The Bayview hotel ceased trading last September and the Ounavarra has been closed for over a year. While the Taravee and Courtown hotels remain open, the town's Beacon night club, famous as the Tara ballroom during the showband era, has also closed down.

"We're afraid this will end up a ghost town, " says Seapoint resident Marian Brennan, who is helping to coordinate opposition to the plan. "We think this site has a lot of potential and would be an ideal location for a brand new first-class hotel."

Wicklow-based developers Joseph Germaine and John Wall have been granted planning permission to replace the adjacent hotels with a commercial/residential complex consisting of a fitness centre, a restaurant and crèche, 77 apartments and a basement car park.

Brennan says the developers of an earlier mixed use scheme in the town were forced to convert commercial units into apartments when they failed to attract purchasers. "We're genuinely concerned the same thing will happen again.

"In the past we had several hotels in the town and they all did very well with local weddings and dinner dances.

There was a time when people came from far and wide to have their wedding reception in Courtown. Now anyone planning a sizeable social gathering ends up going to Gorey or further afield."

Gorey town councillor, Robert Ireton, of Labour, owns a caravan park in Courtown. "I have consistently pointed out the need for a good sized, quality hotel in the town, " he says.

"The problem with these two properties is that they were too small to be viable. There's enough room on this site to build the kind of hotel the town is crying out for."

Ireton is not convinced that there is sufficient demand for the number of apartments planned for the development.

"There's already a block of around 12 apartments in the town and only three or four of those are occupied full-time."

Demolishing the Ounavarra would mean the disappearance of one of the town's historic buildings, he says.

"It's a great shame that the town will now have lost three hotels in five years, " says Gorey town councillor Michael D'Arcy of Fine Gael. "What's happening here is a reflection of the property market generally. Properties are being bought up because of the site location and then redeveloped as apartment blocks."

Residents are also concerned at the inclusion of a proposal to construct an access bridge over the local river, the Ounavarra, linking the Seapoint area with an underground car park planned for the new development. "The road in question is very, very narrow, " says Marian Brennan. "With parking allowed along one side it's already chock-a-block with traffic during the summer. The proposal is to provide access for to up to 150 extra cars along the route and that would make the traffic situation completely intolerable. There's an area beside the Bayview known as the squash court, and it's currently used as a car park. It's a mystery to us why that area couldn't be developed to provide alternative access to the underground car park."

Michael D'Arcy says he'll be "keeping the pressure" on Gorey town council to ensure Courtown is progressively upgraded over the coming years.

"We already have a new swimming pool built. Last year we built a children's playground and two new carparks.

We're in the process of building a lighted footpath between Gorey and Courtown. And there are plans in the pipeline to construct a promenade and a marina in the town. Under no circumstances will we allow Courtown become a ghost town."