Categories: General News
      Date: Aug  3, 2011
     Title: Response to Galway City Council Statement

We note the City Council’s response to our statement of cancellation. In particular, we note that the Council has not denied any of the specific claims we have made in our Statement of Cancellation.

However, the Council is not accurate in its assertion that we cancelled the Marathon and Half-Marathon on 22 July. We informed the City Council we would not operate these events in the City and instead we actively examined options to operate the races elsewhere in County Galway (outside of the City boundary and outside of City Council jurisdiction). Our objective was to eliminate any possible travel disruption to competitors. However, after considered examination of the options and time frame available, we were of the opinion on 2 August that transporting athletes to an alternative race was a preferred option.

In the interim, we confirmed our plans for the mini-marathon in the City. However, on 2 August we were also forced to concede to the persistent bureaucratic obstacles being placed in our way.

While we submitted a Traffic Management Plan which was deemed inadequate by Council Officials, it is noteworthy that our proposed course would have been run along routes that existing races utilise but who have yet to be required to provide Traffic Management Plans to the City Council.

During a radio show on Wednesday, city officials also questioned the ability of Sword Security to implement a traffic management plan. Sword Security is an extremely professional entity with experienced operatives and a wealth of successful events on their resume. Apart from marshalling such events such as the Galway Races and Aviva Stadium, they also marshal the Cork City Marathon for Cork City Council. The Galway City Marathon organisers chose Sword Security to marshal the course in 2011 for those reasons and maintain that the city council's comments are baseless.