‘Goose is cooked’ on enterprise park in Wexford as councillor suggests 11-acre site be used to build social houses
Wexford People“The goose is cooked” on the Kilmore Quay Enterprise Park according to independent councillor Ger Carthy. The 11-acre site remains unoccupied nine years after it was purchased by Wexford County Council (WCC) and, at the September meeting of the Rosslare Municipal District (RMD), Cllr Carthy suggested the ambitious €50m project was now all but dead.
He was responding to an update provided by Angela Lawless from the council’s economic development team who said efforts were still being made to market the site to businesses willing to come to Kilmore Quay.
“We’ll be promoting it as the launch of the new Invest Wexford website at Croke Park in October,” said Ms Lawless. “We have also been engaging with the Ireland South East Development office to determine what opportunities in offshore and marine may be available for Kilmore Quay.
“We have identified a number of companies in that sector and the next step will be to engage with them to see what their requirements would be to operate there.”
Noting that despite a commitment to “borrow north of €50m” to drive inward investment into it WCC had, so far, only managed to “put a road through it and two footpaths which had weeds growing up through them”, Cllr Carthy said the council should gift the site to the private sector to deal with.
“If that means giving them the site to drive jobs into the area then just give it to them. We’re sitting on that land for the last seven or eight years.”
Talk of developing a refrigeration company at the site to complement the local fishing industry were dismissed by Cllr Jim Codd.
“The fishing industry is being choked by regulations, you can’t freeze what you can’t catch,” he said, adding that a previous marketing campaign had garnered just one expression of interest from a company willing to set up in Kilmore.
“A feasibility study was done on the possibility of a refrigeration facility being developed at the park, and it was determined not to be economically viable at that time.,” she said.
“If we don’t get a successful conclusion to this by Christmas I would suggest we build houses there,” said Cllr Carthy. “I think the goose is cooked on this.”