*Bobby Kerr attending a Visit the Burren event.
BOBBY KERR’s seven-year term as Chairperson of the Cliffs of Moher DAC will be noted as “a lost opportunity”.
On Friday, the former CEO of Insomnia and who appeared from 2009 to 2013 as an investor on RTÉ’s Dragons Dens announced his departure as Chairperson of the Chairperson of the Board of the Cliffs of Moher DAC. His role would have been viewed as more of a supervisory one rather than the primary decision ma
During his time as Chairperson of the DAC, a €398k contract was signed with Haley Sharpe in November 2019 to prepare the Cliffs of Moher Strategy 2040, catering providers Brambles secured the ten-year lease valued at €2.35m to run a café on the first floor of the Cliffs of Moher Visitor Centre and in July 2020 a €331k contract was signed with Guerin & Considine Ltd to carry out repairs to the Cliffs of Moher Coastal Walk.
Other initiatives launched during his term included the Cliffs of Moher Shuttle Bus which operated during the summer of 2019, the introduction of an online ticketing system at the Cliffs in July 2021, a partnership Clare County Council and the University of Limerick (UL) to sponsor a new PhD Scholarship Programme at the Cliffs of Moher Experience in June 2022, the Lifts of Moher which saw the addition of two electric buggies to assist visitors to the Cliffs who have disabilities or reduced mobility and a €320k upgrade to the virtual reality cliffside experience called the Ledge 4D Experience in March 2024.
In March when it was feared that the Lisdoonvarna post office was to close, Cllr Joe Garrihy (FG) called on Kerr to consider his post as Chairperson given the role he played in the restructuring of An Post in 2017.
At the time, Cllr Garrihy told The Clare Champion, “This is just not good enough. This is systemic. An Post are set up to do this [close rural post offices], it is a private contract. The man who was behind this contract is now the chairman of the Cliffs of Moher. The man who put this plan for rural sustainability for An Post in place, is now the chairman of the Cliffs, Bobby Kerr. If you are the guy who is putting projects in place to have a system which is unworkable for sustainable rural services, you should not be the chair of the Cliffs of Moher”.
Speaking to The Clare Echo in the hours after Kerr stepped down, Cllr Garrihy stated, “I want to wish the man all the very best, he has achieved an awful lot in his life, a top-line businessman internationally, whatever he moves onto next I wish him all the best”.
Reflecting on the seven year tenure of the PERK Coffee Shops in heading the Cliffs of Moher’s Board, Cllr Garrihy said it was “a lost opportunity” with the lack of impact felt across North Clare to the continued high level of visitors numbers to the tourist attraction which was just shy of 1.5m last year.
Garrihy stated, “I’m well on record with yourself, when you do have an opportunity to bring in expertise of that level, I’d like it to see it benefitting and having a real impact across our small SMEs and our towns and villages, that impact I haven’t see it reflected it yet, maybe it has been inputted into but when you have access to somebody like Bobby Kerr with his experience, I think it is a lost opportunity in terms of it being a focus on just the Cliffs of Moher site itself.
“We’re still working on the 2040 strategy but I haven’t seen what I would like to have seen from the Experience and the quality and the business experience of that man, a Dragon who spent all his life in small business, he knows what it likes, his impact on Co Clare and the Cliffs of Moher I would have rather see that expanded out to the small and medium businesses around North Clare in particular, in our towns and villages but I haven’t seen that and I would regret that it is a lost opportunity by Clare County Council because they would have steered his focus and he only focused on where he was asked to go, I never got the chance to input into it but I would be saying it is a lost opportunity when you have somebody of that scale, experience and quality that you only focus on a County Council owned albeit national site which may have been part of the reason he was attracted to it in the first place but when you have someone of that level you need to use it particularly for the sustainability of small and medium businesses which was his area of expertise, I think that it is a loss that he is gone and it hasn’t been taken advantage of”.
With a new Chairperson to lead the Cliffs of Moher DAC, the Lisdoonvarna native said it is time to have a reset on the Cliffs of Moher 2040 Strategy which hasn’t been adopted by elected members of the Council. “It needs to look at its impact across the towns and villages of North Clare in particular, it needs to focus on how they are connected with it, their success and their future, the small and medium businesses can thrive on the back of having 1.6 million people coming within ten or fifteen minutes of them but we haven’t seen that, it needs deliberate thought out measurable actions by Clare County Council, by the Cliffs of Moher and its strategy to be achieved, that is what I want to see.
“We don’t need somebody new coming in actually, the expertise is within Clare County Council and Co Clare to do that but if we need someone like Bobby Kerr to come in to give them that clear mandate and clear role rather than saying you can come and take pictures above at the top of the Cliffs with the CEO from Fáilte Ireland and forget about the small and medium business in the towns and villages around, that to me just isn’t acceptable”.
North Clare must be a strong focus and not just the Cliffs of Moher for the new Chairperson, he stressed. “Whatever Chair you have, the governance of the Cliffs of Moher and Clare Tourism is stated that it is within the Chamber of Clare County Council so I think the engagement with elected members and local communities is far more important than a Chair. What I would like to see a Chair doing is implementing the wishes and contributing to the success of the people where the Cliffs of Moher is located and that is the people of North Clare and I haven’t seen that to the level that we should, that is what I would like to see a new Chair doing, implementing the wishes of the people of North Clare and of the elected members and engaging much more with them as has been the case up to now”.
Garrihy did not believe Kerr’s decision was linked to the revelation in April that the County Council paid over €8m to acquire two pieces of land adjacent to the Cliffs in 2023. The estimated area of the two pieces of land combined is 55 acres. The Council also agreed to pay the vendors costs which exceeded €200,000. “Nobody that was involved in it seems to be batting an eyelid at the fact that it happened but I think maybe it is a natural transition of involvement. There is only a certain amount of time that anybody no more than a manager of a football team wants to be or is as committed or energised to be involved in something, I’d imagine his opportunities are worldwide for a man of that calibre, I can see him moving on as a natural progression”.
