Abattoir plan may upset JP’s estate gift

THE Co Limerick rural district where JP McManus recently bought an estate for his daughter is up in arms over a plan to build an abattoir there.

A Limerick businessman wants to build a large abattoir at Grange, where Mr McManus acquired a 145-acre walled estate for his daughter recently at a cost of €4.5 million.

An application has been lodged for the erection of a single-storey abattoir with entrance gates and boundary wall at Grange, Co Limerick.

Mr McManus bought the estate at Grange as a wedding present for his daughter Sue Ann and her husband Cian Foley, who got married last Saturday.

It has now transpired that a planning application was lodged with Limerick County Council on June 27 for an abattoir to be built in Grange.

Limerick County Council planners are due to give a decision on the application by August 21 and objectors have until July 31 to send in submissions to the planning department at County Hall in Dooradoyle.

A local woman who asked not to be named: “We understand a butcher is behind the application and everybody in the area will be objecting.

“The whole place is up in arms at the thought of lorry loads of cattle being brought into a small rural community for slaughter day and night. If this got through it would be disgraceful. We’ll be objecting”

Another resident said a public meeting will be called. He said: “You could have cattle lorries from all over the country travelling here. It would be an environmental hazard and there is also the risk of pollution from the huge amounts of effluent it would produce.”

Grange is a popular residential area and sites of just over half an acre fetch €140,000.

The application to the council has been lodged in the name of a company based in Plassey, Limerick.