Limerick golf club in the rough as decision reversed

A PLAN for a new €3.5 million clubhouse at Limerick Golf Club has been dropped, leaving the club with bills of €250,000 in architectural, design studies and planning fees.

The decision to drop the planned new clubhouse was taken at a heated extraordinary general meeting of club members in the South Court Hotel on Wednesday night.

The decision to build the new clubhouse was taken at an EGM last November.

It was decided then that each member would pay a €2,500 levy over 10 years.

Members over the aged of 70 were exempt from the levy.

To avail of a tax rebate, the levy had to be voluntary and not mandatory.

A group of 70 members called last Wednesday's meeting and the previous decision was overturned by 260 votes to 215.

One source said the controversy has created a major split in the club, which played host to Tiger Woods four years ago.

All the preparatory work for the new clubhouse had been completed and it was ready to go to tender when opponents of the plan moved.

Club captain and chairman of the board of management at the club, Jack Lynch, said yesterday: "It is a huge disappointment. To me it's a case of democracy gone mad. It's all go one month and then it's off another."

He said the present clubhouse, built in 1966, was showing signs of age, with ongoing problems.

The plan was to build a 11,300 sq m two-storey clubhouse on an elevated site overlooking the present 16th green, which would have been switched to become the 18th had the plan gone ahead.

Mr Lynch said that €260,000 had been spent to date on design fees, tree studies, engineering studies and planning.

Unless the plan for the new clubhouse is revived at a future date, he said that the money said had been spent without any benefit to the club.

Limerick Golf Club has 1,100 members.