Cliff Walk Talks Get Close To The Edge

One fine day…

atest press report from Friends Of The Cliff Walk, issued on Friday, April 24th 2026…

Wicklow County Council is to furnish councillors and community representatives with a monthly report detailing what progress it has made in the preceding four weeks regarding the Cliff Walk.

This was decided at the latest meeting of the Bray Head Management Committee but only after sharp exchanges between some committee members and the senior official present, Jackie Carroll. Ms Carroll, a director of services and member of Chief Executive Emer O’Gorman’s senior management team, is also Bray District Manager.

When a motion requesting such a report was proposed by Friends of the Cliff Walk committee member Peter Murtagh, and was seconded by Bray independent councillor Joe Behan, Ms Carroll expressed angry opposition to it.

“This is designed to be offensive,” she charged. “I was shocked to see this.”

Telling committee members “I report to the Chief Executive,” she added, “This is not a straightforward request and the Executive will not be agreeing to that.”

The motion, as tabled several days in advance of the committee meeting, said:

‘Henceforth, the first item on the agenda of Cliff Walk Management Committee meetings, after the minutes of any previous meetings have been taken and agreed, will be a written report, from the senior Council official present, detailing what actions have been taken by, or at the request of, the Council since the last meeting of the Committee regarding the Cliff Walk. Said report should include details of any engagements between Council staff; between Council staff and any third parties, including external consultants and land owners; by consultants or third parties for, or at the behest of, the Council; between Council staff and the Task Force, or any member of the Tánaiste’s staff; and any interventions made along the route of the Cliff Walk.’

The motion was proposed by Mr Murtagh. Explaining why, he said the committee had been reminded recently, by Ms Carroll, that its remit was oversight. He said that to this end, the aim of the motion was to ensure the committee was informed, in writing and as a matter of routine at each of their meetings, what the Council itself had been doing over the preceding four weeks, as opposed to anything being done by external consultants.

Seconding the proposal, Councillor Behan said the proposal was “not rocket science”.

“We get such reports at other meetings,” he said.

Ms Carroll interjected to ask why was this being sought. What are you not getting already, she asked.

Believed to be photographer Robert French…

“This is designed to be offensive,” she said.

However, several other councillors and community representatives spoke in support of the motion. Independent Councillor Malachí Duddy from Bray, who is also a barrister, said the proposal was “consistent with good governance”.

Mr Murtagh rejected the charge that the proposal was “designed to be offensive”. He said he was sorry that Ms Carroll was shocked by the proposal. He said the Council asserted that it was responsible for the Cliff Walk and the proposal was a structured means for that stewardship to be monitored by the committee.

Ms Carroll, who earlier told the committee that she and Greystones District Engineer Graham Cullen were leading discussions with landowners, was supported in her opposition to the proposal by Mr Cullen. He worried about the volume of work that could be involved and asked whether, if he rang a colleague to book a room for a meeting, this act had to be recorded and included in such a report.

Mr Murtagh said such a minor inconsequential act would clearly not need to be included. However he offered to amend the motion and, after consulting community representatives Donal Enright (Bray residents) and Adam Kelly (Friends of the Cliff Walk), plus Councillor Behan, this was done and it was then passed.

The agreed motion reads:

‘Henceforth, the first item on the agenda of Cliff Walk Management Committee meetings, after the minutes of any previous meetings have been taken and agreed, will be a written report, from the executive, detailing progress by the Council since the last meeting of the Committee regarding the Cliff Walk.‘

A spokesman for Friends of the Cliff Walk said later, “Prior to tabling this motion, we consulted widely with other members of the committee, councillors and community representatives alike, and the motion received very wide support. As Councillor Duddy said, this is about good governance. There is nothing offensive about that.

“It is also about accountability – accountability to the community and businesses sorely affected by the closure of the Cliff Walk, by the Council, which is now into its sixth year. The main purpose of the motion is intact and we are pleased that it was passed.”

Earlier, the committee, which met for two hours on Thursday, April 23rd, received an update of the work being carried out by the RPS Group, consultant engineers retained by the Council to examine and advise on fixing the Walk.

RPS’s Kate Corcoran said that a number of contractors had recently examined exposed rock at the Bray end and considered the environmental constraints relating to rope access examinations. Tenders for this sort of examination had been shown to two stakeholders, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and Irish Rail, for their observations.

