McDonald’s Restaurants of Ireland Ltd intend to apply to Tipperary Co. Council for permission to develop lands on Slievenamon Road, latter adjoining the, as yet, unfunded Thurles Inner Relief road, at Thurles, in Co. Tipperary. (Latter beside the German International discount retailer Lidl, owned by the Schwarz Group).
From the site notice, erected by Ms Eva Bridgeman, (Agent-Downey, 29 Merrion Square, Dublin), first erected on September 20th last, we learn of McDonald’s proposed plans.
The development will consist of a single story ‘drive-thru’ restaurant, including the ancillary sales of hot food for consumption of and on the premises, with an associated coral area, elevated signage, with modifications to the existing vehicle access at the Thurles relief road.
Also required is car parking, including accessible parking spaces; grill bays; EV charging spaces; bicycle parking; a height restrictor; customer order points with associated canopies; totem signage (latter powerful external advertising platforms that act a bit like billboards); free standing signage; banner frames and digital menu boards; an ESB substation and kiosk; landscaping, including an outdoor furniture seating area with parasols; boundary treatments; lighting, and all associated site and engineering works necessary to facilitate the now sought development.
Currently there are 24 restaurant/takeaways in the just the side streets of this our much loved tiny town, each offering food daily for sale. [ 8 already on Slievenamon Road between Thurles Golf Club and the junction with Liberty Square; 2 on Parnell Street; 2 on Bakers Street; 3 on Friar Street; 3 on Kickham Street and Dublin Road; 3 on Mitchel Street; 2 and possibly a 3rd due to open on Cathedral Street, and 1 on O’Donovan-Rossa Street.]
Then there are the 13 excellent establishments/outlets all daily selling food on Liberty Square in the town centre.
Add this to the fact that Tipperary Co. Council will shortly become the proud landlords of 2 competing restaurants in the town, courtesy of taxpayer funding, (one currently under construction, as part of a 3.4 million Euro project, and currently delayed by the Pipistrelles Bat species and a gang of unruly, rowdy house sparrows), and both currently unable as yet to attract a long term tenant.
This brings the total number of establishments equipped to retail food in Thurles town to 39 outlets, As our readers will understand, the town economy really needs now is a drive-thru restaurant positioned on a non funded, non-existent inner relief road, to bring the total number of food outlets to that nice round figure of 40.
The phrase “a nation of shopkeepers” was an expression used to refer to the United Kingdom in 1794, used in a derogatory sense by French revolutionary Bertrand Barère. Today one could refer to Thurles as “a town of food outlets”.
While we definitely need the inner-relief road, we should not allow yet another multi-billion dollar international outlet to hover up more of the local populations discretionary spending. Family-run restaurants and cafés already work hard enough to stay afloat.The council need to be brave and nip this in the bud. SAY NO TO MCDONALD’S!
The town is growing. Stop objecting to growth and more employment opportunities in the town. Look the plans for the college expansion. Local businesses will still keep going look at the likes of Ths Pike, Mona Lisa etc, they’ve stood the test of time and will keep going. McDonald’s isn’t going to hurt the town. Think of the employment to build it alone and then people to work there once it’s open. It might spur on the inner relief road construction
Thurles Town sadly is not growing.
Year 2022 – Population 8,185 https://www.citypopulation.de/en/ireland/towns/tipperary/22481__thurles/
Year 2024 – Population 7,588 (https://worldpopulationreview.com/cities/ireland)
Our population may have increased by a couple of hundred individuals escaping war this year and not yet recorded.
Should McDonalds get planning permission the building workforce will most likely not be local. On completion, employees will be most likely non local like Lidl.
At least 30 sales staff employed and living locally, will loose their existing jobs with the closure of at least 3 existing trading outlets, while 15 staff at most will be employed at McDonalds.
Do remember that a cup of coffee or a burger or a bag of chips between the hours of 9:00am and 6:00pm has €1.60 extra added to the normal retail costs, because of car parking charges. Parking will be free at McDonalds, who will now trade unfairly.
None of the prepared food, of while some is Irish in origan and sold by McDonalds, will be purchased from wholesalers/retailers locally.
McDonald’s is owned by different shareholders, as it’s a publicly trading company. Accordingly most of this company’s owners are institutional investors, who make up 70.14% of the outstanding shares. Does any of its overall profits remain in Ireland long term?
Now read the link shown here. https://www.health.com/healthy-mcdonalds-options-7966594
love them or hate them, these McDonalds restaurants tend to have a huge pull factor to them. The one here in Portlaoise is a goldmine, the McDonalds restaurant that opened recently in Nenagh, Gladstone street Clonmel etc.
I’m not going to judge their clientele, that’s for the HSE and foodies, but anyway to pull people off the M8 and into Thurles town should be welcomed. The N62 south is a reasonably good road. There should be business parks, industrial estates, cycle lanes etc along it. Whatever happened to the industrial estate Tipperary County Council planned for Clongour? These ideas are quickly forgotten after every election it seems.
