BY C.J. MCGINLEY

A well known local estate agent has this week described as 'outlandish' and highly unfair the description of Gortahork as being along the 'Costa del Provo'.

Manus McGroddy was responding to an article in last weekend's Sunday Independent under the headline 'SF show that home is not always where their vote is'.

In the piece by Jim Cusack he claimed Sinn Féin had been 'surreptitiously putting Northerners with holiday homes in Donegal on the electoral register' and were outbidding locals for property.

"The large number, many owned by Belfast and Derry based republicans, is a major source of annoyance in the county as it has driven up prices for young, first time buyers. Clusters of holiday homes owned by Northern IRA people have sprung up in places like Gortahork, earning that stretch of coastline the soubriquet Costa del Provo," the article stated.

ADAMS HOUSE

"Despite his lying on the RTE leaders' debate that the bank owned his handsome home above Gortahork, Gerry Adams owns the property; local sources estimate that it is worth close to 1 million euro," the article added.

However, Mr McGroddy said the article had done little for the image of Gortahork and was outlandish and unfair to label it as 'Costa del Provo'.

"There is no correlation between Gerry Adams purchasing a holiday home in Gortahork and the need to give that parish a named Costa del Provo. I'm sure Sinn Féin supporters have bought property in different parts of the country like Kerry and elsewhere and they're not labelled in this way," he said.

"The holiday home market is not competing with the first time buyer market. They're two different markets and the County Development Plan positively discriminates in favour of local people to build or buy in their own localities. To me the imposition of the government's Stamp Duty has greater cost implications than Northern Ireland people who wish to buy holidays homes," Mr McGroddy said

"In trying to get at Sinn Féin and Gerry Adams the article claims that Provos have bought so many houses they are out bidding local people who would like to purchase sites. This is untrue because the County Development Plan means that now locals have greater rights to apply for planning permission than ever before," he concluded.

Mr McGroddy said "the Pope, Ian Paisley or anybody else who wanted to buy a holiday home in Donegal had a right to do so".