Carton House

As someone who works in NUI Maynooth in an institute which specialises in spatial planning, I’m a little conflicted over the news that An Bord Pleanála has rejected plans for the university to build a business and technology park in the grounds of Carton House.  As the The Irish Times reports ‘the development would have seen the construction of 8,431 metres of office space of up to four storeys in height; 9,202 metres of university buildings including a research centre, a sports science building and an innovation centre; and 130 apartments and houses.’  It’ll be interesting to see how this unfolds as the area could really do with an innovation cluster that will help to create new jobs and partner up indigenous start-ups with both the university and nearby FDI businesses such as Intel, HP, IBM, etc.  At same time, the last thing we need is more bad planning.

Rob Kitchin