A plan to build 10 apartment blocks and a nursing home on the site of Loreto Abbey, Rathfarnham, has been submitted to South Dublin County Council. Riversmith Limited, one of Zoe Development's companies, hopes to build 317 apartments on the 12.1 acre site which it bought for a figure believed to be about £14 million last October.

The 317 apartments would comprise 270 two-bedroom and 29 one-bedroom apartments and 18 two-bedroom penthouse units arranged in 10 blocks.

In addition, Riversmith plans to convert a listed Georgian house and part of a chapel into a 102-bedroom nursing home. The remainder of the chapel will remain in ecclesiastical use, while some outbuildings are to be converted to offices and a creche.

The Loreto sisters are to retain two buildings to the south of the complex as well as a small site to the rear, and part of the old garden and orchard.

Another religious institution to cash in on the property boom last year was Castleknock College, which is run by the Vincentian Congregation. It sold 35 acres of building land for almost £12 million to Lido Construction. Now a planning application has been lodged with Fingal County Council for 366 residential units, comprising two-storey houses, apartments and duplexes. And in Tallaght, the Phase III Limited Partnership has lodged a planning application for a number of four to nine-storey buildings along the north, east and south faces of The Square in Tallaght.

The development would include 386 apartments, a 43-bedroom hotel, 47-unit apart-hotel, retail space, restaurants, bars, offices, a nightclub and a 1,529-space multi-storey car-park.

One of the key elements of the plan, part of the Tallaght 2000 strategy, would be a new landscaped square known as Millennium Square, which would occupy an area between the South Dublin Civic Offices and The Square Shopping Centre.

Elsewhere in Tallaght, Patrick M O'Reilly has lodged a planning application for a 156,342 sq ft retail warehouse development along with a drive-through fast food restaurant on the Belgard Road.

Plans to demolish the Harry Ramsdens restaurant building on Killeen Road/Naas Road in Dublin 12 and build a motor sales outlet, offices and car-park have been turned down by South Dublin County Council.

In Co Cork, An Bord Pleanala has refused permission to Dunnes Stores for a shopping centre cineplex, hotel and fast food restaurant at the Dunkettle Roundabout in Little Island.