Hotel opponents step up campaign

OPPONENTS of a planned five-storey hotel in Cashel on a site previously earmarked for a town park are holding a public meeting tonight in a bid to step up their campaign.

The deadline for appeals to An Bord Pleanála against the local council’s decision to grant planning permission for the 83-bedroom hotel is February 28 and members of the Save Our Town Park group want as many residents as possible to sign up to their objection.

CMS Developments was given the go-ahead two weeks ago to build a hotel and commercial development at the 2.8-acre site previously owned by the Presentation Sisters. The site is already the subject of controversy after the council purchased it from the nuns in 2001 for €418,000 amid suggestions of a Compulsory Purchase Order and sold it five years later to CMS Developments for €1.9 million. The latter sale is subject to planning permission for a hotel.

The Presentation order’s presence in Cashel recently came to an end as members retired to convents elsewhere in the region. Save Our Town Park wants an inquiry to be held into the two sales of the land.

According the group’s chairperson Richard O’Brien, tonight’s meeting at 8pm in the Parish Centre on Friar Street will be used to “outline the history of the site and the sale of the land” and give details of the group’s submission to the Cashel Town Development Plan, the South Tipperary County Development Plan, and to the Department of the Environment and Local Government.