*Photograph: John Mangan
Agendas and finger pointing were referenced when the latest discussion on Caherlohan took place at Monday’s meeting of the Clare County Board.
Whitegate’s David Solon expressed his disappointment that once again it was Brian Torpey who had to raise matters of importance, “there are too many delegates that are muted and don’t really say what should be said”.
He continued, “At the last meeting we rose an issue about Caherlohan and the sanding of the pitch. We only found out at the April meeting that the pitch in Caherlohan isn’t a sand based pitch. I thank you for the e-mails sent to our secretary during the week in relation to the sand based pitches and that only 2 inches of sand went on to the pitches. Those e mails were dated May 2010. In December 2010 in the convention booklet it was stated they were sand based and again in 2013 they were sand based. It took eleven years for us to find out that the pitches weren’t sand based. I was very surprised that we had to send an e-mail in to the county board”.
Clare GAA secretary, Pat Fitzgerald then questioned the Whitegate delegate on what classifies as a sand-based pitch and how many inches of sand there are on such a pitch. “Will you answer the questions please because you are on this all the time. We put sand on it”. He said Solon was “going on waffling” to which the former Whitegate chairman stated, “I’m not waffling”.
“For whatever reason you have some issue with me. You mentioned at the second last meeting you mentioned that in your opinion there was one man in Clare County Board responsible for it and he wasn’t been dealt with. I hope you realise now that we had, not one but two consulting engineers look at it. Let’s get together and work together. I don’t have agendas. Everybody in the county is pointing the finger at me. Who is the person you believe is responsible. Let’s get it out in the open,” Fitzgerald remarked.
Solon clarified that he also had no agendas. “When questions are being asked they need to be answered,” he said.
Earlier in the meeting, Brian Torpey of Tulla put forward the view that the Clare GAA Open Day at Caherlohan arose “because of the questionnaire sent out by the strategic review committee. I didn’t go to Caherlohan because I have been there before. I didn’t need to go. I know the cure for Caherlohan and that was told to us by the report given by Hylands from Kilkenny three years ago and until that is implemented it won’t be corrected. There are too many important things to be discussed in Clare GAA at the moment”.
Chairman Jack Chaplin detailed that the Caherlohan sub-committee would be best placed to provide answers on the facility located on the outskirts of Tulla.
