No regrets
Council boss in Lissadell battle that has cost State €7.8m says the right to the beach was in dispute: We won that. It was the most important. We were vindicated, I have...
A FORMER county manager who was in charge of Sligo County Council when the Lissadell House controversy began has claimed that the lost court case, which is set to cost taxpayers €7.8m in legal costs, has ‘vindicated’ him.
The political fall-out from the controversy continues to affect retired Sligo county manager Hubert Kearns’s former council colleagues – with a council meeting this week hearing about the legal advice that informed the December 2008 decision to claim the controversial rights of way across the Lissadell estate.
Mr Kearns, 57, who left public service with a €250,000 lump sum and a €60,000 pension last November – said that while it was a ‘pity’ so much money was spent, a right of way to a beach was established.
And Mr Kearns, who quashed rumours that he secured a role with Irish Water in his retirement, said that he had ‘no regrets’, and that he had a duty to initiate the case based on legal advice he received.
He also argued that costs could have been kept down had the owners agreed to mediation.
In response, sources close to the family that owns the historic manor house argued that the path to the beach had never been blocked off.
Owners argued ‘beach was never blocked off’
At his north Sligo home, the Irish Mail on Sunday asked Mr Kearns what he had to say to the people of Sligo about the cost of the case.
He said: ‘My job was to fulfil the statutory job that was on me, a statutory obligation to defend that they perceive as rights of way. We got legal advice from an eminent senior counsel in that field of law who said there was a strong prima facie case of public rights of way that existed and of course that was proven by the fact that one of the rights of way was confirmed. So I would have been in my view abdicating my responsibility the government or Oireachtas gave us.
‘Why the Oireachtas gave us that power in 1993 I don’t know, but they did. You should go and ask the government if they don’t want councils to do that – why did they pass these laws requiring the councils to protect what they perceive as public rights of way?’
Asked if he had any regrets, Mr Kearns said: ‘None whatsoever. I’d do the very same again given the facts and of course I was proven right because there was one right, the right to the beach, it was in dispute. They challenged, they said there were no public rights of way. They lost one of them, the most important one to the beach, so we were completely vindicated.’ ‘But of course the press don’t want to write that because if you look at all the rubbish that is written it never includes that because the reason ye won’t write that is you’re afraid of them suing for defamation – I know that, everybody knows that.
‘Why do the papers not write that, that the most important right of way, the one to the beach was the most important, that we secured public access to the beach?’
Asked whether it was worth spending millions securing this right of the way to the beach, Mr Kearns said: ‘Obviously everybody has their own opinion. But what the law says is that the councils have to defend rights of way.’
Asked about his own six-figure golden handshake and five-figure annual pension, he said: ‘I paid into a pension for 40 years. I got what the government decided I should get. I didn’t get it for nothing.’
This week the owners of Lissadell House said that a report for a special meeting of Sligo County Council was a ‘whitewash’. Edward Walsh and Constance Cassidy said the report did little to inspire confidence for Lissadell’s future.