A 20-house development on the outskirts of Baile an Fheirtearaigh on the Dingle peninsula is to be appealed to An Bord Pleanála on the grounds the planning permission does not include a clause to protect the Irish language.
The appeal, which will be lodged by language activist Mr Donncha Ó hEallaithe, who does not live in the area, followed a public meeting which heard general reservations about the planning process on the peninsula.
The developer, Ballinaboola Southbound Properties, had given an assurance that the houses would primarily be for local Irish-speaking people who were finding it difficult to get planning permission in the countryside.
Last week, the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Mr Ó Cuív, criticised the decision by council planners to grant permission for the estate beside the Irish-speaking village without including a language clause.
The development went against traditional settlement patterns and would swamp the village, Mr Ó Cuív said. He described the language clause in the county development plan as crucial to the survival of Irish in Kerry's two Gaeltacht regions. If Kerry County Council had continued with the traditional dispersed rural settlement and had not zoned for high residential developments, he added, the problem would not have arisen.
The meeting in Baile an Fheirtearaigh heard complaints that holiday homes, empty for most of the year, were being built while locals could not get permission and were being forced into nearby non-Irish speaking towns.
In Dún Chaoin, a nearby Gaeltacht, only a third of the 180 houses were for full-time residents - the rest were holiday homes.
The senior planner in Kerry County Council, Mr Tom Sheehy, said language clauses were unenforceable. The council could not be expected to monitor who was buying private houses and then throw someone out of his or her own house for speaking English, he said, nor could it enforce an occupancy clause restricting ownership to Irish-speakers.
In the county development plan, there is a commitment "to ensure that any developments within the recognised Gaeltacht areas are of benefit to the Irish language and the Gaeltacht communities of the Dingle and Iveragh peninsulas".