*Pat Dowling. Photograph: Eamon Ward
DEPARTING CHIEF EXECUTIVE of Clare County Council, Pat Dowling said the risk in acquiring the Shannon Heritage tourism sites is paying off for the county and criticised “legal loopholes” for slowing down works on projects such as Blake’s Corner.
Dowling retired as Council Chief Executive in December bringing the curtain down on an eight year term, during which Clare County Council was named local authority of the year on two occasions.
Speaking to The Clare Echo in what was his final interview as Chief Executive, Pat labelled COVID-19 and the global pandemic as “the most difficult thing we’ve ever coped with as a sector in my generation”. He recounted, “the pandemic changed the whole nature of society, and, it was insidious in its nature, and yet we couldn’t see it, it was invisible, and that was the danger of it so that period from 2020 into early 2022 took two years out of people’s lives”.
Dowling added, “From my career, when I look back at working 40 years plus, that will always stand out as something that hit us, we had to deal with it, we had to help people as much as we possibly could, and I think by and large as a nation, I think we did reasonably well, notwithstanding the tragedy, the sadness, the mortality levels that we had in Ireland that were high, and in Clare they were even high but, it was a difficult period, no doubt”.
It also led to a change in how public services work such as the introduction of a ‘three day two day’ system giving Council employees the opportunity to remote work. He also maintained it changed the approach of local authority staff. “I think it made Clare County Council a better organisation in our ability to respond to crises. We do it all the time with weather events and things like that, as you know, but I think it just made the nature of the person who works in Clare County Council more caring, and more conscientious than they might have been, but definitely they are now, that’s for sure”.
On what enticed him in 2016 to apply for the role of Chief Executive when he had been serving as Deputy Chief Executive of Limerick City and County Council, the Knockaderry native stated, “I’ve always loved Clare, we’ve holidayed in Clare. We had a mobile in Kilkee as lots of Limerick people do so when the job came up, I was very interested in going from deputy to being full chief executive, the opportunity came up in Clare, I wouldn’t have gone if it was other counties, I like Clare and, love Clare, in fact and that’s why I’m living here now, that’s what enticed me to give it a go and sure it’s worked out okay”.
In March 2023, Dowling sought to avail of the three-year extension to his seven year term. He departs having been in situ for eight years. “When we brought the new council into place, and then we had a general election and I have some health issues I need to get dealt with. I have a coronary artery disease, I’ve had it for 20 years, and I cope with that well, but other back issues and stuff I need to get dealt with next year, and I’m beginning to slow down a little bit and sometimes you know when the time is right. I could have gone to the full ten, but I felt, for me, it was best to go when I chose to go and not when I had to go, if you know what I mean. So I just felt right, and, there’s all the bits and pieces I want to do as well and so halfway through that extended period, I’m leaving,” he said of his exit.
Gauging how to know when the time is right can be difficult. “You just kind of feel it. You’ve you look at all the things that you’ve done in your life, in your career, and you decide you just want to step away and just take a break and relax. I’ve been working furiously for over forty years, I’ve always had jobs where I’ve had responsibility and I go at it fairly full on, and I give it everything to achieve an outcome. It’s not a case of clocking in at nine and going home at five. For me, we were reared in that you give everything of yourself to the vocation you have chosen, because if you only give half of yourself you will only achieve half of the outcome, you’ve got to give everything so it has been full on. When do you know, it is difficult but I think I’d like to call it a day and have a little rest for a while first and then re-evaluate any other bits and pieces I’d like to do”.
In 1983, he graduated with a degree in European Studies from the National Institute for Higher Education which is now the University of Limerick and during his time there was placed on co-op at the United Nations in New York and lived at the time with his older brother Michael who is now the President and Chief Executive Officer of Northwell Health. His second placement while in university was in the European Parliament. He received a bronze medal for exceptional achievement when graduating.
