Clare County Council has been urged to refuse planning permission for a luxury housing development in the heritage town of Killaloe.
Portard Development Ltd plans to build 38 houses beside Clarisford Palace, the former home of the Bishop of Killaloe.
This has led to strong opposition from the joint custodians of the 18th century house and residents of Killaloe, located on the shores of Lough Derg.
The owner and joint custodian of Clarisford, Dr Cornelius Grupp, said Clare County Council's planning department could look across the Shannon and see the destruction caused by recent development in the adjoining lakeside town of Ballina.
He claimed North Tipperary County Council planners allowed developers to cram as much housing as they could into small parcels of land without consideration for green areas or the quality of life for the occupants.
"This planning application [for Killaloe] is a carbon copy of all that is wrong with what has happened in Ballina," he said.
"Killaloe is now more famous for its chaotic traffic situation than as the heritage town of the one-time capital of Ireland. To add to traffic levels at this stage seems nothing short of lunacy."
Another custodian, Mr Adam Philips, said Killaloe would be destroyed by the high-density housing. "This type of development is more appropriate to large urban centres. The destruction of Ballina by developers and planners is a glaring monument to vandalism of a heritage area by those who were entrusted to provide good planning. It should not be allowed to happen in Killaloe."
Clarisford Palace was home to the Bishop of Killaloe in the 1770s and is listed in the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage.
Over the past 10 years the palace has been protected from unwelcome development in its environs by the council and Bord Pleanála, where four planning applications have been withdrawn or refused.
Killaloe resident Mr Ailbe McDonnell said: "If we are to learn anything from the lessons of Ballina and other planning disasters, ordered planning to a proper scale must prevail."
