This article is from page 20 of the 2011-09-20 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 20 JPG
CLARE County Council have rubbished suggestions made by heritage campaigner and Environmental Editor with the Irish Times Frank McDonald that the local authority have deliberately allowing the listed buildings at Blakes Corner in Ennistymon to fall into disrepair in a effort to make it more publicly acceptable to demolish the structures and make may for a roundabout at the traffic black-spot.
Mr McDonald, who will speak at the Courthouse Gallery in Ennistymon later this month, also said that he does not believe that a plan to rebuild Blakes and Linnanes at a site pushed back from the roadway will come to pass.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a deliberate ploy [by Clare County Council]. It was done in Dublin in the late 1980 where the roads engineers were destroying whole streets to create space for motorways. They used to buy the building and let them go derelict – then they would claim that the buildings were dangerous and needed to be pulled down. It is a standard ploy that is employed,” he said.
“I don’t believe that that is going to happen [rebuilding Blakes and Linnanes]. I have seen enough of pledges being made about building being taken down and put back up again but that has never actually happened. They wouldn’t be the same building if that happened anyway.
“These buildings have been made protected structure because it was felt that these buildings were important in the context of Ennistymon’s heritage and now because Clare County Council wants to put in a roundabout on the road to Lahinch these building are to be torn down.”
Senior Engineer at Clare County Council, Tom Tiernan, yesterday said that Mr McDonald’s comments were not true. “He is wrong – it is as simple as that. I don’t know where he is drawing his conclusions from. We have carried out repair work on the building but our staff has been reduced and out budgets have been reduced,” he said.
“We are involved in a process at Blakes Corner and we will continue to be part of that process.”
Next Thursday, September 29, Mr McDonald will be in Ennistymon to speak about the effects that the construction boom have had on the landscape and environment of Ireland.
“I will be talking about the excesses that we indulged in. Like, for example, building motorways which are now losing money, like the M3 which was driven through the landscape of Tara, the M9 which terminates in a city which has less that 50,000 people and the Limerick Tunnel. All of these were build as Public Private Partnerships and all are losing money. So in addition to the hundreds of million that have been spent on building these roads, they are also costing us a fortune year on year as well because the traffic projections won’t be realised,” continued Frank.
“You can’t unbuild the Limerick Tunnel but there is a lesson that we need to learn from this. We need to learn to cut our cloth accord to the measure and we need to be mindful of the knock-on effects of building unnecessary motorways.”