New car park expected to be open before next summer
A new, 80-space, car park is expected to be open behind Green Street in Dingle by next summer, following the success of a lengthy campaign by Kerry County Council to secure a suitable site.
Cllr Seamus Cosaí Fitzgerald confirmed this week that, following negotiations that continued for well over a year, the council has reached agreement with St Brendan’s Trust to lease land beside the presbytery and behind the existing car park on upper Green Street. The lease is initially for five years, with the option of extending this for a potentially indefinite period.
The council will apply for Part 8 planning permission for the development in the immediate future and, with funding already set aside for the project, Cllr Fitzgerald said he expects the car park to be open before next summer. “I’ve been lobbying on this for years so it’s nice to see something happening,” he added.
The new ‘cars only’ car park will go some way towards alleviating the chronic tourist season parking problems in Dingle and, according to Cosaí, it will also help direct more tourist business towards the Main Street and Green Street area.
Meanwhile, Cllr Fitzgerald said negotiations with landowners on the route of the fourth phase of the inner relief road (from the Spa Road to Goat Street) are at an advanced stage and are expected to reach a successful conclusion in the near future.
He added the Dingle inner relief road is the only project of its kind in the county that is included in the national Infrastructural Plan 2016 and Kerry County Council is therefore confident of securing funding for the road, which already has the required planning permission. This means work on the project could start as early as next year.
In the Dingle Development Plan it is proposed to extend the relief road down to the Quay (beside Murphy’s pub), passing the new Green St car park en route. This isn’t likely to come to fruition any time soon but, in the meantime, traffic will be able to bypass Dingle via the high road to Milltown Bridge as soon as the fourth phase of the relief road is complete, further easing Dingle’s traffic problems.