Caravan owners plead for retention of park at beach

USERS of a controversial caravan park, which is to be closed at Rossbeigh beach, in Co Kerry, yesterday pleaded with Kerry county manager Martin Riordan to keep it open for the coming season.

The park is located in a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and some of the 40 caravan-owners have been using it for up to 40 years. They now want the small area in the dunes, where the caravans are parked for three months every summer, to be excluded from the SAC. “We think this is a reasonable request and it should help resolve problems for both the county manager and Duchas,” said Sean Kelliher, who has had a caravan there for 23 years. “We would also be willing to have any council official, or anyone else, inspect the caravan site area before, during, or after our time there.”

Mr Riordan has told Kerry County Council that he has no option but to close the park, for the coming season, for environmental and planning reasons. He said the park contravened planning regulations and the council could face prosecution as a result. Also, the beach could lose its coveted blue flag status, if the park did not comply with planning.

Mr Riordan said the hope was to have a properly-laid out caravan park reopened at Rossbeigh for the 2007 season.

Mr Kelliher, however, said the caravan-owners were devastated on being told they could not use the park, just two weeks before the start of the coming summer season.

“People are being urged to take their holidays in Ireland, which is something the people with caravans in Rossbeigh have been doing for a very long time,” he said.