Peter Casey in planning row... after he builds a wall!
County council tells him to tear it down... Former Presidential candidate shoots back: ‘You have no jurisdiction over it!’
EX-PRESIDENTIAL candidate Peter Casey is in a dispute over a sea wall at his Donegal home. The council says he has no right to build it – but he says that Lough Foyle is UK jurisdiction.
DONALD Trump has his controversial wall, now ex-Presidential candidate Peter Casey has his.
It’s a sea wall that Donegal County Council says he had no right to build – and which he claims it has no right to tear down.
Mr Casey has told the Irish Mail on Sunday the county council’s enforcement case over the wall outside his home in Greencastle, Co. Donegal has no validity – because the UK has jurisdiction over Lough Foyle.
Mr Casey said he has built a sea wall on the foreshore at his picturesque Donegal home to protect it from rising waters caused by global warming.
Lough Foyle, which separates Donegal and Derry, has been a disputed territory since partition. It was thought that the Good Friday Agreement had settled the dispute, but the British say that they will reclaim the coveted waterway after Brexit.
The sea wall has a bay that will accommodate a 50 foot flagpole that sources suggest will eventually fly an Irish tricolor.
This week Mr Casey did not want to comment on this plan. Previously however, talking to the MoS, in unreported comments, Mr Casey gave further context.
‘You know the area around it is all disputed. The British claim ownership of it – we’ve reclaimed it [for Ireland],’ he said the day after the re-inauguration of President Michael D Higgins. Pointing to a picture of the area on his phone, he said: ‘So what I did was, the guy dynamited his way onto the headland, pushed all the rock out into the [water]… and then see where the flag is now? That’s high tide. At high tide you can’t see those rocks… but I dug it all out and I’ve got like a natural swimming pool.
‘So it’s about 20ft deep all the way along and I put in boulders all the way across to protect it from erosion. And then we put up the flag – 60ft tall flag, seven foot, eight foot, by four foot flag, and that’s claiming Lough Foyle for Ireland.’
Despite being a little more reticent this week, Mr Casey did admit the sea wall, which is built between Sweet Nellie’s beach and rocks outside his home, has an element of ‘two fingers to the British’.
Local campaigners say that the development, which has no planning permission, is a hazard to fishing and boatmen.
Mr Casey earlier this month lodged a planning permission with Donegal County Council to extend his house, which is built on rocks overlooking Lough Foyle. However, there is no record of a planning application to carry out the building of the wall on the foreshore.
A spokeswoman for the council said: ‘Donegal County Council is aware of the development and an enforcement case has been opened. For this reason the Council is not in a position to comment further on this matter.’
However, Mr Casey says he will not obey Donegal County Council because it has no jurisdiction. The ownership of the seabed of Lough Foyle is contested – the UK claims ownership, although it was thought in the past that it belonged to the Republic.
The construction is below Mr Casey’s house at Sweet Nellie’s beach, Carrowhugh, Greencastle, Co. Donegal. Derry is across the water from Mr Casey’s house.
‘Everything is owned by the crown,’ said Mr Casey. ‘There is an element of giving two fingers to the British. We are seizing back a little bit of Ireland from the British – there’s a little bit of Rockall here. It is completely unregulated here.
‘The water outside my house is owned by the Crown, right out to the end of Lough Foyle,’ said Mr Casey. ‘My property is very exposed. It was basically built with rocks and pushed out onto the sea and over time it has started to get eroded.
‘The idea of this is basically a breakwater. It’s about two feet off the ground, and at high tide it’s about five feet under water.
‘There are rising waters because of the warming climate. We have dolphins now in Lough Foyle.’
Claims over the estuary between Co. Derry and Co. Donegal have been made since the island was partitioned a century ago.
After the Good Friday Agreement peace deal, a cross-border body called the Loughs Agency was handed responsibility for the waters, a key strategic naval base during the Second World War.
However, in the wake of the UK’s vote to leave the European Union, then Northern Ireland secretary James Brokenshire reasserted London’s claim over the entire lough.
Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan said he did not accept the British claim.
He said: ‘This is an issue upon
‘The area is disputed. The UK claim ownership’ ‘Element of giving two fingers to the British’
which there has been some disagreement for many years.
‘I don’t accept the claims that the whole of Lough Foyle is under the jurisdiction of the UK government. However, rather than dwell on the negatives, I think it is important that we look forward and see how best this issue might be resolved.’
There are campaigners in Lough Foyle who have opposed plans to put a sewage outlet into the beautiful seaway. They have also lobbied for the dispute to be settled. They see Mr Casey’s sea wall as a bit opportunistic.
Enda Craig, as an activist and member of ‘Save the Foyle’, has been involved in many campaigns dealing with the environment, the ecosystem and local sanitary waste problems in the area for more than 30 years.
‘I live on the shores of Lough Foyle, between Moville and Greencastle, on a beautiful part of the Foyle shoreline,’ said Mr Craig.
‘We have found out the seabed of Lough Foyle, belongs to the Crown Estate, which belongs to the Queen of England. We have done massive research on it,’ he said.
Mr Craig believes Mr Casey has seen an opportunity for a canny political move by taking on the British. He said there is ‘a feeling here’ that Mr Casey is latching onto the ownership issue because ‘he did so well in the Presidential vote when he hooked onto the Traveller issue’.
It was Mr Craig who briefed Peter Casey on the seabed issue.
‘I went away and I didn’t hear from him,’ said Mr Craig, ‘and a few days ago I went down to Sweet Nellie’s... I noticed that there was a big track machine down on the beach which seemed to be building a wall. I couldn’t believe it, he was building what you’d call a causeway from the bottom of his property out to this reef of rocks which is about 20 to 30 metres out.’
Mr Craig says Mr Casey’s ‘erosion’ theory is disputed because his house is built on ‘solid rock’.
‘I’m putting this as a possibility... if I was Peter Casey... I would be looking around to see is there another possibility of another controversy that might resonate with the people of Donegal.
‘I can tell you that a Derry man coming out from Derry city, living in Donegal, and he builds a little wall, and he’s up against the Crown Estates looking for planning permission – fighting to save Lough Foyle for the Irish people... when the Irish Government doesn’t give a monkey’s.’
Justice Minister Mr Flanagan has said officials from his department had been in contact with civil servants from the Northern secretary’s office in an effort to thrash out a resolution.
Seen as an opportunity for a political move