By Cormac MacConnell

I’M telling everybody I write for these days about a proposed rip-off by the Clare County Council and those related authorities in charge of the Cliffs of Moher.

I’m advising those proposing to visit one of the greatest Irish attractions that a brief boycott of the Cliffs might well serve to bring the authorities to boot and at least reduce the impact of the projected rip-off.

Basically, as things stand now, it is proposed to impose a charge of eight euros a head to view the Cliffs in future. The County Council and the Shannon Development Authority are building a new interpretation center at the traditional viewing area near the village of Liscannor and, though I’m not certain of this, the eventual impact for those who undertake that experience and who park their vehicle in the car park could be even more than eight euro a head which, near as dammit, is 10 of your dollars. I consider this a rip-off.

There’s worse. An ad hoc carnival atmosphere has developed around the fabled Cliffs over the last 20 years or so. There are traders who have been selling everything from souvenirs to CDs to burgers and chips.

In addition, and more important to the atmosphere, there have been a hardy corps of buskers there, playing and singing from morning to night. There have been harps, ballads, accordions, pipes, guitars, the entire range of music.

The buskers charged you nothing, they simply hoped you would drop something into the hat or maybe buy their latest CD or tape. They wrapped the mythically wonderful terrible beauty atop the Cliffs with wreaths of music, with a mist of it.

Sometimes the great waves down below seemed to be dancing in time. Wonderful.

As I write the authorities have launched a sustained legal campaign aimed at ejecting both the traders and, crucially, the musicians from the site. That in my view is nearly criminal.

I’ve said already publicly that what the authorities are doing (and remember the County Council is an elected body!) is fashioning themselves into an exceptionally blunt instrument with which to kill the golden goose of this region’s tourism.

The Almighty put the Cliffs there, in Moher, for free. A few decades ago, too, that is the way you saw them.

It cost nothing to park your car and walk to the edge of Ireland, below the old ruined castle, and shiver a little in the brined wind off the green Atlantic wastes and wonder greatly at the breathtaking majesty of what filled your eyes to overflowing.

And when you were looking down from above at the flying backs of gulls and gannets and puffins, the occasional falcon, you needed no interpretation center at all. The Cliffs of Moher are customized to your mind and to mine.

They are indeed mind-blowing, to use the modern phrase. It is a sad fact, related to this, that they are the very last sight that a growing number of mortal men and women ever see. This very fact, somehow, emphasizes how inspiring and stimulating they are for the overwhelming majority of us.

For us they powerfully surf home the power of the elements and their harmonious beauty, the parameters of our mortalities, the limitless joys of life and living. The Almighty put them there for us free of charge. Now the local powers wish to charge us heavily for the privilege.

I had an email last week from somebody wanting the Clare County Council to be aware that there is no charge for viewing the Niagara Falls! But this is Ireland.

There has been a nominal car-parking charge for a number of years now. There has been a small and quite pleasant visitor center of the type that sold coffee and apple pies and postcards and had a well-maintained toilet block. That was okay, I suppose.

But now the plan is to spend what will end up at about 30 million euros on this interpretation center and related facilities and to impose the range of charges I mention above. The edge of the knife is to the throat of the golden goose.

I would tell first-time visitors to this lovely region that there are other points along the coast road where you can have virtually as good a view of the mighty Cliffs as from the Eight Euro Zone. And you get them free.

I would tell these people, also, that this is an area in which coffees and teas and souvenirs (probably better and cheaper) can be purchased at a wide range of outlets.

I would accordingly advise all of you to be aware of this emerging situation and to remember the way in which the tenantry of Galway and south Mayo long ago dealt with the overbearing Captain Boycott. Is a nod as good as a wink to a Kentucky thoroughbred? I hope it is.

It is especially sad, I think, that the council elected by the musical people of Clare is now involved very actively in driving the musicians away from the Cliffs. The traders are a different and hardy breed who will always find a trading niche and make their money.

But the (free) music around this mighty spot, pagan betimes as it is, comes from a corps of free spirits, free as the winds that come in from the bay but also far more brittle and vulnerable than the traders.

They came to play for nothing, hoping to gain something from those who listened. They provided the background to all that majesty and beauty and, by being there, added immensely to it.

They did nobody any harm. They actively fed the golden goose.

Which is a helluva lot more than the council is doing.