Cliff Walk Could Be Reopened “In A Matter Of Hours”

A year ago today…

atest press release from Friends Of The Cliff Walk, issued on Saturday, November 29th 2025…

We welcome warmly this week’s statement on the Bray Head Cliff Walk by the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance, Simon Harris.

After almost five years’ closure, there is at long last reason to believe that our much treasured community asset, so important to public health and to business, will reopen officially and within a stated timeframe to which all parties have agreed.

Under the Tánaiste’s plan, both Wicklow County Council and Irish Rail have accepted the recent report by RPS consultant engineers and, crucially, have agreed to implement it in the shortest possible timeframe, with St Patrick’s Day 2026 the target date for reopening as much of the Walk as possible by then. To achieve this, everyone involved will have to work with dispatch and not allow administrative or other obstacles delay progress unduly.

The RPS report showed how a walk-around, short term bypass measure on the Greystones side of the Walk could be achieved by moving the path a mere five meters inland, erecting a fence around the slippage area and putting up warning signs.

This can be done now and would take no more than a matter of hours to achieve.

We believe that the longer term solution of moving further inland a longer section of the path at this location can also be achieved through genuine engagement with landowners.

As regards parts of the Bray Head rockface in need of remediation, here too the RPS report outlined a practical solution that is tried and tested, and straightforward to implement. We understand that for its part, Irish Rail has no issue with unstable parts of the rock face being secured by wire mesh covering only and not by spraying concrete as well.

This is environmentally much more preferable and is also a more simple and easy-to-implement solution.

We welcome the proposal that the Council’s Cliff Walk Management Committee be reformed to become a body to oversee the implementation of the RPS suggested remediation measures and that it will include a representative from the Friends of the Cliff Walk.

According to the Tánaiste’s plan, the Council’s chief executive, Emer O’Gorman, will propose this change to the Committee when the Council meets this coming Monday, December 1st. We hope the reformed group can have an independent chairperson and that all members of it approach the task at hand in a non-partisan manner but with a can-do sense of mission and urgency.

We hope all councillors, but especially those representing Bray and Greystones and who have expressed support for what we have been trying to achieve, will back this proposal. For our part, we pledge to work on and with the implementation group with diligence, seriousness and collegiality.

Our campaign to restore, preserve and maintain the Cliff Walk and get it reopened began in August/September last year and has received exceptional community support, including from volunteer workers, for which we are hugely grateful. What has been achieved to date — and there’s more work to be done yet! — could not have been achieved without the backing of so many people, in Greystones and Bray, and we thank you all.

We are very pleased with the measures announced by the Tánaiste. We thank him for the plan he has devised and for his continuing interest and support at a time when the responsibilities of his ministerial office are both pressing and demanding.

You can check out Harris’ new plan here, the full RPS report here, find out more about recent Cliff Walk shenanigans here, explore its history here, and check out Friends of The Cliff Walk here.