Sir, - Permission may be granted within weeks for an extensive golf course and clubhouse on the back of Bray Head. The relevant planning applications have received little or no notice. They are a further challenge to those who are already fighting a controversial permission for housing on lower Bray Head which was granted by officials against the wishes of virtually all local councillors.
The plans for the golf course envisage the destruction of a very large number of trees (including oak, Scots pine, elm, larch and ash). The course would stretch all the way from the outskirts of Bray town right up to Windgate and east of the Greystones Road halfway to the sea. The whole visual amenity and rural nature of Bray Head would be radically altered by any such "development".
Two things make the proposal especially unfortunate. In the first place it is part of a complex web of transactions which would see the existing golf club in Bray move to this new location, so that builders could get their hands on the old course which is a treasured green space on the banks of the Dargle in central Bray.
Secondly, the proposal highlights the fact that what is defined as Bray Head by some councillors does not correspond remotely to what most people regard as Bray Head. The public should be aware, for example, that the proposed Natural Heritage area order for Bray Head relates only to the cliffs and top of Bray Head as far as Windgate and not to the whole rising area from Bray to Rathdown which is east of the Bray/Greystones Road.
Members of the public opposed to a golf course on Bray Head should write immediately to the Planning Department, Wicklow County Council, Wicklow Town. According to a letter on the file, "any observations should be submitted before September 22nd, 1998; otherwise the Planning Authority will assume there are no objections." - Yours, etc., Colum Kenny,
Herbert Terrace,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.