Leitrim coco hosts talks on cross-border greenway plan

A series of public consultations for a proposed greenway that would run across Sligo, Leitrim , and Fermanagh were held last week.

The new library in Dromahair hosted a meeting where members of the public came to meet with members of the construction, design, and environmental teams working on the project.

The proposed project is a 75km greenway cycle and walking route, following the old Sligo-Leitrim Northern Counties Railway, starting in Sligo and ending in Fermanagh; passing through Ballysadare, Collooney, Ballintogher, Dromahair, Manorhamilton, Glenfarne, Blacklion, Belcoo, and Letterbreen along the way.

The project remains in the planning stage, with an exact route still being devised in conjunction with input from the public and relevant landowners.

An application for the project will not be submitted to Leitrim County Council and Fermanagh and Omagh District Councils until 2027. The planning of the project is funded by the Department of Transport; if it passes, developers will need to secure further funding for the construction stage. The project will now go into the design and environmental evaluation phase.

Project Liaison Officers are visiting landowners whose land may be affected by the proposed project to consult them on potential challenges and desired changes to the route.

The greenway will be one of the biggest in the county—the first in County Fermanagh—and will join the Drumshanbo and Carrick-on-Shannon greenways in Leitrim.

“The Greenway is focused on trying to link the different communities together,” says Dan Murphy, member of Arup, who were appointed by Leitrim County Council to provide multi-disciplinary engineering and other specialist consultancy services in the project planning process.

“It's a huge opportunity for people to walk and cycle between the different population centres and to try to link in the different amenities, so schools and playgrounds and the opportunity to create new things like playgrounds, fitness facilities along the way, pop-up amenities, different things like that.”

Alongside the benefits for the local population, he believes that the greenway will increase tourism to the area.

“It's just a huge opportunity for the area and a chance for there to be investment in infrastructure that just isn't there at the moment and to really just give people the alternative to the car when they want to make day-to-day trips and the like, and also then the greater opportunities that might present for increased visitors into what is a beautiful part of the country.”

“The idea where you could have Blacklion and Belcoo as kind of this hub for people to go down to the likes of Florence Court and the Marble Arch Caves. It's amazing how it could open up that area to a whole new, both domestic and international visitors to come in and then to hopefully move west and experience more as it's gone along. The benefits are there for both communities on both sides of the borders.”

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