Community group angry as ‘utopia’ excluded from Wild Atlantic Way

People in a scenic area on the northern side of the Dingle Peninsula, which has received favourable mention in the Lonely Planet tourist guide, are protesting about not being included in the Wild Atlantic Way.

The Cloghane/ Brandon Community Consortium said it would love to share the enthusiasm for the Fáilte Ireland initiative to create a tourist driving route from Cork to Donegal.

“But it is difficult when our award-winning parish, where Mount Brandon meets the Atlantic, is being bypassed,” a spokesman for the group said.

“Tourism is our only viable form of local employment and, to prevent our communities from becoming a futuristic famine parish, we need to be included on the Wild Atlantic Way.’’

While fishing and farming had sustained the community, they argued tourism is the key to the future.

They wanted opportunities at home so that local young people would not be forced to emigrate.

“Being on the Wild Atlantic Way would benefit our villages in ways that are too many to number”, read a statement signed by Tom O’Donnell, Micheál O’Dowd and Gina Overy.

The Lonely Planet described the area as “a little piece of utopia hiding on the Dingle Peninsula”.

A spokeswoman for Fáilte Ireland said during the public consultation on a draft Wild Atlantic Way map, a number of submissions were received which recommended extending the route, by way of a spur, to Cloghane and Brandon Point.

But, following an analysis of all the submissions received, the Wild Atlantic Way regional steering group decided the road between Cloghane and Brandon Point was too narrow to form part of the Wild Atlantic Way and the views at Cloghane in themselves did not merit an extension of the route to Cloghane.