Save Tullig from West Cork Distillers
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On 16/01/2023 Cork County Council's Planning department put corporate greed and vested interests ahead of West Cork rural communities and GRANTED PLANNING PERMISSION to West Cork Distillers for an inappropriate industrial warehousing complex in the rural townland of Tullig. The decision is in direct contradiction of County Cork Chief Executive Tim Lucey's stated position on such developments, and ignores significant issues raised in multiple submissions on the application. 

Our community will continue to fight this incomprehensible decision, and we value your support.
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The position in February 2023

This video explains where things stand now... in February 2023, as we appeal Cork County Council's bizarre decision to grant planning permission for this inappropriate industrial development. Please like and share this video far and wide....

A view of the site

This is the 11 hectare site that West Cork Distillers wants to turn into industrial warehouse complex holding 36,000,000 litres of maturing whiskey 

Recent Updates

Some recent posts from the Save Tullig blog

West Cork Distillers Planning Application 21905

Show your support for the local community, and keep industrial development where it belongs. You can access planning documents and submissions via the Cork County Council planning portal by clicking the Planning Application button below. Click "How you can help" to find out what you can do to support the community campaign.
Click the buttons below to view the community's comprehensive group submission objecting to this inappropriate industrial development, and our supplemental submission relating to further information submitted by West Cork Distillers in December 2022.
Community Group SubmissionCommunity Group Submission on Further Information

Making Your Submission

NB: If you made a submission on West Cork Distillers' previous application (and haven't received a refund), you can use your original receipt instead of the usual €20 fee to lodge your submission for this planning application.
Making a planning submission can seem a little daunting at first, but it doesn't have to be. Individual objections can take the form of a letter outlining your concerns as simple bullet-points. You can put as much or as little into it as you feel comfortable with.

Feel free to take our key community objections below as a starting point, choose what applies to you, put them into your own words, and add anything else you feel is relevant.

Cork County Council has a helpful PDF on its website with instructions and a sample submission letter template.
PDF Submission Template
Don't obsess too much over it -- we highlight a lot of concerns in detail in our group community submission. the important thing for individual submissions is to hit the key points and get your submission in ON TIME.

You can either drop your submission into your local planning office in person, or make an online submission using Cork County Council's online submission system (Planning Application #21905).
Submit Online
West Cork Distillers wants to destroy this site at Tullig, Reenascreena

Key Community Objections

These are the key objections highlighted in the conclusion of our Tullig & Reensscreena Community Group Submission. The full report covers everything in a lot more detail.
Read Full Submission
  • The local road infrastructure (L4239 and L4241) is completely unsuitable for increased use by heavy goods vehicles.
  • There is potential for increased flooding, particularly in Connonagh, but also at other sites locally, because natural surface water attenuation would be removed, and replaced with vast artificial surfaces that increased surface water runoff.
  • There’s a genuine concern that allowing an industrial development like this one in Tullig/Reenascreena will not just irrevocably alter the appearance of the landscape, but will erode the intangible underlying fabric of the rural community.
  • We are concerned that granting permission for such a development sets a dangerous precedent for rural communities in Ireland. It would give a green light to profiteering industrialists, prompting them to buy up low-cost agricultural land to satisfy their industrial warehousing needs. Such development adds nothing to the immediate local economy and serves to erode the core values that underpin rural Irish communities.
  • We believe the development would have a radical and negative visual impact on the rural landscape. There is no characteristic of industrial warehousing units that allow them to sit harmoniously in a landscape of “Rolling Intimate Mosaic Farmland”.
  • While the wetland/peat bog areas of the site have been partially excluded from the development, the plans still include the destruction of areas highlighted as high-value sensitive wetland habitats.
  • There are still significant gaps in understanding of the site's ecology. All ecological survey work was carried out during a narrow window in autumn and early winter, giving a skewed snapshot of the site's ecological significance at best, and no basis from which to assess the proposed development’s ecological impact.
  • The plans document insufficient Firewater Retention Capacity, and contravene EPA guidance on minimum Firewater retention capacity for an industrial site of this nature. Retention based on the contents of a single warehouse in a 12-warehouse facility is completely inadequate, and represents a serious threat to sensitive wetland habitats on site, underlying groundwater and the aquatic ecosystems of the broader Roury catchment and Rosscarbery Bay.
  • Risk assessment fails to take account of the unique nature of storing high densities of highly flammable distilled spirits in wooden casks in the constant presence of potentially explosive ethanol vapour. The risk of explosion, a documented risk at maturation facilities, is not considered at all.
  • The site is remote, and would take the nearest emergency services at least 25-30 minutes to reach should an incident occur. The nearest fire services in Clonakilty, Skibbereen and Dunmanway are unlikely to have the capacity or equipment to deal with a rapidly escalating industrial fire with explosion risk on a site of this nature. Cork City fire services are more than an hour away -- which would be far, far too late.
  • The proposed development would impose a significant, multi-faceted burden on local residents, spanning community, landscape, infrastructure, agriculture, property, amenity and more, while delivering no tangible benefit.
Whiskey Maturation Warehouses like the ones proposed by West Cork Distillers
Whiskey Maturation Warehouses similar to those proposed for the West Cork Distillers development

Why should I object?

If you're a resident of rural West Cork, this concerns YOU. Should this inappropriate use of unzoned agricultural land for industrial development proceed it sets a dangerous precedent for rural communities across the region. This development alters the fundamental land-use of the site, irrevocably changes the character of the landscape and undermines the underlying fabric of the rural community. It takes what makes rural Ireland special, and obliterates it.

And make no mistake, if we allow a development like this to go ahead in Tullig, given the explosive (pun intended) growth of the Irish whiskey industry, it won't be too long before there's a similar warehousing project coming to a townland near you. So let's nip this in the bud now and let businesses like West Cork Distillers know that putting profit before place and people simply isn't going to be tolerated in rural Ireland.
How you can help

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