Recollecting on both placements, Dowling remarked, “oh they were great days”. He maintained the placement was “very innovative back then” but is now “as common as muck”. His brother Michael was responsible for securing his placement with the UN. “I worked in the United Nations with the International Council of Social Welfare, unpaid, I was an intern. I was the kid that had to run around the place, and even I recall back then, you know, it’s amazing to look back at your life, I used to often deliver packages and stuff to the Twin Towers, World Trade Centre because there would have been offices of this International Council of Welfare there, I’d often be sent off to get a bus or a taxi to deliver stuff but I worked there and it was great time, I lived with with Mike and his wife, Kathy, in in the city, and then then moved up upstate New York. The United Nations was an amazing place, and there was I walking around as a kid from Ireland, long hair very uncomfortable in a suit because I wouldn’t have been used to wearing suits, and go on to meetings of the security council, the general assembly, where the world met to resolve world issues. It was a phenomenal experience”.
Current UL Chancellor Brigid Laffan was his politics lecturer at NIHE. He recalled, “we were out in Brussels on a study trip and I said, I’d love to do my second co-op in in Europe as part of the European Economic Communities, it was called back then. I basically got picked, and served as a stagier, again, like an intern with the European Progressive Democrats, they were a European political grouping back then so I got in with them, I was based in Luxembourg, back to Mount Schumann, where the European Parliament Secretariat was. One week every month, we’d pack all the boxes and head off to Strasbourg for the plenary session of the European Parliament. And I was there writing reports, making coffee, delivering packages, doing whatever but I loved it, it was great. I came back to finish college, and I had those bits of experience, which was good, which hopefully in some ways served me some advantage later on in my career”.
Dowling previously described the transfer of the Shannon Heritage sites as “one of the biggest risks” in the Council’s 125 year plus history. When asked if this risk will pay off for the county, he responded, “The risk is paying off. Every risk has to be calculated, and not taken, carelessly, that acquisition and if I look across at my desk now, there’s a book at the back of it holding up everything, and you see the size of it, it’s about 1000 pages, that’s the due diligence, I’m leaving that to my successor to see what can be done. That was the scale of the due diligence we took out that took a year and a half. That derisked it because it did a full due diligence of what the risks were and how those risks could be mitigated. We’ve done that, we have a new system put in place, we are evolving towards a nuclear tourism company that’ll embrace all the tourism stuff that’s going on”.
Additions of Bunratty, Craggaunowen and Knappogue have helped the Council to grow its tourism product in what he labelled “key strategic acquisitions”. He said, “The success of the Cliffs is obvious, you see we’ve got An Bord Pleanála approval for redevelopment at the Loop Head Lighthouse. We’ve almost completed Vandeleur, and we’re almost completed the visitor centre for Holy Island. Looking back, adding Shannon Heritage to all of that has been a key strategic move, and it’s already successful, the numbers are telling us the figures are telling us, it will continue to grow and be successful and, in fact, contribute to the finances of Clare County Council”.
Getting the transfer over the line was at times an arduous and frustrating process. “We were being asked to take over a national asset from one semi-state body across to another state body, I was not going to do that lightly as chief executive, if it was to happen, it would happen with a high level of assurance of success, we’ve been proven right, and it has been very successful. Now I look forward to, our new director of tourism and her team to grow all that product now to reinvent Bunratty Castle and Folk Park, that is why we purchased 100 acres of land around it as well. This is going to grow and get bigger and better into the future, because I think we went about it fairly strategically and fairly prudently, it has worked out well”.
Growth in the Council’s tourism portfolio does not mean the local authority is competing with Clare businesses in the sector. “We’re definitely complementing. We are driving a sector in in the county that if we didn’t do it, it wouldn’t necessarily happen, it would be way more fragmented so now we have created a necklace, a suite of facilities, east, west, north, and south of Clare, and that will continue to grow. We only met with the OPW the other day to discuss how we can help promote Scattery Island more to increase the visitor numbers there. We’re involved in the in the broad tourism sector for the benefit of the county, and I would say, on the contrary, I think because we’re involved, we are generating more supply chain opportunities for suppliers, to be in that market space so we’re actually we’re creating a strong economic entity, in the county”.
