*Carmel Kirby, Kevin Corrigan and Pat Dowling.
CLARE COUNTY COUNCIL’s departing Chief Executive has said opposition to aspects of the Ennis 2040 strategy was “to be expected”.
Pat Dowling retires as Chief Executive of the County Council this month, he has been in the role since September 2016. A wide-ranging interview with the Knockainey native will be published in the January 2nd edition of The Clare Echo.
Another individual making their way to the exit door is Chief Operating Officer of Ennis 2040 DAC, Kevin Corrigan who resigned this week and will leave his role at the end of January.
Of the upcoming exit of the COO, Pat said, “I had indications that Kevin had decided he wanted to move on and pursue other opportunities, these things happen all of the time, Kevin has served Ennis 2040 very well, he has worked very hard and diligently, he has progressed a lot of site acquisition and master planning for some key opportunity sites with Ennis 2040, we all wish Kevin very well, he is a very professional competent individual.
“He has decided for his own reasons just like I have decided for my own reasons to retire, he has decided to move on to other pastures, it is as simple as that and nobody should read any further into that, this is about Ennis 2040 as a strategy, irrespective of who is employed to deliver, manage or drive it isn’t the issue, the issue is that we have a plan for Ennis and that we draw down funding to implement the plan, it is not about individuals”.
When asked why the economic and spatial plan hasn’t received the full backing from the Clare public, the Chief Executive stated, “That is a matter of opinion, when you say it doesn’t have the public fully behind it, are you talking about a majority of the public or are you talking about a minority of the public”.
It was then pointed out to Dowling that Ennis 2040 has had more significant opposition to any strategy or project he was involved with during his time in Clare County Council, he said, “True and this was all to be expected, it was all to be expected. When you try and change the nature of a capital town or any capital town of any county in Ireland, it poses challenges, when you try and change the nature of the public realm of a town where people have been used to parking or driving through or pulling up to do their shopping or whatever for decades and decades, that creates a lot of upheaval so none of what is happening and the opposition and the critique is of any surprise to me whatsoever. If you take Navan or Portlaoise, they have all gone through the very same process as Ennis, nobody should be surprised in Ennis that Ennis is different to anywhere else it is not, well to me it is different because it is wonderful town but we want to grow and improve it, to create jobs for people where they can live, shop and moreover I want to be able to attract people into Ennis to encourage economic activity so yes there is still which is to be expected elements of public disquiet about what is happening, we will continue to work through that process”.
Towns like Navan and Portlaoise have also been subjected to protests, he claimed, “Oh yes they have, if you do your research on Navan for example, they have done a major change to their town centre which predates us by about five years, they are still going through difficulties so yes there have been marches and protests in other towns”.
Neither of the two towns mentioned issued a petition with 3,500 signatures to the local authority. “What is wrong with any of this, there is nothing wrong with any of this, people have a right to protest, they have a right to give opposition and I have a right as Chief Executive to grow my county town or else do the people of Ennis want to leave it as it is, they are the options”.
Members of the public who attended public consultation events for plans in Abbey Street car park as part of Ennis 2040 in January and February have yet to receive feedback on their submissions. “You’re making an assumption and a statement, I don’t agree with you, there has been plenty of consultation and feedback like you weren’t around when we took a unit on Abbey Street and started off on this whole process, the public came in and met us and we ran it for a number of weeks, people are picking and choosing what suits them,” Dowling responded.
When it was put to the Chief Executive why the public who went to the Temple Gate Hotel, Barefield and Clarecastle didn’t get feedback after making submissions, he pointed out that the Council ran the events and he accepted that feedback should have been issued.
In a recent Clare FM interview, Dowling said there would be an opportunity to press the ‘reset’ button on Ennis 2040 in the New Year. He explained, “We’ve got to keep going with the plan, the only major reset I meant was in the context of Kevin Corrigan deciding to move onto other opportunities he wants to pursue in his life, I am reassigning somebody else to oversee the programme until the recruitment happens, that is the reset that we continue on, we’re not stopping, nothing is stopping here. There are some key opportunity sites in the town that I think can bring huge benefit to the economy of Ennis”.
Delays have been encountered with the lodging of plans for some of the key projects such as the Post Office Field. “There are reasons around all of that, we will be proceeding with lodging planning for a number of sites and a number of developments because it has to go through the planning process and this will take time, it is a slow burner, it is not all about to happen, it will take time and there may be appeals to the Board but when I say reset it is because there is a change of personnel at the helm I’m putting new people in to oversee the programme until the recruitment takes place in the New Year”.
Critics of Ennis 2040 have said described it is a private company that is deciding the future of the county town but this is a view rejected by the Chief Executive. “The future of Ennis town is being dictated and controlled by Clare County Council, yes we set up a wholly owned designated company to do that work for us but it is a wholly owned company of Clare County Council, it is facile for people to suggest this is the private sector, it is not, the money that is funding this is provided by the elected members of Clare County Council, if we can dispel the myths that are going on, we have a DAC running tourism, we have a DAC running our cultural facilities in Ennis, they are all legal entities, we have seven or eight in Clare, there are a thousand within the local authority sector, it is a model that is used with special purposes vehicles set up, it also allows you to bring private expertise in where we may not have access to it to help us as well and it is very beneficial, it is a tried and tested model and it is very facile for somebody to say you are giving over the future of Ennis to the private sector, that is not the case and they know that”.
