Dramatic change at Rossbeigh

MANY people have been to their favourite beach at least once this summer. And, no matter how old they might be, they probably saw little or no change from the time they first went there as children.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for my favourite seaside haven, Rossbeigh, on the Ring of Kerry, which has undergone dramatic, even frightening change in recent years.

Rossbeigh is a long, narrow peninsula, called a spit, with sand dunes as a backbone. Powerful waves broke through the dunes during a storm in December 2008, dividing the spit in two and creating a new island.

Sadly, the situation has since been getting progressively worse. The breach is now about 700 metres wide and getting wider, with an estimated five million tonnes of sand washed away in five years.

One of the finest beaches in the country is, in the words of Rossbeigh businessman Michael Cahill, being “savaged by coastal erosion”. Nobody seems able to do anything to stem the relentless tide and all indications thus far are that nobody is going to do anything soon.

For decades now, successive governments have been spending very little to tackle erosion and the current lot have no plans to allocate money for coast protection works at Rossbeigh. Given the enormous scale of the erosion, it would cost millions to even try to remedy the problem. Mr Cahill, an independent councillor, has given up on our government and wants Kerry County Council to seek funding from the EU Environment Commissioner Maria Domanaki to save Rossbeigh.

The latest news from the council, meanwhile, is that nothing can be done ‘’without a careful understanding’’ of the causes of the erosion. There’s ongoing research by UCC experts, while Dutch experts have also looked at the situation.

One thing is being made absolutely clear _ no money will be spent until the problem is fully understood. The point is that a lot of money could be wasted unless people knew exactly what they were doing and why.