Sisk attended Tuesday nights Town Council meeting and agreed to open up most of the Public Square and the North Wall of the new harbour. This will provide much better public facilities though the Square will be smaller than I had hoped.

In July I put a 5 point plan to Sisk and some of these points were implemented in July and I am pleased that the remainder are now to be implemented. The opening of the public square will depend on planting and the growing of grass and bushes which may delay opening it until next Summer. I asked them to try to speed this up.
I also asked them to improve the public slipway and provide facilities for the 3 local fishermen. They agreed at the meeting to do this in conjunction with opening the North Pier.

There was some discussion of a plan prepared by a Community Group. This was costed by them at €1.8m. I thought that it would cost nearly €10m however Sisk have agreed to cost it. The rowing and angling clubs do not agree with their areas being made a public space and I support them in their view. Other than that the plan would be good value at €1.8m though it may need planning permission which could lead to a 2 year delay.
Some Councillors felt that the priority should be to provide a better public realm (lighting, paving, street furniture) in the public square rather than a larger unsupervised public park which could attract vandalism.

In 2007 the harbour was derelict whereas now it is the best leisure harbour in Wicklow and the 4th best Nationally, after Dun Laoghaire, Cork and Howth. It has given a great boost to tourism with lots of high spending yachting visitors who would never have come to the town but for the proper harbour. They greatly like Greystones and are not concerned that the site is unfinished.