Seán Kelly, MEP for Ireland South, has urged the Irish Government to take action and purchase the stunning land and forestry on Kerry's Conor Pass to create a national park.

.

.

.

The site, which includes four lakes - Pedlar’s Atlea, Beirne, and Clogharee - along with a beautiful waterfall and mature forest, presents a unique opportunity for the government to show leadership in nature restoration.

The expansive site, bordered on the west by the Owenmore river, offers breath-taking views over Dingle Town, Brandon Bay, and the majestic Atlantic Ocean. Currently, the land attracts thousands of walkers and tourists each year, making it an ideal location for a national park that can benefit both nature conservation and Ireland's tourism industry. The site approximately 1,000 acres of land and nearly 400 acres of valuable forestry.

Killarney-based Kelly said: Killarney’s tourism has benefited massively from a national park, so there can be tangible economic benefits beyond just the significant benefits for biodiversity. We have discussed nature restoration intensively over the last number of months and this is a golden opportunity for the government to show leadership and dispel some of the damaging rhetoric that was associated with that debate.”

"Conor Pass has already garnered international attention, with foreign buyers expressing interest in just a few days. If the government were to submit a bid, it would be better to do it sooner rather than later. A holistic and long-term view should be taken into account for consideration, but I really do think a serious assessment should be carried out."

Kelly called on the government to show leadership and seize this golden opportunity to create a national park on the Conor Pass. The purchase of this picturesque land and forestry would not only enrich Ireland's natural landscape but also send a strong message about the country's commitment to nature conservation and sustainable tourism.

FRIENDS OF THE EARTH

Meanwhile Friends of the Irish Environment have appealed to the owner of lands at the Connor Pass in County Kerry to gift the lands to the State ‘in the tradition of Killarney National Park’. Killarney National Park was previously the Muckross Estate, and its 105 square kilometres was gifted to the nation by US Senator Vincent Bourne in 1932.

“The opportunity to have a national Park in one the most rugged and magnificent parts of Ireland is one that it would be a shame to miss. We established five national parks in the last 20 years of the 20th century – including Charles Haughey’s opening of the Wicklow National Park in 1986 – but we have established none since the turn of the century,” said FIE Director Tony Lowes.

“The €10 million price 1400 acres was a ‘American fantasy’ at €7000 an acre. He pointed out that although the final price is still not known, four times this area was added to the Wicklow National Park in 2016 where the asking price was €2.5 million.

As the owner is returning to the United States, Mr. Lowes said that even if he was unable to gift the entire holding to the State a “meeting of minds over a combination of charitable donations and tax advantages could be arranged with good will on both sides.”

On Newstalk he addressed the issue of the €10 million being better spent on social housing in the area, as suggested by Deputy Healy Rae, pointing out that the “multiple values of nature conservation were poorly understood,”

“It is not simply that tourism thrives in areas where we have our national parks with an economic vitality that is clearly seen in Killarney, but proper land management can only be assured by ownership,”

He told Newstalk: “If allowed to regenerate properly, you would find that birds and creatures of all kinds would flock to it, including tourists. The skies would fill and the rivers would again be full of fish, as they once were before.”

“If you drive the Connor Pass now’, Mr. Lowes, who used to live in the area, said, “You will see that the rare ungrazed areas are lush and thick with vegetation, slowly evolving into scrub which will one day become native forest. Those areas over grazed by sheep are held together by the thinnest layer of grass.”

“It not simply that proper land management would bring back our native flora and fauna, but our coastal waters are green with algae blooms right now. This is driven in part by the impact of the nutrients in the sheep faeces. While overgrazing is not the only cause of our coastal dead zones, algae growth driven by these fertilising faeces decay. This exhausts the oxygen, ultimately resulting in dead zones with the death of fish, shellfish, and other aquatic organisms,”

FIE has written to the owner, Michael Noonan, encouraging him to engage with the Government.

“In the long term, these modest beginnings could form the basis of a wider and more significant Park, stretching from Mount Brandon to Dingle.”