Naked driver flaunts beach barrier

A barrier erected at a beach in North Clare recently is still generating waves among surfers.
Clare County Council installed the barrier at the entrance to Fanore car park last month with a view to curtailing anti-social behaviour at the location.

Kinvara-based artist Olivier Longuet is an avid surfer. He said the barrier is preventing him entering the car park in his van but is ineffective at battling anti-social behaviour.
On Wednesday, June 2, just after 5pm, Olivier claimed he and his partner witnessed “an individual driving around the car park naked”. He says he was unable to call the gardaí because he didn’t have his phone with him.
While there were a number of people on the beach at the time, few were in the car park and Ennistymon gardaí say they got no reports of the incident.
According to Olivier, this is further evidence that the barrier is not fulfilling its role in protecting the sand dunes and preventing anti-social behaviour.
“The irony is that the barrier was put up to prevent anti-social behaviour but it is allowing this sort of thing happen. We feel we have seen more of this anti-social behaviour since the barrier was erected. We, the surfers, want the beach and the dunes to be protected. We are often the ones who tell people not to camp overnight on them or end up calling the gardaí,” he claimed.
He agreed with the principle of the Council’s action. He believes something needs to be done for the environment and for the regular users of the beach.
“The barrier is not going to stop people from wrecking the place. It seems to me that the anti-social behaviour goes hand in hand with people staying in tents. I would suggest that some form of protection around the sand dunes would stop the cars going down there. I was raised in France and when you have proper signage and you fence things off, it seems to work,” Olivier added.
Fine Gael’s Joe Arkins is one of a number of Clare County Councillors that have found themselves inundated with correspondence in relation to the barrier. In response, he has proposed a motion to the local authority to be debated at Monday’s council meeting. He says Clare County Council must examine the level of access and restriction of access at beaches in the county and tackle vandalism and anti-social behaviour at these locations.
“I raised the issue of the barrier at Fanore at the last meeting of the North Clare Electoral Area and asked that the engineers and officials there look at alternative measures to control the access of control and vandalism,” he stated.
Councillor Arkins said he is sympathetic to those who use campervans to visit the beach.
“It does create a difficulty for them but overall the problem is the overnight camping, the destruction of the dunes, people lighting fires and turning the place into a free for all.
“The difficulty, as far as I am concerned, is that above all else the people who live in Fanore shouldn’t have any kind of rave parties, barbeques or vandalism going on at their back door in the middle of the night. That is my main concern,” he continued.
“There are vandals from other counties that see North Clare and its amenities as some sort of a wilderness. The environment at Fanore and in the dunes and the amenities there are for the local people first, second for tourists and they are not there at all for vandals,” Councillor Arkins said.
His fellow Fine Gael councillor Martin Conway believes that alternatives to the barrier should be explored.
“While height-restrictive barriers are there for a reason, in my view, they are definitely not the ideal solution and with the advent of modern technology in areas like electronic devices and electronic gate openers and so on, surely there is a better way of dealing with the problems of anti-social behaviour on our county’s beaches,” he concluded.