Residents in Cork are appealing planning permission granted by Cork City Council for apartments on the site of a former Magdalene laundry in the city.

They are also calling on An Bord Pleanála to hold an oral hearing into the proposed development.

Moneda Developments Limited, a Dundalk-based company, was granted planning permission in December for 182 apartments on the site of the former Good Shepherd Convent on the city's northside.

The eight acre site, which lies between Sunday's Well and Blarney Street, was sold by the Good Shepherd Sisters to UCC in 1995.

Since then it has had a number of owners.

At the height of the boom, it was sold for more than €20 million.

The buildings were badly damaged over the years by fire.

Last year, Moneda bought the site and buildings for €1.5m and applied for the partial demolition, re-development and extension of the former Good Shepherd Convent, Orphanage and Magdalene laundry.

Noting the site is of "significant social, architectural and conservation importance and sensitivity", Cork City Council granted planning in December subject to a reduction in the number of apartments sought from 234 to 182 and subject to 43 conditions.

Among them, conditions governing the potential finding of undocumented burials on the site, and the provision of a museum in the site's former bakehouse.

But local residents like Tom Coleman - who is chairman of a local action group - says the development is wholly inappropriate, citing density, traffic congestion and loss of privacy.

Local resident Sheila O'Byrne, who gave up her baby son while in St Patrick's mother and baby home in Dublin, says she is upset by the plans to built private apartments on the site, and supports the call for an oral hearing.

She believes that those who suffered at the hands of those who ran the Magdalene laundries should be accommodated on the site.

Cork City Council has received 32 objections to the conditional planning.

It will be up to An Bord Pleanála to decide whether or not to hold an oral hearing into it.