The Green Party has warned that the Galway village of Barna could turn into a "mini-Torremolinos" if proposals for a new hotel, apartments and townhouses on the waterfront are approved.
Two separate planning applications recently submitted to Galway County Council propose that a new hotel, retail, leisure and office facilities and over 150 new apartments and 48 townhouses, with underground car parking, would be built on either side of Barna pier.
Green Party councillor and party spokesman for Galway, Mr Niall Ó Brolcháin, says that this conflicts with the Barna draft development plan, which aims to protect the character of the 18th century Gaeltacht village.
Residents have already held several meetings in the past week to express concern about the impact of the developments.
Situated four miles west of Galway city centre and seven miles east of Spiddal, Barna has grown from a small fishing and farming village of some 500 people, with the safest pier along some 30 miles of coast, to a semi-suburban area of 2,500 people.
Planning guidelines under Galway County Council's pre-draft development plan for the village have already been breached even before it is ratified, according to Cllr Ó Brolcháin.
"At present there are roughly 730 residences in Barna," he said. "The pre-draft plan states that there should be 480 residences, with an allowable increase of 50 per cent over the next five years.
"Some 48 new apartments are currently under construction in the village centre, which already has a new shopping and apartment complex, and work is due to start on at least another 26 apartments later this year," he added.
Earlier this week, residents pledged to oppose plans submitted by Bomac Properties to construct 152 apartments and townhouses, retail units, a bar, restaurant, hotel, shopping centre and eight underground car parks at Freeport, on the east side of the pier. The plans for Caladh Saor at Freeport, which have been seen by The Irish Times, would effectively close off part of the shoreline in the village.
A spokesman for the residents' group, Pobal Bearna, emphasised that they were not "anti-development" in relation to genuine housing needs, but believed that a "high-density, high-rise Spanish Costa type urbanisation" was out of character for the area.
The development would cause traffic chaos, pose a risk to school children at the local primary school, and result in a loss of visual and coastal amenity.
The pre-draft plan for Barna says that the coastal landscape is sensitive to development, and would be "visually vulnerable" to insensitive buildings.
Only developments of a "very high quality design and careful layout standard" would be compatible with the natural landscape, overlooking Galway Bay and the Burren in Co Clare. The plan warns against any loss of identity for the village, which could become an "urban continuum" of Galway environs if overdeveloped.
It also says development on all littoral or coastal lands should be restricted, and the shoreline and the village's relationship with the sea should be protected.
The council says it cannot comment on the status of the proposed new developments, but says that the pre-draft development plan for the area will be taken into account when coming to a decision on both.
As a Gaeltacht village, Barna would be covered by the new language impact statement applying to all residential developments under the county development plan. But the village's Gaeltacht road sign was recently defaced and has not, as yet, been cleaned by the local authority.