The State's failure to protect the Burren adequately has forced Clare County Council to seek EU support for its radical plan for local tourism and farming. Gordon Deegan reports
In the absence of any State move to address the conservation of the Burren, Clare County Council is seeking to put in place an integrated visitor management strategy for the area.
This follows the council lodging an application to the EU LIFE Programme for funding to carry out a new programme which they have called the Integration of Sustainable Tourism, Agriculture and Environment in the Burren.
According to Burren expert Dr Brendan Dunford, it is a proposal of great merit. "First of all, it is an integrated approach and secondly it seeks to implement a lot of the findings from the various reports carried out on the Burren over the years."
Author of Farming and The Burren, Dr Dunford said: "These reports were carried out at great expense, but very little was done with them. Until now, agencies in the Burren have worked in isolation, but this is a means of bringing all the agencies together in order to manage the Burren in a sustainable way."
Ahead of lodging the application, much work has been done by the council with Teagasc, Dúchas, the Heritage Council, the Burren Trust, NUI Galway, the Tipperary Institute, the Burren IFA and local communities.
The council's move comes after more than a decade when little action was taken to resolve issues associated with the conservation of the Burren as attention was focused on the divisive Mullaghmore controversy.
Despite a resolution of the Mullaghmore saga three years ago, no move has been made since by the Government to establish alternative visitor facilities for the Burren National Park despite an undertaking to do so.
Now, the plan, drafted by the council's heritage officer, Ms Congella Maguire, seeks to put in place a tourism management strategy with specific focus on development of a traffic-management and signage plan, route development, information provision while visitor profile research will be developed. She said the programme hoped that "two flagship projects at sites of high tourism pressure" would be managed "to demonstrate best practice in relation to visitor management, heritage and landscape conservation".
According to the council's head of planning and economic development, Mr Ger Dollard, the objectives of the proposal are threefold. The first seeks to demonstrate how a rural landscape of international importance can be sustained and managed to address the needs of agriculture, tourism, rural development and the environment in an integrated manner.
The second seeks to empower land managers to improve access and adopt land management practice to achieve a favourable conservation status for the Burren at both a farm and strategic level.
The third seeks to "heighten awareness amongst the host community, tourists, visitors and resource managers of the heritage, traditions and sensitivity of the Burren landscape and their role in its continued conservation".
The manager of the Burren Visitor Centre in Kilfenora, Mr Paddy Maher, said current visitor management in the Burren was abysmal. However, in response to the initiative, he said yesterday: "It is all positive. The proposal addresses all the strands of life associated with the Burren, including farming and visitor management.
"This is the first real concerted effort by any organisation to address all aspects of the Burren. There is a lot of merit in the plan and it is very well thought out."
A spokesman for the EU LIFE Programme said a decision would be made on the application by next June or July.