*Photograph: John Sheridan
LISCANNOR’s public parking, footpath and kerbing is in an “embarrassing condition”, a North Clare councillor has blasted.
Clare County Council were called on by Cllr Shane Talty (FF) “to address the embarrassing condition of the public parking, footpath and kerbs” outside the restaurants along the main street in Liscannor.
Senior executive engineer with the West Clare Municipal District, Tony Neville confirmed that the footpath and kerbs along the main street are “considered for for inclusion in our 2025 Schedule of Municipal District Works, subject to funding”.
Neville flagged, “The ownership of the land between the public footpath and the three privately owned buildings is not registered in Landdirect.ie. We will investigate the ownership matter further, including consultation with the building owners”.
Speaking at a meeting of the West Clare Municipal District, Cllr Talty commented, “Liscannor feels it hasn’t had any local authority attention in quite some time”. He maintained the people of the locality were justified to have formed such a viewpoint, “We’ve worked to fix the pier, two public lights installed but apart from that I don’t think it has had any public realm investment”.
Land ownership status “shouldn’t be a barrier to getting work done,” Cllr Talty believed. On LandDirect, the piece of land in question is coloured in green, similar to the lane off Kettle Street in Lahinch “which was resurfaced by the local authority in 2019 for The Irish Open coming to Lahinch,” he flagged.
Infrastructure is not safe in Liscannor, Cllr Talty highlighted. “There is a foot deep of potholes emerging from what is called a footpath”. He added, “it is an embarrassing picture given the volume of visitors to the area”.
Seconding the request, Cllr Bill Slattery (FG) remarked, “As a local who goes to Liscannor not to the Ciffs but to Joe McHughs for a pint every now and then, there are cars parking everywhere because there is no kerbing”. Cars should be restricted from parking in certain areas, he believed.
Efforts of former councillor, Richard Nagle (FF) to find out who owns the land between the footpath and three privately owned buildings was also unsuccessful, Slattery recalled. “Who owns it, it isn’t stated in the response, it has to be rectified, there are cars all over the place there”.
According to Cllr Talty, “there are three properties facing onto this piece of ground, the title was updated with Land Direct in the last ten years, that title was updated and it stopped at the red line of the house, each property goes to the red line of their own property”. “Who is responsible for it,” Slattery asked to which Talty replied, “I’d imagine the people who resurfaced it the last time”. Cllr Joe Killeen (FF) felt it was merited to get Carmel Green of the Council’s property management department involved.
