The Catholic church has rejected plans to build a memorial to victims of the IRA’s Remembrance Day bombing on land it owns in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland.

The scale of the proposed construction posed “insurmountable” access problems at the proposed site in Co Fermanagh, the diocesan trust said.

Eleven people died when a bomb exploded at Enniskillen’s war memorial in November 1987.

An alternative monument is due to be completed next year, but victims said they had been left distraught by the church’s decision.

Steven Gault, whose father Samuel died in the blast, said: “Hurt does not scrape the surface of how we are feeling. Why can’t we have a simple, innocent memorial to remember our loved ones murdered by terrorists 30 years ago?”

The device exploded during a Remembrance Sunday ceremony that was being held to commemorate British military war dead. Eleven people, many of them elderly, were killed and 63 were injured. A twelfth victim, Ronnie Hill, died after spending 13 years in a coma.

The memorial was proposed for land owned by St Michael’s diocesan trust beside the Clinton centre in Enniskillen.

The trust said it was “not in a position to sanction the siting of this memorial as proposed. We are happy that the redeveloped Clinton centre will include a memorial to the victims of the Enniskillen bombing and the trust hopes that a suitable location for the Ely centre memorial will be found.”

It said it was sensitive to legacy issues surrounding the bomb and had given careful consideration to key questions such as public access, obligations to its tenants (the Fermanagh University Partnership Board), the upkeep, security and sustainability of the memorial and potential future public works in the area.

“These considerations have made it manifestly clear that the sheer size and scale of the proposed memorial pose insurmountable problems in terms of access at the proposed site.”

The University of Ulster, Dublin City University and the University of Massachusetts have recently announced plans to regenerate the Clinton centre, named after the US president Bill Clinton and designed to promote peace-building. That work will integrate a memorial to the victims of the Enniskillen bombing, the trust said.

“Not only does it not make sense to move to place a very large memorial in the proposed location, given the potential refurbishment of the entrance to the Clinton centre, but we believe that visual and aesthetic considerations arising from the size and scale of the memorial mitigate against positioning it at this location.”

Gault said he had not been consulted on the trust’s decision but the church said it had not been given details before the memorial was commissioned, resulting in it being unsuited to the site.

Gault’s wife, Sharon, tweeted: “As a Enniskillen parishioner I am ashamed of St Michael’s Trust. I can confirm that they did not correspond with us during the last seven months.”