During the General Election campaign, Senator Roisin Garvey (GP) criticised councillors and Council management for not having suitably qualified personnel involved in Active Travel in the county. This was rejected by the Chief Executive. “Active travel is a national programme, we’ve been seeking to try and roll it out across the county. I’m not going to engage with what a former person is saying about what we did and didn’t do. We’ve responded to and exploited the Active Travel to the best of our ability. I don’t accept any criticism whatsoever when it comes to any of these programmes from any across any Government department because Clare pro-rate to any county has excelled in drawing down funding for a range of programmes, including Active Travel, as good as, if not better than any other county so any criticism, that that’s coming from one of our own Oireachtas members is I find difficult to understand”.
UL’s decision to withdraw from its involvement in a Strategic Development Zone on the Clare side of the campus which included plans for Europe’s first University town does not mean the project is dead, he insisted. He was unable to provide the amount of money spent by the Council in its due diligence for the SDZ. “It’s a cost that’s not a wasted cost because that all that work has been done for the application still sits there. It’s just now because of other circumstances with the University of Limerick, they’ve paused it for now. They’re not proceeding. That does not mean that there won’t be a different type of SDZ. It might be called something different, whereby they want to develop that part of the campu in Co Clare and we’ll support them, all the work that’s been done up to now is not wasted by any means, it sits there as a valuable piece of research, the application is ready should the government ever said, right we’ll consider it into the future”.
Under Dowling’s watch, the County Council has voted to implement the highest charge of local property tax on a consistent basis. In his address at the adoption of the annual budget, he was critical of the manner in which local authorities are funded. “My point on funding of local government thanks, commercial rates and local property tax are there now, obviously you maximise that, this is about general capital funding like roads funding, we’re forever trying to play catch up with the volume of funding we need, we could spend three times the amount of money we have in any annual year on projects if it was available, that is what I mean, we are depending totally on national funding”.
In 2022 Dowling said he hoped to be at the construction stage in 2023 for the N67/N85 Inner Relief Road in Ennistymon which aims to ease congestion at the traffic blackspot in Blake’s Corner. When asked about the Council’s struggles to deliver projects on time, he remarked, “Oh God you couldn’t be further from the truth, you couldn’t be more wrong with that statement, this has nothing to do with getting it delivered, this is what is called legal loopholes that are being availed of by members of the public that slows down the project”.
He said the same criteria could be applied for their delays with the visitor centre at Inis Cealtra which was intended to be operational by the middle of 2023 but won’t be ready until March 2025. “If you take Blake’s Corner, it is a prime one, we’ve done huge work, we’ve resolved the issues faced by the O’Donoghue family who are going to be on the pathway of the inner relief road, that was dealt with very successfully, we got the CPO done and all of that but it has been threatened legally, it has nothing to do with our ability to deliver a project, we’d have delivered it five years ago but it is tied up in litigation, people can decide to challenge the courts, the judiciary is independent, they go through a process and it has to be done. In researching the reasons for the slowness, it has nothing to do with our ability to deliver and nothing to do with funding, we have all the technical expertise, we’re ready to rock but we can’t break the law, until the legal situation is dealt with, that’s the way it is”.
Speed bumps with revamping the Cloister Car Park in association with Clare GAA are not connected to legal matters, he said. “It will be developed, there’s no problems with the Cloister Car Park. It is on target to be delivered next year for sure, we made the commitment, we did the deal with the GAA and the Cloister Car Park will be delivered. Projects have to go through procurement and systems, you can’t just click your fingers and there’s 200 nice shiny car parking spaces in a place, we’ve to go through various processes, that has nothing to do with legal situations, Blake Corner does, that will be delivered as soon it can, we’ve committed to that”.
With the onset of retirement, Dowling is proud when he reflects back on his tenure in Clare County Council. His first role in local government was in 1999 when he joined the Limerick Corporation, previously he worked with Clare Youth Service, National Youth Council of Ireland, Macra na Feirme and rural development with Kildare Leader Company. “You’d always like to think that you’ve come in, you’ve done stuff, and you’ve left it in a good place, and that there’s good foundation. I believe there is, I think it’s stable, there’s a good foundation, we’re very progressive, we’re active in a lot of areas, and, the new deputy who’s been appointed, Carmel (Kirby) will manage that process for the next number of months until the new chief is appointed. I’d like to think that my role in it has been advantageous to the Council and to the county”.
