Puckane Community Legal Fund

Puckane village is a small rural community of approx 220 people in County Tipperary, Ireland. At the heart of the village is 12 Irish traditional thatched cottages which are the village's number 1 tourism asset. The cottages have been rented by visitors to our village for over 50 years, they are holiday cottages and are essential to the local economy. The village and our cottages are now under threat from a buyer/private company seeking to permanently repurpose the cottages and the surrounding amenity area into an Asylum Seeker Accommodation Center ... a buyer/private company driven by profit. Our cottages and our number 1 tourism asset will be gone forever.

This planned permanent repurposing of the cottages will increase the village population by an unsustainable 30% and be made worse by not having the necessary local services to support asylum seeker integration including local school places, public transport, and medical services. This is a recipe for a social disaster and against the best practice recommendations in the Irish Government White Paper on the subject particularly in relation to asylum seeker population density and settlement patterns.

This complete disregard for the local community and those who might take up residence in Puckane poses a grave risk to both their well-being as well as the future prosperity of our village, all for the sake of private company profit.

How did we get here ...

The 12 cottages are for sale but due to an oversight in the planning permission granted in 1970 the holiday cottages were listed as 'cottages' instead of 'holiday cottages' and this oversight is now being taken exploited. This is a David and Goliath story, we need your help with a legal fund to stop the exploitation of this legal loophole. The legal fund will be needed to secure a judicial review and/or seek an injunction, time is of the essence.

The Puckane Community Group is a representative group for the local community of Puckane and the locality including the Tidy Towns committee, Puckane Development Association, local sporting organisations, local schools, and local businesses.

The Puckane Community Group is committed to the sustainable development of Puckane Village and the locality aligned with the Tipperary County Development Plan and with our Puckane Village Design Statement. As a community, we continue to welcome and support diversity and inclusion while also being cognizant of local needs and available resources.