Responsibility for the cliff walk between Bray and Greystones should be taken out of the remit of Wicklow County Council if it will not progress the trail’s reopening, a public meeting has been told.
A capacity gathering in Greystones Sailing Club on Monday evening heard representatives of businesses and the local community express dismay at the failure to reopen the walkway after it was closed by the council five years ago, due to coastal erosion.
Alison Banton of Brooke & Shoals, which manufactures scented candles and diffusers, told the meeting she represented 20 businesses that were hurting due to the loss of “external footfall”.
Darragh Flynn of the Greystones-based Happy Pear cafe and health foods business repeated criticism of Wicklow County Council expressed by his brother Stephen on social media, saying the business which employs 80 people had suffered a fall-off in trade of between 20 and 30 per cent.
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Mark Atkins, who runs a coffee shop at Greystones harbour, said there used to be 350,000 walking trips a year on the cliff walk and the loss of trade was very significant. He called on the chief executive of Wicklow County Council “to step up and acknowledge the consultant’s report and do what Friends of the Cliff Walk are asking”.
RPS Consultants was engaged by the council to provide engineering consultancy services on the walk.
Local councillor Orla Finn told the meeting that “as councillors we have been told there are serious reasons why the cliff walk has been closed”. Reading from the consultant’s report, she said the main criterion that the cliff walk does not meet is “safety”.
While she said everyone wanted the cliff walk reopened, “that is the stand we must take”.
Councillor Louise Fenelon Gaskin said it was not fair to say that local councillors were not raising the recent consultant’s report with council management. Reading from a transcript of a recent council meeting, she said council chief executive Emer O’Gorman was on the record as saying she had met the Tánaiste and local TD Simon Harris on the issue.
[ County Council pours cold water on promising Bray-Greystones coastal path reportOpens in new window ]
Ms Fenelon Gaskin, reading from the transcript, cited Ms O’Gorman saying Mr Harris “was very supportive when I did meet him, before I told him how many zeros I needed” – a reference to the cost of engineering works.
A number of speakers from the floor questioned what was perceived as a lack of enthusiasm by Wicklow County Council to progress some of the solutions put forward in the consultant’s report.
One speaker said if the council was afraid of the risk of liability posed by reopening the walk, the council should also consider the risk posed by doing nothing. He said the muddy cliffs would fall anyway and could fall on somebody walking on the beach below. “Doing nothing is not a defence to liability and this should be pointed out to the council,” he said.
Former Irish Times journalist Peter Murtagh of the Friends of the Cliff Walk said the consultant’s report had clearly shown there “were no big obstacles” to reopening the walk.
He said the group had devised a solution which would involve moving the path several metres inland over a small section on the Greystones side. He said the group, which had cleared five years’ of overgrowth along sections of the walkway, had sent Ms O’Gorman “a reasonably warm letter” in June setting out what they wanted to do and seeking her support, but had not received a response.
Mr Murtagh said “ultimately” the Friends of the Cliff Walk may seek responsibility for the cliff walk to be transferred to some other State agency, “if the council will not do what their policies say it should do, what it is supposed to do”.
