Plans by a community of Jehovah Witnesses to build a place of worship in north Tipperary have failed again.
Representatives of the Thurles congregation expressed disappointment at being refused planning permission to build a Kingdom Hall on a site situated in the townland of Tinvoher, 1.2 km from the village of Loughmore.
Their present place of worship, on the first floor of an old bakery building in Croke Street, Thurles, is now too small to accommodate the growing membership of more than 50 people, and access by stairs is proving difficult for elderly members.
For the past five years they have been searching for a suitable site to build a new Kingdom Hall, and this is the fourth time they have failed to get a project off the ground.
North Tipperary County Council twice turned down separate applications for Kingdom Halls planned for sites on the outskirts of Thurles. In another case, an existing building in the town got permission, but the congregation abandoned the project when an appeal was made to An Bord Pleanála.
In the most recent case the county council said the plan to build a 174 sq metre Kingdom Hall with 30 car-parking spaces at Tinvoher would be counter to the objectives of the county development plan.
Its development in a rural area would lead to an uneconomic and unsustainable expansion of public services, such as public lighting and footpaths, and would reduce both the rural amenity and traffic safety.
The site was on a poorly-aligned and heavily-trafficked section of road and would result in the creation of a traffic hazard.
Mr Brian Cook, the Thurles congregation elder, said they had planned to bring up to 400 tradesmen from the Jehovah Witness community throughout Ireland to Tinvoher to build the Kingdom Hall in just one weekend. All the work would have been voluntary.
The congregation's membership in Ireland was steadily growing and was now almost up to 5,000. This growth had been reflected in the Thurles area and the present place of worship was just too small. "When I came to Ireland 30 years ago the membership nationally was just about 1,200," the presiding elder in Thurles, Mr Linton Mason, said.
He ruled out an appeal.