Tayto Park has applied to Meath County Council for planning permission to build a €48 million, 250-bedroom hotel on the grounds of the company's facility in Ashbourne.

The seven storey, 32,000sq m building will offer accommodation and leisure facilities for up to 1,000 guests, according to a statement.

The planning application, which was lodged on Thursday, proposes a wooden structure “designed to be in keeping with the look and feel of Tayto Park”.

In addition to the 250 bedrooms, the hotel will have a spa, meeting rooms and a function room that could accommodate up to 1,200 people.

Job creation

The company estimates that the development will provide 150 jobs during the construction phase and 272 full and part-time jobs when the build is completed.

The most recent accounts for Ashbourne visitor centre limited, which owns Tayto Park, showed that the company had a pretax profit of €5.7 million, an increase of 241 per cent on the previous year. In 2015 the company employed 240 people and had a wage bill of more than €4 million.

In 2016, Tayto Park, which was founded by Ray Coyle, recorded 765,000 visitors. Mr Coyle, who also founded Largo Foods, bought the Tayto brand from drinks maker C&C for €68 million in 2006.