Kerry County Council is investigating the operation of a quarry at a popular tourist spot on the Ring of Kerry.
However, a spokesman for the owners said yesterday they are "baffled" by the attempts to close the quarry, as the council themselves have until recently rented the quarry from them to extract rock.
Tonnes of rock have been cut from the dramatic glaciated landscape at the popular tourist spot Moll's Gap, near Killarney at the location of the quarry, and a tourism spokesperson has expressed concern.
The quarry was on the main tourist fork for Sneem and Kenmare and was "highly visible" said former mayor of Killarney, Mr Michael Courtney, and a board member of Cork-Kerry tourism. He fears "a gaping hole" will be left.
Last December the council served an enforcement notice on the landowners, the Kissane family of Muckross, to stop the extraction of rock and to restore the site.
"The council is currently building a case for injunctive court proceedings," a spokesperson for Kerry County Council said.
The council spokesperson said it had not used material from the quarry in the past few years, and its immediate concern was about the recent intensification of activity at the site. In recent years the council had used the site as a store for stockpiling road chips and so on, the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for the Kissane family said yesterday: "As far as we are concerned this is a legitimate quarry."
They have continued to operate it since the enforcement notice was served by the council, he said. In the 1950s and in the early 1990s, the quarry was rented from the family by the council and it supplied stone for major roadworks in south Kerry.
This was prior to the 1963 Planning Act when planning permission for quarries was introduced. This was the case again in the mid 1990s.
The quarry was a commercial site and it is not part of the surrounding Special Area of Conservation (SAC), the family are baffled by the order to close, he said. The matter is with the family's legal team.
According to the Heritage Service it had been excluded from the surrounding SAC which takes in much of the Macgillicuddy Reeks and south Kerry, following a request from the landowner.
The heritage service recommended the exclusion "on scientific grounds" as the particular site was neither a priority habitat nor contained a priority species.
People were entitled to make a case for the exclusion of their property on scientific grounds. The Reeks had been designated an SAC because of its heath and bog landscape, and the site in question was not of this kind of landscape, an official of the heritage service in Kerry explained.
There has been massive development in south Kerry in recent years. Many holiday and second homes, along with extensions to hotels and guesthouses, have been built in the Ring of Kerry and Kenmare area and demand for stone is high.