A letter from F\u00e1ilte Ireland about funding for the C\u00e9ide Coastal Walk has been branded \u201cembarrassing\u201d by a councillor who wants a strongly worded response sent to the tourism body\u2019s CEO.<\/p>\n
Cllr Michael Loftus criticised the correspondence at the October meeting of the Ballina Municipal District, saying it provided no clear information on when a capital funding programme would be available to support the project. He called for an \u201cextremely strong-worded\u201d letter to be sent to the CEO of F\u00e1ilte Ireland, questioning why the funding programme was still not in place.<\/p>\n
Cllr Loftus said those responsible had been \u201csitting on their hands for so long\u201d on the project, which aims to develop a 15km coastal walk from Downpatrick Head to the C\u00e9ide Fields, and which F\u00e1ilte Ireland has listed as a catalyst project for North Mayo under its five-year tourism development plan.<\/p>\n
The letter in question, from Luke Murray, F\u00e1ilte Ireland\u2019s Team Manager for Mayo, Sligo and the Wild Atlantic Way, came in response to a motion passed by the municipal district asking for a timeline for funding approval for the proposed walk.<\/p>\n
Mr Murray told the council that \u201cF\u00e1ilte Ireland does not have an active funding application before it in respect of the Coastal Path and there is currently no open F\u00e1ilte Ireland funding stream through which an application for the project can be considered\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Fianna F\u00e1il councillor said the organisation is currently developing a new capital investment plan, with hopes that funding schemes from the plan will be advertised on the F\u00e1ilte Ireland website once they are open. As the scheme is currently being developed, Mr Murray said it would not be possible to comment on the eligibility of individual projects at this stage.<\/p>\n
Cllr Loftus described the response as \u201cembarrassing\u201d and an \u201cAI letter\u201d, saying it gives the council no information on capital funding and warned that it \u201cneeds to be addressed sooner rather than later\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, Cllr Jarlath Munnelly urged caution, warning that criticism of F\u00e1ilte Ireland could be counterproductive.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to be supportive and positive. I don\u2019t like the criticism because it could be interpreted by people who work for F\u00e1ilte Ireland who will have a say on this [project],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Cllr Munnelly explained the campaign for the C\u00e9ide Coastal Walk had been ongoing for a decade and that councillors needed to be careful not to sound too negative about the project\u2019s prospects.<\/p>\n
The Fine Gael councillor pointed to the North Mayo Tourism Development Plan, saying the initiatives within it that had been \u201cjust talk a couple of years ago\u201d were now included in a national policy scheme and in direct line for funding. He also referred to the \u20ac710m in capital funding allocated to Enterprise, Tourism and Employment in Budget 2027.<\/p>\n
Cllr Munnelly suggested that a meeting with F\u00e1ilte Ireland would be more constructive than sending a strongly worded letter, and that the council could write to the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, Peter Burke instead.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can write to the Minister and ask him when the money is going to come, but I do not want to criticise F\u00e1ilte Ireland locally,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to keep the positivity about the project going because it is going to be really good.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, it will need an injection of money, but if this money came a year or two years ago we would\u2019ve missed the boat because we did not have the [National Plan] in place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Cllr Loftus reiterated that F\u00e1ilte Ireland committed in 2025 to bringing forward a capital funding programme, but said it is now the end of 2026 and such a programme is still not in place.<\/p>\n
He said the previous CEO of F\u00e1ilte Ireland made the commitment and questioned whether the current CEO shared the same vision.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy concern is that the change of leadership is stopping the actual funding coming to our area.”<\/p>\n
Cllr Loftus stressed that local staff at F\u00e1ilte Ireland were doing good work, but said the failure to secure capital funding for the area was \u201cbeyond their pay grade\u201d.<\/p>\n
Published as part of the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A letter from F\u00e1ilte Ireland about funding for the C\u00e9ide Coastal Walk has been branded \u201cembarrassing\u201d by a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-671690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}