Wicklow council spent €116,000 on Cliff Walk barriers as campaigners highlight ‘misplaced priorities’
The Wicklow PeopleWicklow County Council has spent more than €116,000 since 2021 erecting and repairing barriers designed to prevent people using the Bray–Greystones Cliff Walk, according to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act to the Friends of the Cliff Walk campaign group.
The spending covers repeated installations of metal and timber barriers, signage, machinery hire and labour costs incurred after a series of cliff collapses first prompted the closure of the route.
The largest single category of expenditure, €79,850, is listed as “Greystones Maintenance”, a term not defined in the FOI release but covering machinery hire, materials, wages and “energy costs”. Much of the physical work has been carried out by contractors retained by the council, with some undertaken by council staff.
Problems began in February 2021 when part of the soft clay cliff above Greystones North Beach collapsed, followed by another slippage two months later. In May 2021, Richard Nolan Civil Engineering was paid €13,653 for barrier works responding to those incidents.
The fallen material on the Bray to Greystones Cliff Walk in 2022.
A further collapse near the Bray end of the walk in October 2022 led to another payment of €5,352 to the same firm, believed to relate partly or wholly to the large metal barrier now in place at the Bray entrance.
Three payments in November 2023, totalling just under €6,000, covered barrier repairs, while four payments in 2024 amounted to €4,850. Two payments in 2026 came to €2,551. Signage costs over the period exceeded €4,000.
Friends of the Cliff Walk, the volunteer group formed in 2024, said the FOI figures confirmed what they had long argued, that the council had spent substantial sums keeping people off the walk while doing “virtually nothing proactively” to address the underlying issues that caused the closure.
In a social media post the group contrasted the €116,000 spent on barriers with the €145,000 invested in Burnaby Park amenities, such as a boules court and outdoor chess tables.
The group said the comparison illustrated “misplaced priorities”, with public money directed towards low impact projects, while a major tourism and community asset was left closed.
The boules court in Burnaby Park, Greystones.
The group has also raised concerns about the council’s handling of land acquisition efforts.
Information supplied by the council to the Office of the Ombudsman, in response to a complaint alleging maladministration, stated that a compulsory purchase order process was initiated in March 2024 to acquire land on the Greystones side to move the path inland.
However, that process was abandoned in September 2024 without councillors apparently being informed. The council has since said it re‑engaged with landowners this spring and would use CPO legislation if voluntary agreement cannot be reached.
Friends of the Cliff Walk argue this amounts to an admission of lost time and a failure to uphold the council’s own policy on maintaining and enhancing the route, as well as a failure to defend the public interest.
Amid the sharp criticism, chairperson of the management committee Cllr Erika Doyle has emphasised they remain united in its aim of working constructively with the council to achieve a safe reopening.
Wicklow County Council, for its part, says it remains committed to progressing the project “in a diligent, safe and environmentally sound manner and in the shortest possible timeframe”.