A planned tourism development for the county has the potential to positively impact all of West Clare.
It is hoped to create a West Clare Trailway and an electric bus route powered by wind turbines on the Loop Head Peninsula by 2018.
Cillian Murphy is one of the key players involved in this venture. Having completed a masters degree in International Tourism and Hospitality Management at Manchester Metropolitan University, he’s well versed on what it takes to succeed in the tourism sector, that on top of his experience with Loop Head Tourism and Murphy Blacks Restaurant.
“Tourism has always been a little innovative, it thinks a little bit differently, we’ve a lot of people back here whose brains work differently to other people where instead of looking at the negatives all the time we’ve fostered a culture where people say ‘ok that’s a situation that isn’t very helpful so how can we work around it’”, he says.
His current project involves using the bogroads of West Clare as a trailway that can entice people from all over the world to visit the area while a new mode of transport could also be provided via an electric bus.
“I think it’s going to be a really good product for us in the long-term and again we’ve always been about setting up infrastructure which allows people to use them, rather than setting up businesses we’re setting up business opportunities, these would be free for anyone to use, free for anyone to decide ‘you know what I’m going to set up a walking company, a guesthouse or I’m know going to market a weekend’s walking break’”.
Murphy feels it has the potential to evolve into something special. He cites the early interest shown from the Limerick Institute of Technology as an example of what direction the process could take.
“This is a project that could grow and grow, we’ve had interest from LIT looking at it and maybe’s there a bit of interest that they could be doing as to people’s usage, if we were to have this bus running in a diesel free year and then it was being run by a wind powered electric bus there’s comparisons to be made so there’s a whole range of places as to where this can go but that’s in a way beyond our remit or our wish, it will be great what other people can see or what experience and examples they can use from it”.