A plan to build more than 200 houses and apartments in a Co Wexford seaside village is completely out of proportion, and could turn the small village into a "ghost town", residents and local representatives have said.
Wexford County Council is considering plans from Prospect Homes for a development of 226 houses, flats and maisonettes in the centre of Ballymoney village, near Gorey, which has one shop, no post office and no primary school.
The developers are proposing to include a number of restaurants, shops, a creche and a community centre in the complex.
However, local politicians and residents have cast doubts over whether these facilities will be viable as they say the houses will be used as holiday homes and left vacant for most of the year.
The village has seen an influx of holiday homes over the last 10 years which has caused huge sewage problems, with leaks on to beaches and local water courses. "Boil notices" have been issued for drinking water for several months at a time.
Fine Gael TDs Paul Kehoe and Michael D'Arcy jnr said the proposed development would overwhelm the village.
"Putting a large housing estate in a small, rural village which has already had its share of development is not going to create any sense of community; it will just become a ghost town in the winter, and I would be very much against it," said Mr Kehoe.
Mr D'Arcy, who was a member of Wexford County Council before gaining a Dáil seat in the general election, said he had long expressed concerns about such developments in the area.
"I'm not satisfied with this type of development in general. We have a real problem with these ghost estates that are only used for a very short period of the year.
"And when they are in use we don't have the infrastructural development to support them."
Independent county councillor Declan MacPartlin said the estate would contravene the new county development plan.
"It's just completely out of scale for the area; the council is not in favour of intensively building up small villages.
"What would be reasonable is development in the double digits, not in the hundreds."
Prospect Homes has said it envisages the units will be mainly occupied by permanent residents.
Local representatives say this has not been the experience with previous estates. And even if the houses are occupied full-time, the area could not cope with the influx of new residents.
They say there has been a recent expansion of Tara Hill primary school, which is not in the village but is the nearest school. However, that can only cater for students who are already in the area.
They claim Gorey's schools are full; the secondary school there was built for 800 and has already 1,600 students.
The coastal strip from Ballymoney to Courtown has endured substandard sewerage facilities for more than a decade. A new sewerage system is about to be commissioned for the Lower Ballymoney area, but this will not service the new development. The development will have a secondary sewerage system, but its output will be pumped out to sea.
Karen Dubsky of Coastwatch Ireland said ideally the waste should be fully treated on land.
"While the very harmful bacteria would be removed before it was pumped out, you will still get an over-production of algal blooms leading to turgid murky water which for humans can be unpleasant but can be very harmful for sea life."
The closing date for objections to the development is today. The chairman of the residents' association, David O'Callaghan, said many local people have made submissions to the council.
"People are up in arms over this. It's such an extreme development in terms of what we have here."
