Greenway plan attracts 500 submissions

Third public consultation to be held after preferred route chosen

The plan to provide a 24km greenway between Ballina and Dromineer has attracted around 500 submissions.

Tipperary Co Council is proposing to create the ‘Lough Derg Greenway’, a walking and cycling route along the lake. Depending on selection, the preferred route may include such sites as the Graves of the Leinstermen, the Millennium Cross, Lookout, Castlelough, Garykennedy and Youghal Quay.

It is envisaged that this route would link in with other greenway plans, including that of the 40km Limerick-Killaloe-Scariff proposal on the opposite side of the lake. Ultimately, it is intended that the Lough Derg Greenway would form part of the proposed national cycle network, which would link it with the major towns and cities of Ireland through a dedicated network of greenways.

A second public consultation exercise on the Lough Derg proposal concluded in mid-January. Approximately 500 submissions were received in this round, many of them from the same party making more than one submission.

All of the responses have now been reviewed. Respondents were recently written to by project consultants Clandillon Civil and informed that the outcome of this process is the production of an Options Selection Report, which will set out a preferred route corridor and the reasons why this corridor was chosen.

The report will also summarise the results and feedback received from the public consultation, and make recommendations on any change to the proposed scheme that are deemed warranted, based on the feedback received.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

Following the production and review of the Options Selection Report, the following subsequent steps will be taken in respect of stakeholder consultation:

1) Landowners who own land on or directly adjacent to the route corridor will be contacted. This initial contact will be purely to advise the potentially-impacted landowner that their land has been identified as being along or adjacent to a preferred route corridor.

The communication will advise that there will be a public consultation held in respect of the preferred route corridor, and that the emerging route alignment that will be shown on maps should be taken to be indicative and will be discussed with the impacted landowners as part of the consultation process and subsequent design phase.

2) A third public consultation will be opened up in respect of the preferred route corridor. Public consultation events will be held in Nenagh and Ballina.

The date of these events will be confirmed in the coming months following the production of the Options Section Report.

3) Following the public consultation and subject to approval for the scheme to progress to the design phase, individual meetings will be set up with potentially- impacted landowners and communities. Further details of these meetings and the availability of landowner representatives will be detailed in due course.

In the meantime, anyone with questions on the greenway proposal is invited to contact the project team by phone on 045 254 231, by email to loughderggreenway@c3.ie or by writing to Clandillon Civil Consulting, Osprey Business Centre, Devoy Quarter, Naas, Co Kildare.