Sixth national park for north Mayo and visitor's centre for Ballycroy announced

The State's sixth national park is to be established in north Mayo, and a visitors' centre will be built in the village of Ballycroy, the Minister for Arts, Heritage, the Gaeltacht and Islands, Ms de Valera, has announced.

The park will encompass some 10,000 hectares of State-owned land in the Owenduff-Nephinbeg area, comprising some of the best Atlantic blanket bog in the country and in Europe, the Minister said in Ballycroy yesterday.

Lands within the target area in private ownership will not be included, unless they come on the market and are acquired by Duchas, the Heritage Service, Ms de Valera said.

Speaking in Ballycroy Community Centre, the Minister emphasised that the proposed park would not have an impact on farming or other activities outside the conservation area, provided that there were "no significant adverse effects on the park as a result of such activities". She said she expected it would be good for tourism.

The new park would be run in a similar manner to the existing five at Killarney, Co Kerry; Glenveagh, Co Donegal; the Wicklow Mountains; the Burren in Co Clare; and Connemara in Co Galway, she said.

Duchas would manage it in consultation with the local community, and she intended to set up a liaison committee later this year which would ensure full consultation with all local interests.

In the meantime, Duchas was continuing to acquire lands, when available in the region, for conservation purposes, she said, paying a tribute to Mayo County Council for its "positive approach to conservation during this time".

The decision came following a consultant's report, and the designation will "contribute to a network of Duchas sites in Mayo, including the Ceide Fields Centre", the Minister said.

The land acquisition programme in Mayo was jointly funded by her Department and the EU, with £5 million spent on land acquisition, £1 million of which was funded by the EU.

While no immediate funding for the visitors' centre at Ballycroy was at her disposal, the Minister said, she intended to apply for it in the post-1999 tranche of EU structural funds. She was "quietly confident of succeeding", she said.

The Minister's decision comes at a time when the controversy over the proposed Burren visitors' centre has not been resolved, and when numbers of visitors to existing centres are falling.

Statistics produced by Duchas earlier this year showed visitors at the award-winning Ceide Fields centre in north Mayo falling from a record 63,543 in 1993 to just over 40,000, while numbers also dropped at Glenveagh, the Waterways Centre in Ringsend, Dublin, and the Corlea Trackway centre in the midlands.

The policy of designating national parks has also been criticised by the Heritage Council. In a major critique, published last year, the council said the approach was "fundamentally flawed", and recommended pursuing a management policy for fragile areas such as the Wicklow uplands which corresponded with the Category V - Protection Landscape designation defined by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

The main difference between this and a traditional national park was "an acknowledgment that human activities and local communities are not incompatible with the concepts of nature conservation and sustainable development", it said.

The Minister also visited Turlough House in Castlebar, Co Mayo, yesterday with a view to establishing a new facility for the folklife collection of the National Museum of Ireland.