Trump gets his Irish ballroom — if he can save a snail

DUBLIN — Donald Trump has won permission to build a ballroom at his golf resort in Ireland — but only if he can protect the tiny snails that live next door.

Tuesday’s planning approval from Clare County Council clears the way for the U.S. president to build a 320-seat ballroom beside his remote Doonbeg hotel and golf club on Ireland’s Atlantic coast.

The decision and its timing carry particular weight for Ireland’s government, which enjoys exceptional access to the White House each St. Patrick’s Day — an annual opportunity that, in the age of Trump, has become a political minefield.

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.”

He followed that up with a below-the-radar lobbying trip last month to Ireland, during which he pushed for the Doonbeg investment and for government support for the Irish Open, Ireland’s top golf tournament.

Doonbeg is due to host the Irish Open this September. The Irish government, which will hold the rotating presidency of the European Union later this year, is already bracing for a potential Trump visit coinciding with the premium competition.

Donald Trump hasn’t visited Doonbeg since 2023, when he used a round of golf to launch a long-distance attack on the author E. Jean Carroll, who subsequently won a civil judgment that he had sexually abused her.

The approved plan for Doonbeg allows the Trumps to bulldoze the hotel’s existing events building, which has a 260-guest capacity, in favor of a larger facility that will feature new roads and parking, a partially covered terrace, a bridal suite, multiple bars and “champagne and tea stations.”

Snails, presumably, will not be on the menu.