The east side of Galway city looks set for a substantial growth in population over the coming years after the groundwork for the construction of almost 5,500 new homes was given the go-ahead this week.
The Government has agreed to provide 40 per cent of the £4.2 million funding required by Galway Corporation to provide waste-water services for the development of over 4,600 new units in the Doughiska area.
Earlier this week the local authority announced plans for the construction of 855 private, social, voluntary and local authority houses in a separate project between Hillside and Merlin Park.
With a further 1,500 or so houses earmarked for the Bothar an Costa area of the Headford Road, planners are anticipating a huge growth on the east side of the city for the first time since the 1970s.
Galway Corporation is intent on redressing the balance in population following the growth of the city west of the Corrib since then, particularly in the Knocknacarra area.
Developers in Galway are to be levied by the corporation to come up with the 60 per cent of the cost of providing the waste-water services in Doughiska, on the eastern fringe of the city.
"Much of this land was already zoned residential before the latest City Development Plan, and it is clearly good news to be opening up more land for residential development," the City Manager, Mr Joe Gavin, said yesterday.
"The whole approach in our transportation planning is to avoid people having to go for long journeys across the city every day. We have zoned over 100 acres in the west side for industrial and commercial development and we hope to see more employment on that side of the city."
The growth of Knocknacarra to an estimated population of 12,000, at the same time as the growth in employment in the Ballybane and Mervue areas, has led to traffic problems, with a huge number of motorists commuting across the city every day.
The opening up of such large tracts of land to housing is likely to extend the current building boom in the city well into the millennium, while perhaps resulting in a levelling-off in house prices in Galway.