Bernard McNamara and Jerry O'Reilly's ambitious 25-storey mixed-use scheme on the site of the Tara Towers hotel on Merrion Road, Dublin 4, has been rejected by An Bord Pleanála.

The planning board has upheld Dublin City Council's refusal for the scheme, which incorporated a building almost twice as tall as Dublin's Liberty Hall, stating that it went against the council's high-rise building policy and would be "visually intrusive".

The Radora Development's scheme, designed by architects Bucholz McEvoy, incorporated a hotel, offices and residential element.

A 156-bedroom hotel with meeting and conference rooms and a restaurant was planned for the first nine floors of the tower.

The 10th to 25th floors were for residential use.

An interlinked building with a sloping roof was intended to contain a conference centre.

The planning board ruled that the development, by reason of its scale, height, bulk and location on a restricted site close to a residential suburban area, would not comply with the planning authority's tall buildings policies.

"The proposed tower would be visually intrusive at this location alongside Dublin Bay and would set an undesirable precedent for similar development at such locations," the board stated in its ruling this week, adding that it would "seriously injure the amenities of the area."

In particular, the proposed 25-storey building would result in a "prominent and overbearing form of development that would result in significant overshadowing of land to the north, north-east and east of the site", the board stated.

The board also criticised the "deficient provision" of public open space proposed in the scheme.