While work on a greenway from Monaghan Town to the border is finally about to start, people living along the planned route west to Smithboro are asking when their section will get going, nine years after they were first told about it.

Gerry Murtagh from Knockatallan told Northern Sound that many residents in his area doubt the Monaghan Town to Smithboro greenway will ever open. He said local people first got letters from Monaghan County Council about the plan back in 2017.

"We all thought it was a great idea, it would keep people off the roads, especially kids who are around the area," he said. "Everybody that you talk to around the area says 'it will never happen', but I'm still hopeful it will happen."

His main worry is the funding. "The fear I have is that the money could be diverted into something else if it's soon not started within the next couple of years, and then it means that we'd have no greenway," he said.

Where the project stands

According to Northern Sound, a recent meeting of the Monaghan Municipal District was told that changes are being made to the environmental and design reports for the Smithboro stretch. Once those are finished, the planning and compulsory purchase order (CPO) process will start, and construction will follow after that. No start date for building work was given.

The timeline has already slipped. Minutes of the Ballybay-Clones Municipal District meeting held in Clones on 16 March show the council said then that it intended to publish the Part VIII planning application for the Smithboro to Monaghan section in the second quarter of 2026, subject to approval from Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), which funds greenways. That application has not yet been published.

At that same March meeting, staff said the long-term aim is a continuous greenway from Monaghan to Clones and on to Belturbet, and that the Monaghan to Smithboro section was "currently the most advanced". The plan was for work to move from Monaghan to the border first, with Clones to Smithboro after that.

The Clones to Smithboro stretch has its own problem. The March minutes record that flood modelling found 4.1km of that preferred route is at risk of flooding. The council and its consultants sent TII flood-resilient designs and costings, but TII said it would assess them only after the national greenway design standards, which now include flood risk, are updated.

The preferred route corridor for Monaghan to Smithboro was published in October 2021 by the Ulster Canal Greenway project, after Covid delays. Its drawings run from Smithborough through Drumsnatt and Carson's Bridge to Cortolvin, on the Monaghan side.

Border section starts in November

The frustration comes in a week of good news for the other side of town. Councillors at the Monaghan Municipal District were told on Monday that a contractor has been appointed for the Monaghan Town to the border phase through Tyholland, with work due to start at the beginning of November and the route due to open before the end of 2027.

Tyholland councillor Niamh McCooey (SF) told Northern Sound that building should take about 40 weeks. Mr Murtagh said that news is welcome for walkers, but many people had expected the Smithboro stretch to be under way by now. For more on the border section, see our earlier report.