Mountaineer Stelfox warns about ‘profound negative impact’ of gondola plans in the Mournes

Mountaineer Stelfox warns about ‘profound negative impact’ of gondola plans in the Mournes

15 January 2025

IRELAND’S leading mountaineer has warned the proposed gondola project and visitor centre in the Mournes will have a “profound negative impact” on the area.

Dawson Stelfox — who was the first Irishman to climb the Himalayas — insists people should not risk sitting back and say the controversial multi-million pound project will never happen.

The cable car ride from Donard Park to a visitor centre at a former quarry at Thomas’s mountain is at the heart of the £44m Mourne Gateway Project which is being financed by the Belfast City Region Deal and Newry, Mourne and Down Council.

The City Deal is providing £30m in funding with the local authority providing £14m, but there is major concern that the final bill will be significantly greater if it is given the green light, with ratepayers asked to pick up and even bigger tab.

Writing in Mountaineering Ireland’s Irish Mountain Log magazine for walkers and hill climbers, Mr Stelfox reviews what is being billed as a flagship tourism project which is also the first proposal of its kind on the island of Ireland.

In the article entitled “Mourne Gateway… or dead end?’ he said Mountaineering Ireland “is fundamentally opposed” to the proposal as it believes it will cause “irreversible harm on multiple levels”.

Mr Stelfox said for as long as he can remember, there has been “sporadic speculation” of cable cans, funiculars of gondolas "up Donard," invariably sparked by returning holiday-makers with alpine aspirations. 

But the mountaineer, who is a conservation architect, said the Mounes are not Alpine massifs. “Access is easy and the scale intimate, so intrusive engineering would cause damage to their special character, protected as it is by designation and legislation,” he opines.

“As a result, previous technological fantasies have faded away and there is always the temptation to put each successive proposal into the ‘it will never happen category’ but every once in a while a fundamentally bad idea gets a head of steam and starts building through good sense,” he said.

“One such development was the dam and reservoir proposed for Kinnahalla, below Spelga, in the 1980s, and it took a concerted effort by local residents and recreation and environmental groups to stop it. More recently, a proposal to build a funicular railway up the line of the Granite Trail above Newcastle was stopped by local opposition.”

Mr Stelfox, who is a founder member of the Mourne Heritage Trust and is still involved in initiatives to protect the built, natural and cultural heritage of the area, said new development is again being proposed by the local council.

“It will have a profoundly negative impact on the Mournes and we just can't risk sitting back and saying it will never happen,” he declared.

Mr Stelfox recalled that in 2013, the South East Coast Masterplan came up with a range of initiatives for the Newcastle area, describing many of them as “quite sensible”.

Included within the masterplan was a proposal for a gondola ride from Donard Park to Drinnahilly, Millstone Quarry or Thomas's Mountain Quarry which was described as a "premier visitor attraction for both the Mournes and the South East Coast”.

A Mourne Mountains Gateway study followed in 2016-2017, with Mountaineering Ireland and others engaged in the consultation, putting forward proposals to enhance recreation experiences and the natural environment in the Mournes, and opposing the gondola as “disruptive to the landscape and scenic quality of the area.”

Mr Stelfox said the outcome of that process was not made public, nor the criteria used for deciding.

He said it has only recently been made known that a gondola ride to a visitor centre at Thomas's Mountain Quarry was the preferred option and it went on to be the focus of a grant application to the Belfast Region City Deal fund as the "Mourne Gateway”.

The leading mountaineer continued: “This was despite no Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) being carried out or any form of environmental surveys beyond a checklist of what surveys would need to be done in the future.

“The SEA process designed to filter out environmentally damaging projects before large amounts of public money are spent on them, but this necessary procedure was not followed and ‘options or alternatives’ are not now being considered.

“Instead of a broad range of mostly good initiatives, as envisaged in the Mourne Mountains Gateway consultation, the City Deal part-funded Mourne Gateway is now entirely focused on the gondola ride from Donard Park to a new visitor centre in Thomas's Mountain Quarry.”

