*Siobhán McNulty, Director of Tourism Development with Clare County Council. Photograph: Eamon Ward
WITHOUT AGREEMENT from landowners, the Cliffs of Moher Coastal Walk will not be able to exist, a senior official in Clare County Council has admitted.
In the middle of April, Clare County Council published the Cliffs of Moher Coastal Walk Management Plan. The 246 page document is also known as the Tobin Report and it recommended the local authority become the management organisation for the future management and development of the 18km coastal trail from Doolin to Hags Head, a trail that showcases the world-renowned Cliffs of Moher.
A leaked version of the report which first appeared in The Clare Champion focused on the possibility of a compulsory purchase order (CPO) has caused great upset among North Clare landowners. Members of the IFA have told The Clare Echo they will reject any notion of a CPO while the Council has said “Much of the focus of the leak was on the use of CPO. It is not the intention of Clare County Council to wield this option over landowners”.
Calculations from the report estimate that it will cost €460,000 per annum to manage the trail. The report suggested that €275,000 of this should be funded via entrance fees to the Cliffs of Moher. The remainder should be provided from either the Department of Rural and Community Development or a subvention from Fáilte Ireland.
Speaking to The Clare Echo at the Cliffs of Moher Experience, Director of Tourism Development, Siobhán McNulty outlined that the focus of the past month was to allow stakeholders time to digest the report before the commencement of negotiations.
She stated, “We have just given the coastal walk management report a little bit of time for people to digest it, we are currently arranging a series of meetings with the stakeholders commencing with the landowners. At the moment the southern section of the walk is closed and will be for this season, that too has its impact on economic growth and development from Liscannor in particular. The Doolin section to the bottom of the hill does remain open, we’re actively negotiating and we will continue to negotiate with the landowners towards the stated objective which is that Clare County Council will take over the operation and maintenance of the walk and we will have a walk, that can only happen by agreement and we’re invested in that, there’s a significant body of work and a long negotiating road but we’re starting on that”.
According to McNulty, there can only be a viable future for the coastal walk if agreement is reached. “Since the actual report was published people have read it and they are happy in the main, it is balanced, the leaked version and the CPO would not have helped the cause at the early juncture, however we have set out stall around CPO and the rationale for why it is included in the document. We’ve got feedback from a number of community groups and businesses, in the main they’re happy it is balanced but they are all waiting with bated breath around negotiations. We’ve said from the very outset, this can only be a success if we can get stakeholder agreement, the key to that is landowner agreement, if we can’t get agreement from landowners then we can’t have a walk and that is the fundamental crux of it”.
