Wicklow County Council Overplaying Cliff Walk Dangers?

One fine day… Cliff Walk FRI31OCT25

atest press release from Friends of The Cliff Walk, issued on Sunday, November 9th 2025…

Cliff Walk WEDS6NOV25

An independent expert report into the Bray Head Cliff Walk was altered, after it was given to Wicklow County Council, to state that instability in several areas were ‘a significant safety risk to the public’.

The warning, which is being used by the Council and some councillors to justify the continued closure of the Walk, was not contained in a first draft of the report, which was produced by the RPS Group, a leading international engineering consultancy.

However, after that draft was reviewed by Council officials, the warning was inserted into a second, and final, draft.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, Friends of the Cliff Walk obtained from the Council a copy of the first version of the report, which is dated August 26th 2025. That version is self-described as ‘for client review’.

A subsequent version of the report, dated September 19th and described as a final version, contains the assertion in the last sentence of the report’s Executive Summary.

The sentence reads: ‘This report has identified several areas of the walk, the instability of which represents a significant safety risk to the public.’

It is not known how, or why, the claim of an alleged ‘significant safety risk to the public’ was inserted into the report but it chimes with the Council’s position that the Walk remains unsafe and therefore must stay closed.

The claim has been repeated since by the Council as to why the Cliff Walk must remain off limits to the public.

As recently as this weekend, the Council told the Irish Independent that the Walk remained closed ‘due to safety concerns over the instability of the area, which represents a significant safety risk to the public’ [emphasis added].

The change to the report will be highlighted at a Friends of the Cliff Walk public meeting taking place on November 19th at 7pm in Temple Carrig School, Greystones.

The Walk was closed initially in February-March 2021 after soft clay above Greystones’ North Beach gave way. A bow-shaped strip on the edge of the Walk, measuring approximately two meters wide and 10 meters long, slipped downwards about 10 metres.

The following autumn, a limited rock fall near the Bray start of the Walk meant that the entire seven kilometre-long walk has remained officially closed since. Prior to the closure, the walk was used by over 300,000 people annually, contributing significantly to the economy of north Wicklow.

Following agitation by Friends of the Cliff Walk, including cutting back overgrowth and restoring access to the Walk – a policy the Council had neglected deliberately for four years – and the creation of a taskforce by the Tánaiste and local TD Simon Harris, a firm of engineering consultants, the RPS Group, was commissioned last June to examine the walk and write a report.

According to the report, RPS was tasked to carry out ‘an inspection to assess the Cliff Walk condition, integrity, and identify any potential hazards to users of this amenity walk’.

The final version of the report, the one dated September 19th 2025, is 114 pages long and includes 89 pages of appendices. These contain detailed tabulated examinations, together the measurements and photographs, of 30 slopes, or locations, along the Walk. Each is assessed as to the level of risk of further rock fall or erosion, according to a matrix devised by RPS.

The Executive Summary is unremarkable in that it summarises the meat of the report into a quick read précis, concentrating on methodology and solutions, both short and long term.

The final paragraph of the summary states: ‘For the Cliff Walk in general the following is recommended, namely installing appropriate warning signage and a formalised maintenance and inspection programme. Other potential instability related hazards identified which are recommended should be addressed including maintenance and fixing of the parapet wall and the post and wire fencing on the downslope side of the walk both of which locally are in a poor condition.’

In the August version of the report, the summary ends there and the substantive narrative and analysis of the report that follows is a logical setting out of the detail alluded to in the summary.

However, in the September 19th, final version of the report, which was submitted after Council officials had reviewed the earlier version, the following final line was added to the Executive Summary: ‘This report has identified several areas of the walk, the instability of which represents a significant safety risk to the public’ [again, emphasis added].

Nothing to support this blunt assertion is expressed in the report narrative that follows. While several of the slopes examined are graded as high risk, according to RPS’s multi-criteria analysis (or MCA), nowhere is it stated there is a significant risk to public safety.

The word significant appears otherwise just four times in each version of the report. Once in relation to the walk being a significant tourist attraction. The second time to state that the North Beach slope has been affected significantly by failure.

The third reference is within a tabulated explanation of the report’s MCA matrix, and relates to ‘Significant new, recurring large-scale adverse failure requiring remedy by Specialist Contractor’.

The final use of the word relates to the rugged character of the Cliff Walk as being a significant reason for its popularity.

But nowhere do the report authors assert there is a ‘significant safety risk to the public’ – expect in the final version where it was inserted, by persons unknown but after the earlier version has been given to Wicklow County Council.

There are a several other, mostly minor, differences between the two versions of the report, none of which could be construed as contentious. They include inserting cost estimates for some of the work suggested by RPS, references to Irish Rail’s East Coast Railway Infrastructure Protection Projects (ECRIPP), references to landowner consent, and several minor changes to the appendices, mostly relating to the sequence of photographs used.

A spokesman for Friends of the Cliff Walk said Council officials “need to explain how and why the single sentence warning was inserted into the report.

“We don’t question the integrity of the RPS report as such,” he said. “It is a clearly written, expert report that identifies straight-forward solutions. However, it is disturbing to find that an alarming assertion about public safety was inserted into the report after – crucially – it had been reviewed by Council officials, who are not a disinterested party in this saga.

“Almost five years on from their original decision to close the Walk, there has been no further rock fall or clay slippage. The warning inserted into the report reads more like a post-facto justification for the closure, and its continued closure, rather than genuine concern for public safety.

“As the RPS report notes — in both versions, incidentally — there needs to be an acceptance by all vested parties that there will remain some risk of rock instability. Communicating that risk to users by installing appropriate warning signage should be carried out.

“We agree. The Walk needs to be reopened, with appropriate signage, and Simon Harris’s taskforce needs to do what it was set up to do.”

You can check out the downs and the downs of The Cliff Walk closure here, find a little history here, and catch up with Friends Of The Cliff Walk over here.