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By Anne Lucey

Plans for a €24 million brewery and whiskey distillery, visitor centre and restaurant at Fossa, Killarney, will get underway in January - after an appeal to An Bord Pleanála was withdrawn.

Aidan Forde, Director of Torc Brewing of Church Close, Muckross, had appealed plans by Killarney Brewing Company, to develop a micro-craft distillery, brewery, cask maturation area, exhibition area, visitor centre, restaurant, and parking to cater for coach and private cars at the old Rosenbluth office building at Killalee on the main Ring of Kerry Road, on the grounds of firewater retention. He has now withdrawn his appeal.

Fossa may shortly see three new whiskey distilleries and visitor centres - within a stone’s throw of each other.

Less than half a mile away, the adjoining townland of Lakeview, the seat of the O’Connell family in Killarney, has already begun producing its first whiskey called ‘The Liberator’ in a 300-year-old complex that includes a bonded warehouse.

And a third proposal for a distillery, this time by Killarney Distillers Limited, in a protected structure at Knoppogue in Aghadoe, Fossa, is also underway. A detailed application for planning for conservation and refurbishment of a derelict 19th century coach house at Aghadoe House as a craft distillery development will be finalised in late January, the Council said.

A spokesperson for Killarney Brewery yesterday said site works were already underway and the project is to go "full steam" ahead now.

Kerry County Council grant of permission lays down the restaurant must close by midnight.

The brewing company, which has been operating since 2015 at a site on the Muckross Road, produces gin and beer with a number of new whiskeys planned when the brewing part of operation moves to Fossa.