Kerry County Council's decision last week to adopt new bylaws for 52 beaches in advance of the summer holiday season should be welcomed, at least in principle. And with more Blue Flag beaches than any other county in Ireland, Kerry must be careful.
Although some of the provisions banning public barbecues and busking without the council's written consent appear draconian, there can be no doubt that beaches and particularly sand dunes need to be protected from intrusive, damaging and potentially dangerous activities such as car-racing and quad-biking. Many people would agree that the nuisance of noisy jet-skiing also needs to be controlled.
As Coastwatch Ireland has pointed out repeatedly, our coasts are under continual pressure from more recreational use and abuse, infilling for development, erosion and climate change. The adoption of a Coastal Zone Management (CZM) approach to deal with these threats in a comprehensive manner has long been advocated by Coastwatch's Karin Dubsky, but the Government has yet to produce draft legislation - despite promising that it would have a CZM strategy in place by last year. It is no wonder, therefore, that local authorities feel they must resort to imposing bylaws on an ad-hoc basis.
There are problems with such an approach. Different rules will apply in different counties, leading to confusion about what is, or is not, permissible. Bylaws recently adopted by Wexford County Council are not the same as those promulgated in Kerry or Fingal or Meath. Also, not all beaches are "bylawed"; prohibiting quad-bikes on Blue Flag beaches could encourage their use on unprotected beaches. Enforcement will also be a challenge for local authorities with neither the resources nor the personnel to ensure that bylaws are observed.
One of the most troublesome of Kerry's new bylaws, which came into force yesterday, is likely to be the ban on the long-standing tradition of camping on such well-known beaches as Ballybunion, Castlegregory, Derrynane, Inch and Ventry and 12 others. But officials pointed out that unregulated camping on the Maharees had grown to such an extent that it now posed an environmental risk. In the case of Inch Strand, an area is to be set aside for car parking after the local community council pointed out that there was no alternative. The public has a keen interest in what happens in coastal areas. When Wexford County Council published its draft bylaws a few months ago, it received more submissions than were generated by the draft county development plan - even though the beaches account for less than 1 per cent of the county's geographical area.