Community group wins funding to help restore sand dunes

Community group wins funding to help restore sand dunes

10 May 2017

A COMMUNITY group has won its battle with Newry, Mourne and Down Council to secure funding to support an environmental project in Ballyhornan.

Council officials initially rejected a bid for financial help from the Ballyhornan Development Association to help restore sand dunes at the local beach which have suffered from extensive erosion over recent years.

The refusal to provide a £3,000 grant to assist with the environmental project was subsequently raised with the Local Government Ombudsman by councillor Cadogan Enright and when the matter was referred back to the local council the money was made available.

The Downpatrick councillor said working with the Development Association, he has raised thousands of pounds to restore the screen of sand-dunes at Ballyhornan that protects the picnic and play area and also to buy marine grasses and plants to help restore this area.

He continued: “We expected the council to make a contribution to protect what is actually its own property. The grant application was turned down on the grounds that the development association did not produce accounts for 2015. However, the organisation was only started with local authority assistance in 2016 so could not have legally produced accounts for 2015.”

Councillor Enright said he raised the issue with the Ombudsman last September and the issue was referred back to the council which subsequently agreed to provide funding in March.

“The new council in many respects appears not fit for purpose,” he suggested. “Far from pro-actively tackling urgent issues like the loss of council property vital to our tourism trade to the sea, we see it impeding local volunteer groups trying to do the work it should be doing itself. 

“I am hoping that this outcome signals a change in attitude. The new council needs to spend less time examining its own internal organisational navel and more time supporting communities properly.”

Gerry Young and Pat Magee of the Ballyhornan Development Association are delighted money for the environmental project has now been made available.

“We have raised over £23,000 on our own with no local authority help to do the most difficult part of the job on land owned by the Environmental Agency and Crown Commissioners under the cliffs to try and re-grow dunes and slow the erosion threatening the coast-road,” explained Mr Young.

“We needed only £3,000 to protect the area owned and supposedly managed by the local council. We should not have to do this, the local authority should be doing it.”

Mr Magee, who is one of the Development Association’s trustees, said he has been farming this area all his life, explaining the sand dunes have never been in poorer shape. 

“Whole sections have been totally wiped out by scrambler bikes and the weight of thousands of people walking on them in winter, summer autumn and spring. The dunes need a screen to protect them if they are to recover,” he said.

“We want to emulate the successful work of the Kilclief Residents’ Association on their beach here in Ballyhornan. We have thousands of marine grasses to plant, but cannot do so without the money to build a protective screen and sand-traps to allow the plants to grow.”