An Bord Pleanála has deferred its decision on an appeal against the latest plan by the President, Mrs McAleese, and her husband, Dr Martin McAleese, for a lakeside home in a tax-designated area of Co Roscommon.
The board was due to rule on the appeal by Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE) by last weekend. However, the parties have been notified that the deadline was being extended to April 5th. No reason was given for the two-month deferral.
In January 2000, an earlier plan for a two-storey house with outbuildings and a jetty was rejected by the board on foot of an appeal by An Taisce.
A separate appeal by FIE was dismissed after it became clear that it had inspected the wrong site.
In its ruling, An Bord Pleanála said the proposed house at Kilmacarril, overlooking Lough Eidin, would be detrimental to visual and environmental amenity, prejudicial to public health and contrary to the proper planning and development of the area.
The President was also criticised - though not by the appeals board - for not engaging the services of a qualified architect to design the house which she and her family planned to live in after her seven-year term of office comes to an end in 2004.
Subsequently, the McAleeses commissioned Mr Arthur Gibney, a former president of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, to design a restrained neo-vernacular house, single-storey in scale and located further away from the lakeshore area.
However, FIE was still not satisfied. While accepting that the proposal had been re-evaluated, it maintained that each of the reasons for refusal given earlier by the appeals board remained valid.
In October, in its appeal against Roscommon County Council's decision to grant permission, FIE said the site was located in a remote, elevated and exposed rural landscape of high visual amenity, where it is the council's policy to restrict development.
Taken in conjunction with existing developments along the shoreline of Lough Eidin, FIE argued that the McAleese house would create a precedent for further dispersed rural housing in an area which lacked many public services and community facilities.
FIE's appeal has been vigorously contested by Mr Bernard McHugh, planning consultant to the McAleeses.
It is being supported, however, by An Taisce, which has characterised the house as another example of unsustainable development in the countryside.
