OPINION: Murrisk Greenway consultation a sham, box-ticking exercise

I was recently a guest at the Mayo Association in Dublin where Rita Casey was honoured as Mayo Person of the Year and the Meitheal Award was made to West-on-Track for its campaign to restore rail services terminated in the 1990s. It was a joyous occasion, a celebration of hope and positive actions. I came away impressed by local people and local groups in Mayo who unite to support charities and their community, through thick and thin.
Next day the late Father Micheál MacGréil was honoured at a Féile MacGréil event in Westport Town Hall Theatre. It was humbling to hear stories from people recounting how active he was throughout his life in working with communities, defending the rights of the weak and challenging the might of the strong. Sometimes even shaking down and bending reluctant government ministers to his will.
There was so much to learn and enjoy that the event ran over time. It concluded with a song and a poem.
When we emerged out onto the Octagon in the early afternoon, people were quietly gathering to mount a protest against the proposal of Mayo County Council, part funded by Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), to cut a cycleway across the pristine foothills of Croagh Patrick in the teeth of local opposition. This was a wake-up call to the realities of Irish political governance.
My mood darkened. After enjoying two days celebrating local heroism and community work at the Mayo Association awards and honouring the memory of Father Micheál, this protest meeting represented a confrontation with public authorities who, having destroyed the last vestige of real local democracy, were riding roughshod over the rights and wishes of the ‘little’ people living in the foothills of Croagh Patrick.
As I waited for the meeting to start, I recalled lines from Yeats’s poem ‘September 1913’: ‘What need you, being come to sense / But fumble in a greasy till / And add the halfpence to the pence / And prayer to shivering prayer, until / You have dried the marrow from the bone’.

Council’s shocking behaviour
This Mayo County Council/TII proposal has all the signs of fumbling in a greasy till, carelessness and complacency. The contrast between working with the community and dictating to the community could not be starker.
But, I hear you say, is not the Council engaged in a process of consultation? If you believe that, you will believe anything. Today, government agencies hire expensive PR consultants to carry out sham, box-ticking consultations.
Even I accept that the present on-road track from Westport to Murrisk, which I cycle regularly, is inadequate. But here’s how official “consultation” works.
First, the authority decides on what it wants to do (eg, cut a cycle track across the face of a pristine mountain). It presents this decision, in a confusing, vague format, to the affected community in what they call a “consultation”. Needless to say, they make sure that their preferred option is claimed to be the only feasible choice. Then they wave the threat of compulsory purchase orders in front of the community, both to frighten them and possibly to divide them, by hinting at payments in return for compliance. They pretend to listen, claim to take community views on board, but forge right ahead, ignore you, and do what they always intended to do.
This is shocking behaviour and has to be stopped in its tracks.
It saddens me that when government agencies want to prevent development projects, they claim it would damage the environment (for example, restoring the Claremorris-Collooney rail line or improving the N17), but when they want to press ahead with a project, they will try to bend and re-interpret environment protection rules.
This is what Mayo County Council Manager, Des Mahon, wrote in 2001 in a preface to Leo Moran’s book ‘Croagh Patrick – Archaeology, Landscape and Peoples’:
“When people speak of holy mountains or special places such as Kilimanjaro, Mount Fuji, Mount Everest, Croagh Patrick holds its own with the best of them for history, heritage, archaeology and adventure.” He also said: “Murrisk was awarded the Eco-Label in recognition of the fact that the area has an environment of high quality and a community committed to managing it in a suitable way.”

Arrogance
In the face of threats like the current one, people expect their elected County Councillors and TDs to act as a buffer between the unthinking arrogance of official bodies, who have all the formal power and funding, and the justified outrage of the community, who have limited formal power and have to resort to public protests.
Some public representatives have stepped up. Others have not. People will draw their own conclusions and act accordingly.
These were a couple of days of stark contrast for me and for Mayo, calling to mind Yeats’s lament: ‘For men were born to pray and save / Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone / It’s with O’Leary in the grave’.
Of course, we have been here before, when the prospect of gold mining on Croagh Patrick horrified people and strong public protest managed to bring that madness to an end. Will the officials, ‘men born to pray and save’, come to their senses in time to bring this cycle track madness to an end before it causes irreparable damage, both to the community and to the environment?

John Bradley is a former ESRI professor and has published on the island economy of Ireland, EU development policy, industrial strategy and economic modelling.