Greater resources sought to cater for anticipated influx of ‘staycationers’

WITH the relaxation of Covid restrictions, a number of West and North Clare councillors have requested extra focus on dealing with the large number of visitors expected in the near future.
Councillors Cillian Murphy, Joe Garrihy, Shane Talty and Susan Crawford combined on a motion for this week’s Municipal District meeting.
The motion stated, “Given the experience of last summer, and the significant influx of visitors expected for this year, that the West Clare MD provide a detailed analysis of the extra human resources required to provide appropriate levels of management, and enforcement of the litter, parking and beach laws, at our coastal amenities, to include projected additional costs and identifying future potential income streams.”
In a written reply, Acting Senior Executive Officer John O’Malley stated, “A number of debriefing sessions were held following the experience of summer 2020 at our main visitor attraction locations in West Clare MD and a Business Case developed to ensure that resources, both financial and physical, were planned for the 2021 season.
“The additional human resources required are significant in order to ensure that our public toilets remain open seven days a week for the main season May to September. Also, as noted from recent numbers that visited our beaches in April there is significant pressure on parking, litter/dumping and compliance with Beach Bye Laws.
Mr O’Malley noted there has been significant investment in facilities at a number of beach locations in West Clare in recent years and the previous practice of using General Operatives from the Councils Roadworks crews is not a sustainable model for ensuring that these facilities are maintained into the future.
“The staff involved are required to complete an ever-expanding Roadworks Programme and taking them from their main work focus is not the solution,” he added.
He said that seven blue flag beaches are already resourced, and increasing human resources would be expensive.
“The projected costs of additional resources on top of the significant existing costs to resource these areas is in the region of €10,000 to €15,000 per week,” said Mr O’Malley.
“It is difficult to put an exact cost on this due to the fluctuating numbers visiting the amenities and the changing weather conditions.”
Councillor Murphy said while it is a national problem rather than one Clare County Council is particularly responsible for, businesses are filling in gaps left by a lack of public facilities.
“There are a number of things we need to look at here. It has become really apparent the scale of public services that have been provided up to now by the private sector.
“The first inkling of that was last year when Covid rules meant businesses had to keep records of those coming in and out of their premises and then they were closed.
“An awful lot of stuff that had been provided off book, for want of a better word, suddenly weren’t available to us. That’s when we started to see those businesses being really aware of people who were not actually customers but using toilets and stuff.
“It really masked the level of need for local authorities, not just in Clare but across the country, to provide services and it meant we have to try and catch up really quickly. Of course physical infrastructure takes an awful long time to deliver on the ground, so public frustration starts to show.”
While he said the costs are not insignificant, he questioned what the result of not investing would be.
“Ten to fifteen thousand euros a week is significant, but I do question the cost of not doing it and not doing it properly in a planned way. Piecemeal knee jerk reactions to a specific situation always costs us more than a planned approach to avoid the situation in the first place.”
He said there are means of reducing the burden.
“It is incumbent on us to look at the opportunities we have to mitigate those costs. We have multiple car parking spaces, some of them at our busiest coastal resorts and they’re free of charge. To me that’s inappropriate, I think it’s a really missed opportunity for us to leverage some income streams to offset the cost of managing places properly. I have no problem saying something is going to have to change and the sooner the better in my own view.”
Councillor Shane Talty said some more flexibility is required.
“A weather forecast and the lifting of Covid restrictions created a perfect storm on the last weekend of April. We need flexibility so plans can be put in place to deal with what’s inevitable three or four days out, rather than dealing with it in a panic of phonecalls over the weekend.”
Director of Services Leonard Cleary said in 2022 certain minor charges for facilities and parking could be introduced, which could improve the situation.

By Owen Ryan