{"id":60799,"date":"2025-09-13T02:53:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T02:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/60799\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T02:53:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T02:53:12","slug":"councillor-threatens-to-take-angle-grinder-if-drumboe-walkway-not-reopened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/60799\/","title":{"rendered":"Councillor threatens to \u2018take angle grinder\u2019 if Drumboe walkway not reopened\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A Councillor has threatened to \u2018take an angle grinder\u2019 to a gate blocking a scenic walkway in Stranorlar.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Cllr Martin Harley made the comment in relation to the 16-year saga over a path access through Drumboe Woods. The route connects the new Finn Valley college with the town, however, it has been closed over health and safety concerns raised by Donegal ETB.<\/p>\n<p>The matter was initially raised by Cllr Gary Doherty at this week\u2019s monthly meeting of the Lifford-Stanorlar Municipal District (MD).<\/p>\n<p>He was informed by Kathleen Browne, of Donegal County Council\u2019s Community Development section, that they hoped access would be restored once construction works are completed at the school in November.<\/p>\n<p>Cllr Harley, a member of the Donegal ETB board, said he would force open the gate himself if the education board would not.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe responsibility of opening the route is on the ETB, but there\u2019s also an onus on us (councillors) too as it\u2019s been closed for 16 years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt (the gate) has to be taken down now or, if not, I\u2019ll take an angle grinder up there myself and take the gates off. But, hopefully, it won\u2019t come to that. That walkway has been there for over 100 years. I\u2019m very annoyed about the whole thing, but it needs to be opened as soon as possible\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Cllr Patrick McGowan remarked that a local man took an angle grinder to the gate lock a few years ago, but it was replaced by the then principal.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI blame the ETB for this as the council has bent over backwards,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe ETB is actually in breach of their planning permission by not having this pathway opened. Hopefully it will be open by the end of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The council\u2019s planning officer, Ciara Condon, said the access issue was raised with the ETB when permission for the development was granted, and that the right of way is marked in the local area plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Councillor threatens to \u2018take angle grinder\u2019 if Drumboe walkway not reopened\u00a0 was last modified:  September 12th, 2025 by Staff Writer<\/p>\n<p>      Tags:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Councillor has threatened to \u2018take an angle grinder\u2019 to a gate blocking a scenic walkway in Stranorlar.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,43352,43113,669,43353,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-60799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-cllr-martin-harley","11":"tag-donegal-etb","12":"tag-donegal-news","13":"tag-drumboe-woods-walkway","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-featured-news","16":"tag-featurednews","17":"tag-headlines","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-latest-news","21":"tag-latestnews","22":"tag-main-news","23":"tag-mainnews","24":"tag-news","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60799","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=60799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}