The fate of a proposal to extend Dungarvan town centre through a major retail commercial and residential development will be known in the next few weeks.
An Bord Pleanala is to decide next month whether to approve the development on a disused site formerly owned by Glanbia.
The proposal by Clancy Construction was approved by Dungarvan Urban Council, which says it will revitalise the town centre and encourage local people to shop and live in the area.
Objectors include An Taisce, Friends of the Irish Environment and RGDATA, the family grocers' representative body, which claims the town's existing businesses will lose substantial trade if the development is allowed to go ahead.
Dungarvan Chamber of Commerce had also appealed against the planning permission to An Bord Pleanala, but withdrew its appeal before a recent oral hearing on the development.
The project, if approved, will give Dungarvan its first major shopping centre, with Dunnes Stores as the anchor tenant.
A public house with a restaurant and nightclub, shops, a four-screen cinema complex, commercial units, 10 apartments, nine houses, a coffee shop, a creche and 421 off-street car-parking spaces are also envisaged.
Dungarvan UDC believes the project meets the objective of the town's development plan, which was adopted in December and has a section dealing specifically with the 40-acre former Glanbia site, which is to be integrated into the historic town centre.
In its appeal to the planning board, An Taisce said the development would be "just another suburban supermarket grafted on to the edge of the existing town and developed at the expense of existing business".
It would be "an injustice both to the people of Dungarvan and Co Waterford" if the project was allowed to proceed in its present form, it argued.
RGDATA claimed there was a lack of integration between the proposed site and the existing town centre and there would be an adverse impact on current retail outlets and employment. Friends of the Irish Environment expressed similar concerns.
"The worst-case scenario is that the existing centre of the town becomes totally run down as a result of this totally out-of-scale development," it said.
However, Dungarvan's acting town clerk, Mr Joe O'Flaherty, said yesterday that surveys had clearly established that people from the area were going to other towns and cities such as Clonmel, Youghal, Waterford and Cork to shop because of the lack of major outlets in the locality.
"There has been a huge leakage of shoppers out of Dungarvan and we think this development will attract more people into the town, to everyone's benefit." The development would be integrated with the town centre and several traffic and pedestrian access routes between the two areas were included in the proposal.
Clancy Construction says the scale of the proposed shopping centre is within the retail planning guidelines published by the Government last January and it does not accept that existing traders will suffer.
A submission to An Bord Pleanala by McHugh Consultants, on behalf of the developer, acknowledges there would be some impact. "It is inevitable that some relocation, rationalisation and diversification of existing retail outlets in Dungarvan will arise as a result of the provision of new facilities."
It argued that "on balance" the development should be approved as the positive effects for the town would outweigh "potential negative impacts". It also pointed out that the project was intended to complement rather than compete with the existing town centre.