Consultations with the NPWS could normally take six to eight weeks but Ms Corcoran hoped that with the Tanaiste’s involvement at Task Force level, that time line might be speeded up.

On the Greystones side of the Walk, eight landowner maps were being prepared and discussions were ongoing regarding the design of these. The maps will show options for moving the Walk inland and further back from the edge above the North Beach.

Ms Corcoran said that in the entire process, there were “a lot of moving parts to get everything lined up” in relation to the environmental constraints.

Following last month’s meeting which had to be abandoned because of attendance insufficient to reach quorum, this month’s meeting was well attended.

Present were councillors Tom Fortune, Louise Fenelon Gaskin, Stephen Stokes, all from Greystones, and councillors Caroline Winstanley, Joe Behan and Malachí Duddy, all from Bray. Councillor Erika Doyle (Bray) chaired the meeting. The only councillor absent was Mark Barry (Greystones) who sent his apologies. Community representatives present included Mr Murtagh and Mr Kelly (Friends of the Cliff Walk) Alison Banton (Greystones business) and Keith Scanlon (Delgany-based environmentalist) – all from Greystones. Bray community representatives included Aaron Byrne (Rural recreation officer with County Wicklow Partnership) Eugene Finnegan (Bray business), and Donal Enright (Bray Head Residents Association). Absent was Alex Konieczka (an ecologist with the Public Participation Network).

After the RPS report, the meeting discussed future meetings – when and how often they should be held. The pros and cons of in-person and online meetings were examined, as were suggestions about meeting as and when developments necessitated it (a judgment that would be made by the chairwoman in consultation with Ms Carroll), or on a predetermined, monthly or six weekly, basis.

There were strong arguments from Councillor Fortune and Ms Banton that the frequency of meetings needed to reflect the urgency of the situation and hence should be monthly. Expressing exasperation at the length of closure of the Walk, Ms Banton said businesses and jobs were at stake.

Council officials argued for meetings every six weeks because, they maintained, monthly meetings would impact adversely on their workload. But several other speakers noted that when the committee was being set up at the end of last year, the Council’s Chief Executive had promised that it would be given every support necessary to function. There was strong support for meetings being held in person, with a recognition that sometimes it was impossible for someone to attend and, in that situation, there should be an online option.

Eventually, a hybrid solution was agreed. Future meetings will be held monthly, alternately in Greystones and Bray, alternately at 10am and 4.30pm, and with an online option if needed. A presentation by community environmentalist Keith Scanlon canvassed the merit of sustainable nurturing and management of the Cliff Walk after it was reopened. “We need to restore (improve) the area to a healthy, natural state which is as stable as possible,” said the presentation.

His ideas, which included better and nature-centric signage, benches, access to drinking water and cliff stabilisation planting, was well received and without dissent. He asked why the Council could not reopen sections of the Walk that were not a danger to the public and give advice to walkers every half year.

“We shouldn’t be limited by the RPS project,” he said.

This prompted Ms Carroll to say: “It’s a Wicklow County Council project. If we can open a section of the route, we will open a section of the route.”

Mr Kelly asked that progress had been made in discussions with landowners.

Ms Carroll said there was “ongoing proactive engagement” with landowners but she had been “dismayed with some social media commentary” on this issue and, because of this, she was reluctant to say anything further.

Mr Enright said there was a need to explain better to the pubic the process and timeline around the Council’s dealings with landowners.

Mr Murtagh said Friends of the Cliff Walk wanted to know what had happened to a Compulsory Purchase Order process that in 2024 councillors were told four times by senior officials was at that time in train with landowners. He said a Freedom of Information Act request to this effect had been sent to the Council.

Ms Carroll said she was aware of this request and said that certain documents with the Law Agent, the Council’s in-house legal advisor, would not be released. (A response to the request is due on or before April 28th.)

Land owners had rights, she said. So had the community said Mr Murtagh and while he agreed that voluntary agreement was much to be preferred, the Oireachtas had enacted laws created legal tools to deal with these situations.

Councillor Fenelon Gaskin said she too wanted to know what had happened to the 2024 CPO process that elected representatives had been told was in train.

Ms Carroll said she was not going to “waste time” on what went before. She was meeting landowners soon for a “walk over” on land that might host any redirecting of the Cliff Walk on the Greystones side of Bray Head.

Gloom! You can check out 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.