Blackberry Lane 27APR23
hen we spotted the surveyors last Thursday, getting the lay of 
a very large piece of Delgany land, we weren’t all that surprised.
The owner, it seemed to us, saw houses were popping up all over the village, and reckoned, hey, now might just be the right time to give this farm land a Brazilian to make a gazillion.
Still, when we asked one of the surveyors last week if they were there for a planning application, his simple answer, “Yep”, certainly suggests that the Fairy Trail may soon have a whole lot of new neighbours on its south side.
On the Delgany side, the 13 Grade A, fancy-pants, out-of-your-range, €1.5m+ Struan Hill houses are already close to selling out.
With Noel Belton’s old fields brought together as one, the whole thing looks almost big enough for a golf course. Attempts to find out who owns it all, and what their cunning plans are, have proven pretty fruitless though, despite our half-assed efforts.
Either through fear of expensive lawyers or just being somewhat punch-drunk from the hundreds of houses already landing on top of this tiny village, no one from the various Delgany preservation societies had much to say on the matter.
It’s been bloody Cairnage, man, but An Bord Pleanála’s Strategic Housing Missiles having being neutered since March might just bring some power, and sanity, back to Wicklow Planning. Then again…