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Planners Stump Trump Over Doonbeg Coastal Defences

20th April 2016
Trump International Golf Links & Hotel at Doonbeg, Co Clare Trump International Golf Links & Hotel at Doonbeg, Co Clare Credit: Trump Hotels

#Doonbeg - Donald Trump may be topping Republican Party polls on the road to The White House, but the billionaire businessman has hit a stumbling block in proposals for his Doonbeg golf resort, as The Irish Times reports.

An Bord Pleanála has ruled that plans for a 200,000-tonne, 2.8km coastal embankment adjacent to the links course Trump purchased in February 2014 do not constitute a 'strategic infrastructure development', or SID, which would have allowed the scheme to bypass Clare County Council.

Now the plans – declared as protection against coastal erosion – must be resubmitted to the council for a decision whose outcome "will determine the future of our business, the local community and its citizens", according to the resort's general manager Joe Russell.

The application is expected to face opposition from environmentalists mindful of the area's protected species such as the narrow-mouth whorl snail, a tiny mollusc at the centre of controversy over unauthorised coastal defence works on the shoreline two years ago.

The Irish Times has more on the story HERE.

Published in Coastal Notes
MacDara Conroy

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MacDara Conroy

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MacDara Conroy is a contributor covering all things on the water, from boating and wildlife to science and business

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Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.