By Ryan Sands
A new petition urging councillors to halt the multimillion-pound Mourne Mountains Gateway Project (MMGP) has been launched.
The ‘Scrap the Gondola Project’ petition on the Act Now NI website, which allows signatories to send a template email to any or all of the district’s 41 councillors, was posted online by the Mourne Gateway Info Group last Wednesday (16 April).
The estimated cost of the MMGP, which would link Donard Park to a visitor centre in the National Trust-owned Thomas Quarry by gondola, is currently listed at £44 million on the council’s website. Of this total, £30 million would come from Belfast Region City Deal funding, with the remainder from the local authority.
The online petition states that “an easy-to-use email action that allows you to easily send an email to all councillors at Newry, Mourne and Down District Council calling on them to scrap the gondola project once and for all” had been created.
“If hundreds of us send emails, we can flood their inboxes and show the strong public opposition to the project – they’ll have no option but to scrap the project,” it adds.
The template email begins: “I ask you as a councillor to do everything in your power to end the gondola project now. It is clear that a gondola to a visitors’ centre in the Thomas Mountain quarry should not be built.”
Read more in the current issue of the Mourne Observer.
