Following a meeting of the taskforce last month, Wicklow TD Simon Harris promised to implement \u201cboth short- term and medium-term solutions\u201d.<\/p>\n
The T\u00e1naiste 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.<\/p>\n
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 F\u00e1ilte 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 \u201cin the shortest possible time frame\u201d.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s Day next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder the T\u00e1naiste\u2019s 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\u2019s Day 2026 the target date for reopening as much of the walk as possible by then,\u201d said the group in a statement.<\/p>\n
However, Cathaoirleach of the Bray Municipal District and Green Party councillor Erika Doyle, who chairs the local authority\u2019s management committee, said in a social media post this week that such a deadline would be \u201cextremely challenging for all concerned\u201d.<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cWe 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt 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\u2019 money and public safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Work is progressing on the nomination process for these reps and council staff will be reaching out to umbrella bodies in the weeks ahead.<\/p>\n
The decision came after Deputy Harris conceded at the taskforce meeting that there was \u201cpalpable frustration in our community\u201d over the near five-year closure of the treasured amenity.<\/p>\n
Estimates for the works needed are coming in at \u20ac6m from the councillors in Bray, and some \u20ac1.5-2m from the Greystones side, based on a recent \u2018Cost Estimate for Bray to Greystones Cliff Walk\u2019 report.<\/p>\n
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following a meeting of the taskforce last month, Wicklow TD Simon Harris promised to implement \u201cboth short- term…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,18335,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-224933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-hugh-ofarrell-walsh","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115693376139575126","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}