Cliffs of Moher farmers vow to fight threat of CPOs

If you Google Ireland’s most popular tourist attraction, the search at a glance shows a toss-up between Clare’s Cliffs of Moher and Dublin’s Guinness Storehouse.

The actual answer is that just under 1.5m people visited the Cliffs of Moher last year, slightly behind the Guinness Storehouse’s 1.65m in footfall. This makes the cliffs rural Ireland’s top spot for tourists, by a country mile.

Upon Googling the country’s best liked attraction, just two further clicks will bring you to a page for the Cliffs of Moher coastal walk.

This 14km trail, is at present, closed in places. Stretching either side of the Cliffs of Moher Visitor Centre, north to Doolin and to Liscannor on the south, the trail comprises lands belonging to 38 local farmers and landowners.

These farmers were left in disarray exactly a fortnight ago when they found out from the front page of the Clare Champion their lands had been recommended for acquisition by Clare County Council under compulsory purchase orders (CPOs).

The recommendation was included in a then unpublished draft of a report by Tobin Consultants.

This was commissioned by the local authority with a view to drawing up a management plan for the walkway, which was partially closed last summer due to safety concerns following a Sport Ireland audit.

The Tobin report was officially published on Wednesday 9 April.

The report says Clare County Council should attain “full operational control of the lands”.

It outlines the options for this as outright purchase, leasing, a hybrid of the two previous options and CPOs.

The Irish Farmers Journal met with some of the affected farmers and former Clare IFA chair Tom Lane, who is working with them on the issue, one week after news broke from the leaked report.

The four suckler farmers – Pat Sweeney, Patrick McMahon, Donal White and Alan Nagle – all own different sections of the trail and set out various issues around its management.

However, they are unanimous that CPOs must be taken off the table before any discussions with Clare County Council around the future of the walk.

CPOs are “not even negotiable”, says Pat Sweeney, who owns land on the trail in Doolin and is chair of the local IFA branch.

The trail was first opened in 2012 after the farmers collectively agreed to give permissive access to walkers.

Payment

They receive a payment under the Walks Scheme, which averages about €14/metre.

A sustainability payment of €1,000 was also offered in 2023 and 2024, which was not taken up by all farmers as some felt the rate was too low.

Lane, the former Clare IFA chair, explains one of the big difficulties with the trail is that it was not built for the volume of people who travel it, nor does the money paid to farmers reflect this, with the Walks Scheme designed for much quieter paths.

“You’ve 1.5 million visitors to the centre. I’d reckon there must be at least one million of those that visit the centre that actually go on to the trail either side from the centre.

“Then you still have a starting point here in Doolin and the other in Liscannor.

“The number of visitors [to the trail could be] nearly hitting two million on a busy year.

“The wear and tear of 2m visitors and the maintenance of that just doesn’t fit into the Walk Scheme’s budget,” he says.

Donal White farms directly beside the visitor centre.

Due to his proximity to the world-famous site, a vast amount of people from the centre end up on his land.

He has received an average payment of €500 to €600 annually since the scheme started.

Sweeney outlines that the farmers want a financial package that reflects the amount of people travelling their lands and rectifies the void between what they receive and the money the centre makes.

During peak hours it costs €15 for an adult at the gate or €12 online.

Substantial

“What we’re trying to put in place down here is that each farmer gets a good, substantial package.

“There’s a total imbalance between what the Cliffs of Moher Visitor Centre is making and what the farmers are getting. They go past Donal’s farm, they go down about 2km to the main part of the trail and they go all the ways to Hag’s Head.

“They come back this side and they go to Doolin. There’s a total imbalance in payment,” Sweeney says.

There is also a sense among the farmers of the unfairness of the CPO proposal. Lane says they opened up their farms in good faith for a free public trail for the betterment of the community’s tourist economy and now they face losing their lands.

“The real big point here is, you all opened up your gates on permissive access and you let people into your property on an annual basis.

“If you knew that there was going to be a potential CPO on the success of the trail you were opening for the good of the general community and to boost the tourism in the area, you probably now wouldn’t be encouraged to open up your gates and give permissive access,” he explains.

Anger and input

The farmers are critical of the lack of communication from Clare County Council on the report.

Almost two weeks after it leaked they had not been contacted by the local authority and only knew what they read in the media. On Tuesday 8 April they were written to by Clare County Council and sent a copy of the report.

They are also angry over their lack of input into the report.

While they acknowledge they did have a meeting with a consultant employed by the report’s authors, Lane says there was no farmer representation on the steering committee that sought the report, comprised of Clare Local Development Company (CLDC), Fáilte Ireland and Clare County Council.

“Unfortunately, the most important person that should have been sitting on that is a representative group of the landowners and there was nobody on it.

“That’s the sad point about it, there’s a lot of local knowledge and there’s a lot of history to do with the walk that needed to be portrayed to the consultants for the report to reflect feelings on the ground,” he says. The council has said that there was no steering committee. Sweeney asked at a meeting attended by the council and Tobin that someone from the consultants would come and walk the trail with him to get farmer input, as well as local knowledge.

Despite following up on the request, this never happened.

A number of other issues around the trail are raised by the farmers, including safety, inadequate maintenance and fencing, cars blocking gates, trespassing, gates being left open and the state of local roads relative to traffic volumes.

These need to be addressed, they say, but the threat of a CPO has to be taken away by Clare County Council immediately.

The farmers along the Cliffs of Moher coastal walk face a number of unknowns at present.

What is known, Lane says, is that despite the issues around the trail at present, there is still a willingness among the farmers to keep it open.

“I can’t understand why you’d even consider a CPO when there’s already permissive access. You can see here the goodwill in the room to keep the trail open, even with all the problems they’re having, the goodwill is there,” he added.

Report publication

Upon the Tobin report’s publication this week, Clare County Council director of tourism development Siobhán McNulty addressed the issue of CPOs.

“I would like to thank the landowners for their patience in awaiting the report and I acknowledge the tension resulting from the leaked earlier draft.

“Much of the focus of the leak was on the use of CPO.

“It is not the intention of Clare County Council to wield this option over landowners,” she said.

The report still includes the threat of CPOs that was included in the leaked draft version.

Responding to questions from the Irish Farmers Journal, Clare County Council said that landowners and farmers were at the centre of the development of the management plan for the walkway.

In the report there are no acreage numbers or exact maps relating to how much land should be acquired under a CPO.

It does state though, that the land the council is seeking should allow for a 2.75 metre trail and sufficient area to take erosion into account.

“The default position should be that all lands from the (future) landside fence to the cliff edge are under the control of Clare County Council,” the report states.