An Taisce has taken the unusual step of imposing a blanket objection against any more development in the west Clare seaside resort of Kilkee.
It has told Clare County Council it will object to any development until services such as sewerage, water and other public amenities are upgraded.
A spokeswoman for An Taisce said it was unacceptable that raw sewage was being pumped into the sea at Kilkee. An Taisce had not become involved in the Kilkee situation earlier because its Clare Association was reactivated last year only after being dormant for a number of years.
Most of the applications the national trust has objected to are single dwellings. Father Sean McDonagh, chairman of the environmental group, Voice, recently said the scale of housing in Kilkee had deformed the face of the resort.
Kilkee was one of 15 seaside resorts that were part of the Seaside Resort Renewal Scheme, introduced in 1995, giving tax reliefs to investors in holiday homes and other tourist facilities.
Father McDonagh said there had been 595 houses in Kilkee in 1990, and 795 had been built since 1992, an increase of 132 per cent.
In 1990, 71 per cent of Kilkee's housing was lived in, compared to 34 per cent last year. Welcoming An Taisce's move, Father McDonagh yesterday called for a full-scale inquiry by the Department of the Environment into the implementation of all phases of the scheme in Kilkee.
He said the inquiry should find out how all the houses were allowed to be built without any upgrading of the local infrastructure.
An Taisce's move has also been welcomed by the chairman of the Kilkee Planning Review Group, Dr Tom Nolan, who described the move as "late" and asked "Where have these people been all along?".
Reflecting on the campaign waged by the review group to prevent the development, Dr Nolan said: "We won a battle or two, but we lost the war."
He claimed the people had been dispossessed of their environment and of their right to live in Kilkee as a result of the scheme, due to the unprecedented building of holiday homes and the rising price of property.
The Kilkee town manager and Clare county engineer, Mr Tom Carey, said he would fundamentally disagree that any serious additional loading would be placed on the system by single dwellings.
He accepted that improvements needed to be made in the sewerage system and water supply, but said he was satisfied that the necessary plans were in place to achieve the desired results.
Mr Carey said a new sewerage system would not be in place until 2003, and it would be another year before there was a new public water supply.