Bit of a rant here, but It’s crazy that none of our elected representatives at the time had lobbied for the M8 to built a lot closer to the town. If you drive on the M8, Thurles isn’t even signposted until you come really close to the junctions. The likes of Dungarvan which is nowhere near the M8 gets mentioned more than Thurles on signposts.
Same with public transport. The train service is excellent, but it’s expensive. There’s little to no competition and Iarnród Éireann have a monopoly on transport in the town. There’s the 391 Local Link to Limerick but it’s only 3 x times a day. TFI/NTA in the connecting Ireland plan were meant to extend this bus service to Kilkenny and with a minimum service of every two hours. Never happened and unlikely to. Limerick is pretty much the administrative capital of the Midwest. Our major hospital is there for example, yet other towns in South Tipperary have better roads, a comprehensive bus service and rail services to Limerick City that are significantly cheaper than Thurles to Limerick. South Tipp have their own hospitals and regional development boards in their own regions. Slaintecare (the program to re-establish the health boards) has Thurles still in the Midwest region which was a missed opportunity to make Clonmel General hospital the major hospital for Thurles. Given that Clonmel hospital is closer, less overcrowded and more accessible to people in the Thurles area. Preferably our district hospital should have never been closed in the first place. The problems in our health service stem back to Rory O’Hanlon closing numerous district hospitals in the 1980s and reducing bed capacity.
Some very good points being made here and I agree with most of them. Thurles has huge opportunities particularly with the two third-level colleges and also the apprentice college in Turtulla. However is the town centre a proper place for McDonald’s? If motorway traffic wants a pit-stop then it doesn’t have to be in town. Cashel McDonald’s is about 2km from the town and gets footfall from both locals and passing motorists.Thurles is an historic town and sometimes you need to stop random development. Councillors could have exclusion zones within town boundary.Thurles badly needs purpose-built student accommodation. Much work has been put into the town centre. Location for McDonalds is bad. It doesn’t have to be so close to town.
Chris: What did happened to the Business Development Campus that Lowry claimed Tipperary County Council had planned for Clongour? Independent TD, Deputy Mr Michael Lowry turned the first sod, on this project on Monday January 27th, 2020 (Election promises rarely come to fruitian). Five years earlier, on September 10th, 2019, Mr Lowry hailed the arrival of the long-awaited Thurles Inner Relief road. Where is that? View Here https://www.thurles.info/2019/09/10/plans-for-thurles-erin-foods-site-formally-confirmed/
Land is now up for sale.
Jackie Cahill TD claimed he was given the funding for the Inner Relief Road in October 2021. See Here https://www.facebook.com/jackiecahillff/videos/253846050001049/
It’s good you raise the original plan for the Erin Foods site George. It was a clever way of selling it to the people who might otherwise object. Very typical strategy in site development.
This McDonalds is the last thing this part of the town needs. From ten miles on the motorway either side of Cashel all you see are discarded McDonalds’cups and wrappers.
I raised the general filth of the country including, to Team Lowry’s reps at the last election, but year on year the problem gets worse. No signs, no ads nothing. We’re reverting back to the 70s with this litter plague.
What needs to be established now is whether this restaurant will be 24 hours like Cashel, which isn’t in a residential area? If so, then can we expect a Saturday night invasion of the area and all the discarded trash this entails? With the ambitious plans for the expansion of the Mary Immaculate College campus (with an eventual site footprint bigger than TCD), then could we realistically expect droves, seven nights a week?
Remember only around ten people live in the Square but Slievenamon Road/Clongour Road is more a residential area than a business area, so a lot more people to be compromised by the nighttime noise and traffic. Will McDonald’s undertake to clean up the area around the restaurant? I doubt it. They’d have no legal obligation after all.
On the point of jobs raised by posters here. Well, the site will be developed eventually either way. Remember McDonalds main value as a company isn’t fastfood, it is property ownership. They could sell this site and someone might buy it for student accommodation etc. The jobs in McDonalds are not high end. They are usually part time apart from the manager. The potential to harm other fast food businesses in the town is huge. At least the mobile trucks that pull into Thurles on matchdays are only relieving the pressure on established businesses that couldn’t serve the numbers anyway. McDonalds will be just sucking the business away from everybody else.
On a sadder note, it just adds to the cycle of growing obesity in the country. We’ve gone from a town of 40 pubs to 40 eateries and it is there to be seen all round, literally.
Smoking has nothing on obesity, as a killer. Nothing being done about this either by the Govt.
Last obvious point about this is the stupidity of encouraging businesses on an inner relief road. This was the huge folly of the M50. Allow a load of industrial estates etc. to further choke it. This inner relief road was always going to be super busy, but with McDonalds and any businesses, estates etc. to be built on the other side of the river, plus a new entry to the college, then it will be a bottleneck.
Tipp County Council will go where the money is unfortunately. This whole country is being run now like an aggressively expanding business where nothing is allowed to slow its progress.