Mr Stelfox said the projected visitor numbers were 350,000 a year to what is claimed will be a “world-class visitor attraction” targeted at out of state visitors, such as the cruise ship market, to supplement the likes of Titanic Belfast and the Giant's Causeway.

He said it is further claimed to be a "greatly enhanced and accessible Mourne offering, whatever that is meant to mean and will celebrate Mourne stories and heritage”.

Mr Stelfox said the former granite quarry on Thomas's Mountain was a prominent landmark in the view of Slieve Donard from Newcastle.

Crucially, he said this was inside the Eastern Mournes Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) and it was not owned by the council, but by the National Trust.

Mr Stelfox said quarrying had long since stopped, former workers’ buildings had been removed and the site was rapidly being recolonised by nature.

He said it was slowly recovering from the devastating wildfire of 2021 with the National Trust having introduced conservation cattle grazing to support species rich natural regeneration.

“The attraction of the site to the council is the view north over Dundrum Bay which, while interesting on a good day, is hardly world class and on many days is cloaked in cloud, mist and rain,” continued Mr Stelfox.

“The quarry faces and the steep slopes above obscure any view of Slieve Donard itself, unlike, ironically, the rejected Drinnahilly option, which is outside the SAC and ASSI.”

Mr Stelfox issued a reminder that the National Trust, which owns the quarry, has not agreed to lease the site to the local council and has voiced concern about it, stating the charity won't support it unless it can be shown there would be no environmental harm and that any works would be reversible.

He continued: “There are many National Trust members, myself included, who believe those tests were incompatible with the very nature of the project and it should simply be rejected out of hand so that available funds can be spent more wisely.

“As it currently stands, the council is starting to spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayers and ratepayers pounds on consultant fees (the exact amount has not been disclosed). 

“The consultants’ brief does not consider alternatives and is Iimiting its consideration of impacts to the route between Donard Park and the quarry, rather than the wider mountainscape. Mountaineering Ireland is fundamentally opposed to this proposal because we believe it will cause irreversible harm on multiple levels.”

The organisation said it introduces a large-scale building into a prominent site within the strongest of nature protection designations which is contrary to planning policy unless 'exceptional public interest is proven’.

In addition, it says there is is no need for this visitor centre on Thomas's Mountain as all the exhibition and event space, interpretation galleries and cafe could and should, be in Donard Park, not above the tree-line in a prominent site in a protected landscape. 

Mr Stelfox said the example of the visitor centre on Ben Lawers in Scotland, which was demolished after it was clear its presence was contributing to damage to the environment it had set out to protect, should be a cautionary tale.

“The line of the gondola from Donard Park inevitably passes through the Glen River section of the ASSI, causing physical, visual and noise pollution impacts to protected broadleaf trees and an historic demesne landscape,” he said.

“The project aims to bring 350,000 people a year into an area with currently a very small number of visitors, which will lead to new ‘desire lines’ including a traversing line to the Glen River and a direct route to and from Donard.”

Mr Stelfox said the Glen River path is by far the most popular route up Donard, with around 100,000 users a year and required almost constant maintenance to control erosion. 

“Both of those new desire lines will take people onto ground highly vulnerable to erosion and just recovering after the 2021 fire major damage is inevitable,” he continued.

“The laughable idea of corralling visitors to the confines of the quarry is already being rowed back on and as the Cairngorm funicular experience has shown, not allowing visitors out is unworkable. The shortest way to Donard from the new visitor centre will be up the steep slopes behind the quarry,” he said.

The Mountaineering Ireland article argues that apart from the erosion, this steep ground presents a safety issue, especially to those tempted, in descent from the summit, to head straight for the gondola as an easy way down. 

It says unlike the Glen River path with the Mourne Wall as a handrail, the route to or from Donard and the quarry is on open mountain, requiring competent navigation to avoid cliffs, very steep ground and the quarry faces.”