Residents demand €225,000 pay-off

Neighbours in a salubrious southside Dublin suburb demanded €225,000 each to not object to planning permission for a housing development.

The residents are protesting the development of new housing in their area. They wrote a letter to the developer, outlining their requests – but were refused, according to the irish independent.

The developer instead referred the incident to the garda fraud squad.

gardaí investigated claims that pay-offs have been made to locals. No payment was made, and the incident was referred to the garda National economic Crime bureau. irish independent journalist

Fionnán sheehan said some form of pay-off in exchange for compliance is not unheard of.

“Developers are admitting that in other cases, they have seen ‘go-away money’ being paid to people at the at the tail end of planning processes,” he said. “effectively what you regard as a settlement.” however, he said this type of large settlement is rare.

“Developers and builders are saying that it’s quite common that contributions are given to things like community facilities... the footpaths, some sort of green space,” he said. “something like that something that will assuage people’s concerns.”

The group also proposed to bring an offer to other residents along the road, but this would not be for cash, merely for boundary changes.

The residents’ list of demands were to not take a legal challenge against the development and to not support any other objection “whether by way of financial contribution, provision of information or otherwise”. in the letter, the small group of residents wanted a signed agreement from the developers providing “€125k per house after tax (tax position to be clarified so that a gross figure can be included in the agreement) to be paid up front upon us signing the aforementioned agreements”.

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