When Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin visited Trump last year, the U.S. leader complained of the difficulty of building anything at his Irish resort — a problem he mistakenly attributed to Brussels, not Dublin.
Next month, Martin can expect warm words from Trump over the Irish ballroom go-ahead.
A spokesperson for Martin welcomed the decision but stressed it was a matter for local Clare councilors, not the central government. The largest party on the Clare council, the center-ground Fianna Fáil, is led by Martin.
The planning decision is conditional on Trump’s advisers producing a credible plan to safeguard a threatened species that is almost invisible to the eye, the narrow-mouthed whorl snail.
The dark brown creatures, barely 2 millimeters in height, were once endemic to Irish coastal dunes and grasslands, but today seem to be in terminal decline, including on the watery edge of Trump’s resort. He and his sons have been battling Irish planning and environmental interests for a decade over whether the resort poses an existential threat to the gastropod.
Last September, Eric Trump — Donald Trump’s son, who has overseen the family’s business interests at Doonbeg since its 2014 purchase — boasted that the ballroom would be “the best you’ve ever seen.”
