GAA delays transfer of land needed for river work

THE transfer of a small portion of land needed to deal with a pollution problem at the Big River in Tralee has been held up by the GAA’s Munster Council.

At Monday’s meeting of the Tralee Municipal District, council members heard that Na Gaeil GAA Club had agreed to transfer a small portion of land it owns on the banks of the Big River to Kerry County Council.

The lands are required by the council so it can carry out works to alleviate pollution in the Big River which flows south from Killeen Road on Tralee’s northern outskirts to the junction of North Circular Road and Ashe Street where the river goes underground.

The council is currently working to fix a long term issue whereby effluent from a number of council houses sometimes flows from pipes directly into the river.

The pipes - located under the bridge at Killeen Road adjacent to the Na Gaeil club grounds - are overflow pipes that cater for excess water and waste from homes and roads in the area.

While two of the pipes primarily deal with stormwater - one also caters for some excess waste from the Oakpark sewer network - the third pipe is linked directly to a septic tank that caters for six council-owned houses in the nearby Killeen Court cul de sac.

In order to fix the issue, the council is planning to connect these houses to the main sewer line in the area, but to do this they need to use the riverbank land owned by Na Gaeil.

Council management said that while Na Gaeil GAA club had agreed to hand over the land – which the club does not use – the GAA’s Munster Branch had taken issue with the transfer.

As the GAA are trustees to the land the Munster Council decreed that the transfer of the river bank land would have to formally approved by the GAA’s Central Council at Croke Park.

The issue has now been forwarded to the GAA Central Council for their consideration and they are due to rule on the matter in the coming weeks.

In the meantime the transfer of the land has been postponed.

The land in question is a thin, roughly 100-metre long stretch of overgrown riverbank near the bridge on the extreme eastern edge of Na Gaeil GAA Club’s Killeen Road grounds.