By Ryan Sands
The fallout from the collapse of the council’s Mourne Mountains Gateway Project continues to reverberate. The aftermath of the recent National Trust announcement that it would not be granting a lease to facilitate a gondola link between Donard Park and Thomas’s Quarry has led to a flurry of meetings focused on retaining the £30m of Belfast Region City Deal (BRCD) funding allocated towards the total £44m cost and addressing the financial risk now faced by the local authority.
At last week’s monthly council meeting, chairperson Pete Byrne noted that an emergency meeting of the project’s programme board had been held on 2 May – the day after the National Trust’s decision – and said that it had included “a very robust and long discussion on where that leaves us as a council.”
However, Jill Truesdale (Alliance, Mournes) told the Mourne Observer that the discussion had been “so robust” that she had “requested the presence of the council solicitor for the next one, as I believe senior management has a duty of care to councillors’ health and wellbeing.”
Putting Forward Alternatives
Cllr Byrne confirmed at the council meeting that senior officials had several forthcoming meetings with BRCD partners – these include five other councils – and that these would “inform what we can and can’t do in terms of trying to keep that money in the Newry, Mourne, and Down District area.” He also stated that “the pulling out of the project doesn’t fall at the feet of council officers, who were carrying through the request through the memorandum of understanding” that had been agreed with the National Trust.
Read the full story in the current issue of the Mourne Observe
