A group of Clare councillors set off for the Algarve in Portugal yesterday on a €5,000 five-day fact-finding mission aimed at improving the council's proposed visitor centre at the Cliffs of Moher.
The trip - being funded by the taxpayer - includes six councillors who are members of the council's Special Policy Committee on Planning and Economic Development (SPC).
Along with the chairman of the committee, Cllr Flan Garvey (FF), Cllr Martin Lafferty (Ind), Cllr Peter Considine (FF), Cllr Richard Nagle (FF), Cllr Pat McMahon (FF) and Cllr P.J. Kelly (FF) also embarked on the trip.
They are being joined by two council officials, including its head of planning Mr Gerard Dollard, while other members of the SPC drawn from the local tourism industry will also be in the group of 12.
The trip is estimated to be costing the taxpayer just under €5,000 and yesterday, Mr Garvey defended the trip, saying that "this is no joyride, we have a full itinerary for the time we are there".
He said the trip represented value-for-money for the tax-payer. "If I didn't think it did, I wouldn't go."
The primary purpose of the trip will be to visit the cliffs at Sagres where a visitor centre is located similar to the one being proposed for the Cliffs of Moher. The councillors are to also investigate the Portuguese experience in relation to one-off housing, he added.
Mr Dollard said yesterday: "I think it is also vitally important that members of the SPC see similar situations to the Cliffs of Moher in practice. The implementation of the Cliffs of Moher project will change very substantially the visitor management approaches at the cliffs and the whole operation at the site.
"Change of this scale can be difficult and it is important that the members of the SPC can see that such change can be successfully implemented and be in a position to brief the full council and others who may have concern that this can positively be done.Much of the council's focus up to now has been on trying to progress the project.
"Now that the project is imminent and about to happen we need to turn our attention as to how best the centre can be operated," he said. "In this context it is vital to see how others have done it. Sagres seems to be an exceptionally good comparison and I am certainly very interested in studying the situation first-hand and learning anything that can be learnt which will be of benefit to the implementation of the Cliffs of Moher project."
Mr Garvey said there would be "different missions" on the trip. "We will be meeting with two different councils and find out how they are dealing with the question of one-off housing in the countryside."
Mr Dollard added: "It is also an opportunity to promote the county of Clare and to learn from the experience of other countries in dealing with complex issues of planning and economic development."