Confusion reigns over when Bray to Greystones Cliff Walk taskforce will hold next meeting
The Wicklow PeopleSome confusion reigns over when the Bray To Greystones Cliff Walk taskforce will hold their next meeting.
The task force has met just once after it was set up earlier this year by the Tánaiste and local TD, Simon Harris.
It’s understood that Mr Harris is set to convene a second meeting imminently and has been requested to do so by the Friends of the Cliff Walk campaign group.
However, district councillors in Greystones were told by their new district manager, Helena Dennehy, during their September monthly meeting that she was "not aware" that a meeting of the taskforce had been scheduled.
Mr Harris established the taskforce in October 2024 and chaired its first meeting in early 2025. As a result, Wicklow County Council commissioned the RPS geotechnical engineering report.
The report highlighted short term measures that could be taken that would allow for an early reopening of the walk, which included spraying concrete on the rock face and cladding it with wire, and, on the Greystones side, moving the path up to five metres inland at the point of the slippage.
Separately the Cliff Walk Management Committee is to meet on Friday and will consider its responses to the RPS report. Any views, observations or suggestions may form part of any feedback Wicklow County Council chief executive Emer O'Gorman presents to the Cliff Wall taskforce.
The Cliff Walk was not on the agenda for at the September meeting of Greystones Municipal District, despite the publication of the RPS report.
Cllr Stephen Stokes, who is also vice-chairman of the management committee, suggested the subject should be included as a "line item" on the agenda for the next district meeting.
Cllr Stokes said the next committee meeting would be "to try to push things on".
"There's no need to wait any more," he said. “We need to get after funding."
This was a reference to the €10 million a council official suggested that it will cost to make the Bray Head rocks safe. It remains unclear where that figure came from or how it was arrived at.
Cllr Stokes noted that the RPS report was "very complimentary" about the state of the Bray Head rock face where it is managed and maintained by Irish Rail.
However, he did not make any reference to the rock faces, or other parts of the Cliff Walk, that are supposed to be maintained by Wicklow County Council but are not.
Having read the report, Cllr Tom Fortune said, "the solution is staring us in the face", which was, he said, re-routing. His concern was that there was no timeline to implement a solution to the problems behind the closure.
Cllr Louise Fenelon Gaskin said the taskforce must now step up to the mark. “It needs to meet asap and report back to each of us.”
Cllr Orla Finn wondered whether Mr Harris had spoken to Ms O'Gorman. Her query was not answered.
Cllr Lourda Scott said the key point that was that €10m, which she described as a "ballpark" figure, was needed to remediate the rock face. She said senior council official Michael Nicholson had been raising the Cliff Walk issue "for four years".
There was also a discussion as to whether more of the councillors should be part of the Cliff Walk Management Committee and there was general agreement that they should.
The next meeting of the Cliff Walk Management Committee will be its second in little over a week. During the lifetime of the previous county council, which ran for five years between 2019 and 2024, the committee did not meet once.
The Cliff Walk was closed by the council after a clay slippage on the Greystones side of the walk in 2021, which was followed by a rock fall on the Bray side in late 2022.
Since the closure, the Friends of the Cliff Walk group believe the council has let the walk descend into dereliction as part of its "do nothing" policy rather than repairing the amenity and maintaining it.