Following a meeting of the taskforce last month, Wicklow TD Simon Harris promised to implement “both short- term and medium-term solutions”.
The Tánaiste also said he would reconvene the taskforce again in two weeks for an update on the progress and stressed that everyone should work to get the walk reopened, or as much of it as possible, by March 2026.
The meeting was attended by the chief executive of Wicklow County Council, the chief executive of Irish Rail, the National Park and Wildlife Service and Fáilte Ireland and it was agreed that the recommendations laid out in the most recent engineering report provided by the expert group RPS, would be implemented “in the shortest possible time frame”.
The Friends of the Cliff Walk group said it welcomed the statement from Deputy Harris on the timeline for reopening. After almost five years of closure, the group said there was now hope that the walkway could reopen close to St Patrick’s Day next year.
“Under the Tánaiste’s plan, both Wicklow County Council and Irish Rail have accepted the recent report by RPS consultant engineers and, crucially, have agreed to implement it in the shortest possible time frame, with St Patrick’s Day 2026 the target date for reopening as much of the walk as possible by then,” said the group in a statement.
However, Cathaoirleach of the Bray Municipal District and Green Party councillor Erika Doyle, who chairs the local authority’s management committee, said in a social media post this week that such a deadline would be “extremely challenging for all concerned”.
She added: “We are working to move things along as quickly as possible and will provide a more detailed update on next steps following the next meeting of the committee.
“It has and remains my commitment to the people of Bray to work to reopen the Cliff Walk safely and in a timely fashion, however we must adhere to proper procedure, as with any process involving taxpayers’ money and public safety.
“As somebody living beside Bray Head who misses the Cliff Walk terribly, I understand the frustration that is out there, but I stand over the work done by the committee since I took the chair this year, to get it to this stage.”
Last week, the elected members of Wicklow County Council agreed to expand the remit of the management committee, with six additional members to be added, three representatives from the Greystones side and three from the Bray side.
Work is progressing on the nomination process for these reps and council staff will be reaching out to umbrella bodies in the weeks ahead.
The decision came after Deputy Harris conceded at the taskforce meeting that there was “palpable frustration in our community” over the near five-year closure of the treasured amenity.
Estimates for the works needed are coming in at €6m from the councillors in Bray, and some €1.5-2m from the Greystones side, based on a recent ‘Cost Estimate for Bray to Greystones Cliff Walk’ report.
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