks in Geneva, in an effort to resolve deep divisions over whether plastic production will be included in a final treaty. Campaigners hope successful talks would allow a global approach to pellet loss, packaging, transportation and legal accountability. Amy Youngman, a lawyer at the Environmental Investigation Agency, says: 'Because of the biodiversity in the area, the Kerala spill is devastating. But coming four years after the X-Pearl Xpress, it was foreseeable.' One problem, she says, is that ships are not required to disclose they are carrying pellets. Another is the failure to recognise harm when spilled. 'They are not seen as hazardous or dangerous material so they are shipped like any other produce,' she says. Human error causes most spills, she says, adding that laws on handling and storing pellets could reduce spills by 95%. A research paper published in June co-authored by Therese Karlsson, a scientific adviser for the International Pollutants Elimination Network, showed that plankton may well have been malformed after exposure to leached chemicals from plastic and burnt plastic debris from the X-Pearl Express. Of 16,000 chemicals in plastic, 4,000 are known to be hazardous. 'But for more than 10,000 of them we don't know the health impacts,' she says. — Guardian
Irish Post
a day ago
- Irish Post
Two castles, two churches, one big question
FROM where I was sitting on a fine sunny day I looked back at a landscape I'd roamed as a child. Gone for the day and back in the evening to eat fish fresh off the boat. My father would fry it up in a pan. I looked now and saw two restored castles and two derelict churches. Is that symbolic, I thought? Is that who we are now? Now that we worship money and venerate the wealthy. When I was a kid I'd been on the roof of one of those derelict castles. Climbed up through the crumbling floors. A stone's throw from the sea, it nestles in an undulating wooded landscape. Stunningly beautiful. Now a gate, a Private Property sign, and a steady flow of vehicles comes out of it and it does look impressive in its restored state. The story is that a member of the family who'd built it had returned from abroad, the US or the UK I can't be sure, and bought the castle back. Friends of his, apparently, bought the other one. That one first came to notice when public pathways were boarded up. Says a lot instantly, doesn't it? You'd have to wonder. There is so much resentment stirred up against immigrants and yet the only immigrants in Ireland I know are in workplaces. Unlike, it seems, most of those who protest against them. Yet there's no resentment against the excessively wealthy or the inherited wealthy. Those we celebrate. Strange, isn't it? We resent those who work and toil alongside us and celebrate those who benefit from our labour. We lavishly follow those who do nothing but post on social media and deplore those who want to work in our hospitals and shops. We despise the foreigner working in the Spar and worship the foreigner sitting in the castle. It simply makes no sense. Even by the crude measuring tool of who is most worthy of our resentment. Of course, any criticism of the wealthy is seen as envy. They can't believe that we are not all dreaming of life in a castle. They can't believe that ideas as simple as fairness have any relevance in a modern world. They don't understand that we might want an Ireland that is better than that. They only think we want what they've got. The Celtic Tiger still leaves remnants of that philosophy of course. I still walk country lanes and still see new houses and wonder just why they are so big. What for? Not far from here there is a centuries old ruin that has countless windows, one for every day of the year or something daft like that. So these vain, grasping, notions have always been around. The ostentation and the conspicuous consumption. The Celtic Tiger celebrated them, held them as a belief system, but it didn't usher them in. And as the castle and the new huge houses show its demise didn't usher them out. And what of the two derelict churches? I'm not someone who thinks we should bring back the days of Catholicism. I was born and raised in all of that and I think its demise is both substantial and utterly a marker of change in this country. We might forget just how Catholic we were. We might want to. But not everything that changes changes for the worse. I can't really mourn the passing of Catholic Ireland. Faith and belief is up to the individual and I'm happy for those who have that comfort. You don't have to look far, though, these days do you to see religion as a cover for prejudice and hatred. It's a shame. But it's true. Don't mind me though. I grew up around dereliction in both England, the ruins of industry, and in Ireland, castles and stone cottages. Perhaps, I'm overly attached to that landscape. Perhaps, it discolours my view. Who are the restored castle people? What is it that they think? What are their hopes and plans for this Ireland? Where are the derelict churches people? What do they think now? What do they think of this Ireland we have? See More: Ireland, Joe Horgan
