Government hoping to get its way on Burren centre

They braved Atlantic gales which swept the limestone landscape to protest. Yet in spite of a seven-year campaign of opposition by environmentalists and locals, the controversial interpretative centre will be built on the Burren - if the Government has its way.

The Minister for Arts, Heritage, the Gaeltacht and Islands, Ms de Valera, would make no comment this weekend on the Burren Action Group's latest demonstration at Mullaghmore. "We are calling on her, not just as the Minister concerned, but as a Clare TD to make a decision," said Ms Martina O'Dea, of the action group, after last week's protest walk which was attended by 80 people in dreadful weather.

The Minister's response is that consultation is taking place with local communities on a modified version of the original interpretative centre plan. She has proposed a Burren Working Group and has denied that this is a prevarication on her part. Ironically, the scaled-down version - renamed as an "entry point" at "Gortlecka" - was first mooted during the lifetime of the previous coalition government.

The compromise, involving parking for 72 cars and four mini-buses; a ranger centre and visitor waiting point; retention of primary and secondary sewage treatment; and road-widening, came with a large carrot. This carrot was funding for three privately-owned centres at Corofin, Kilfenora and Ballyvaughan. The then Minister, Mr Michael D. Higgins, denied that he was holding north Clare to ransom but did confirm that failure to obtain planning permission for Gortlecka would "impact significantly" on his support for the existing centres.

The Heritage Council has expressed its opposition to any such facility in the Burren park target area and its immediate surroundings. Nevertheless, Clare County Council's six-month deferral of a vote to facilitate the compromise development, through a material contravention of the county development plan, has bought time for those councillors (mainly Fianna Fail) who support it.

The Clare county development plan is under review. If "satisfactorily" changed, the Office of Public Works can lodge a new application for a full visitors' centre without a material contravention at all. Meanwhile, local elections scheduled for this year have been deferred till 1999.

Fianna Fail first proposed a £2.7 million Burren interpretative centre as part of a national park in 1991. At the time, the Office of Public Works required neither planning permission nor an Environmental Impact Assessment.

A campaign by the Burren Action Group, led to a long legal battle - with a significant High Court judgment, upheld by the Supreme Court, bringing the OPW within the parameters of the planning acts. Construction began in December 1992, but an injunction granted by the High Court in February 1993 against any further development is still valid.

Now a High Court application by the action group seeking restoration of the site to its original condition has been adjourned pending the final decision on the compromise planning application. The compromise attracted over 200 objections - in contrast to the previous application which elicited 400 letters of support. Meanwhile, Mullaghmore is expected to be designated as a Special Area of Conservation.

Local feeling has turned from bitterness - the OPW having split the community - to cynicism. In previous years, the New Year walk by the action group was marked by counter-protests. Not so this season.

"People are disappointed that there has been no support for the existing centres," Ms O'Dea told The Irish Times. "Negative" and "time-consuming" is how Prof Emer Colleran, one of the seven plaintiffs who took the original Supreme Court action to halt the development, describes the impasse. "It is such a misdirection of effort. Here we are, seven years later, arguing over a misguided project which is still being pursued.

"The tragedy is that the communities of Corofin and Kilfenora have got nothing in the meantime. If we were to have spent the last seven years putting in plans for enlightened management and a proper lifestyle for people on the Burren, imagine what we could have done."