Planning permission is being sought from Sligo County Council for the largest scheme of holiday homes ever proposed in the Republic - an £18 million development of 240 units near Enniscrone, on the Moy Estuary. The scheme - as large as many suburban housing estates - would be located in an area designated under the tax incentive scheme to encourage development in traditional holiday resorts. It is being put forward by a company called Sunrise Sunset Ltd.
Also included in the company's application are plans for a three-storey hotel with 54 bedrooms, a bar, restaurant and conference facilities, a separate leisure complex, including a swimming pool, and the demolition of an existing farmhouse on the 95-acre site.
The application was lodged with the county council last month in the absence of any local area action plan for Enniscrone, which was one of 15 holiday resorts to be designated for development tax incentives under a "pilot scheme" introduced in 1995.
Like most of the rural areas of Co Sligo, the site is not zoned, which is generally taken to mean an agricultural zoning. It would not, therefore, represent a material contravention of the county plan.
Overall, the proposed holiday "village" would be by far the largest in the Republic. Trabolgan, in Co Cork - the first major purpose-built scheme in this category - contains 172 self-catering units. The environmental impact statement (EIS) for the Enniscrone project concedes that the existing agricultural landscape would be "radically altered" by the proposed development but says its visual impact would be reduced by the "clustered" nature of the housing.
The site at Scurmore is located about one mile south-west of Enniscrone and, according to the EIS, this is sufficiently far away to be "physically self-contained". It would not, therefore, "impinge on the structure or integrity" of the existing village.
The EIS, which was co-ordinated by Brian Meehan and Associates, planning consultants, says the site "does not have significant ecological interest" despite being located adjacent to a Special Area of Conservation covering the Moy Estuary and Killala Bay.
"The development will retain much of the existing habitat and will scarcely disrupt the local ecology. It also avoids most of the more sensitive areas", the EIS says.
Those sensitive areas closest to the proposed housing clusters "will tolerate an increase in trampling pressure", it maintains. Such trampling may be done by the estimated 720 to 960 people - many of them children - which the housing would accommodate.
The EIS concedes that the existing county road which serves the site has "a number of deficiencies" and would have to be widened to cater for the traffic generated by the holiday village, hotel and leisure centre. This is estimated at 63 cars per hour.
Local objectors say the road cannot even cater for the existing levels of traffic. Ms E.M. McCormick, who lives about a mile from the site, said a lot of the additional traffic in recent years had been generated by the tourism-related schemes already built in the Enniscrone area, including a 50unit holiday village, which is about to be doubled in size, as well as by increasing ribbon development. There are also plans for an 18hole championship golf course on Bartragh Island, at the mouth of the Moy Estuary, designed by British golfer Nick Faldo.
Mr Mervyn Gawley, a local farmer and environmentalist, said the proposed village would "take away the essence of this rural district". And because it would be "wholly separate from Enniscrone", its impact would be much greater than the existing ribbon of houses.
He said there had been a steady increase in the number of wild birds coming into the Moy Estuary, including wigeon, shellduck and even whooper swans. It was now so important that there were plans to upgrade its designation as a Special Protection Area (SPA).
The proposed holiday village would be a "rape of the landscape", showing a "complete disregard" for the environment. "We all talk about the great economic boom. At the end of it, we're going to be left with a country that's been destroyed," he said.
