The National Trust has confirmed that it will not provide a lease for the council to develop a visitor centre and gondola station on Slieve Donard’s Thomas Quarry.
In a statement released today (1 May), the conservation charity said that it has consistently expressed “serious concerns about the potential environmental impact” of the Mourne Mountains Gateway Project for eight years.
It also highlighted that it has “never endorsed the project” and has “never been a partner in its development”.
The National Trust stated that it “cannot support a project of the scale that would be inviting substantial visitor numbers into fragile and threatened areas of the Mournes landscape and, therefore, we will not be considering a lease at Thomas Quarry”.
Read the full story in next Wednesday’s paper.
