Mature trees cut down in Bray - just heard on RTE radio 1

patto_chan

Was listening to Radio 1 DriveTime just now and they were telling the story (sad story I thought) about a bunch of mature trees that have been cut down in Bray. I'm not from Bray and so don't know the area.

It seems several planning applications for a particular piece of land had been turned down over the years because it would require a collection of mature trees to be felled.
Now it seems the owner has felled all the trees - and under the law is perfectly entitled to cut down any trees as he is the property owner. Everything he did was legal.

I thinks it's a shame - mature trees take decades to grow but can be cut down in minutes. Now that they're gone it is possible there is nothing to block any future planning application.

If the local authority was on top of its game then they should have put preservation orders on the trees if that was the reason they rejected the previous planning applications. A typical half-assed job from our overpaid so-called 'public servants'? Although the RTE reporter Philip Boucher-Hayes pointed out that our laws are so arcane that a preservation order would have been required for each individual tree.

Just heard this on the radio and thought it was a sad indictment on the way we do (or don't do) things in this country.

david1two3

The fine for the offence ,if they had bothered to put the preservation order on the trees would have been just over 6 Euros per tree.Send this fellow and all belonging to him to Coventry and keep him there. He is a disgusting , greed motivated individual who is beneath contempt. You have to stop these people in their tracks and keep them there, to my mind they are much worse than antisocial drunks and hoodlums, who have no prior intent when they venture out. I know I would be buying a gross box of eggs if I was a Bray man. Whatever his comeuppence he thoroughly deserves it, I also heard the report on the net in London and Im just glad Im not in Dublin right now.

patto_chan

For those who missed it on Radio 1 yesterday:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0918/drivetime.html
It's the 6th story down:
"Bray Cllr decries tree felling as vandalism"
"Philip Boucher Hayes reports from Bray, Co Wicklow, on the legal loophole that allows developers to lawfully cut down trees"

Or here is a link that you can put into Real Player to hear the 10 minute clip:
http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/209-2289993-320-180.smil