One of the puzzles of Mr Michael D. Higgins's tenure as Minister of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht was why he chose to persist with plans to build an interpretative centre at Mullaghmore - although a greatly scaled-down version - in the face of determined opposition from many of his own supporters.
It remains to be seen what position the Government will adopt on the continuing dispute over plans for a centre at Gortlecka near Mullaghmore. Court action has been suspended pending a decision by Clare County Council on the OPW's planning application.
The council recently advertised that it would seek a material contravention of the county plan in order to let the development go ahead. This would require a three-quarters majority of councillors to vote in favour of the proposal at their meeting in September.
Members of the public, meanwhile, have until Friday to inform the council of their views on this latest move.
Whatever happens in September, one thing seems certain: Mullaghmore is destined to enter the Guinness Book of Records as Ireland's longest-running environmental controversy.
Mr Higgins, meanwhile, has shed some light on his reasons for continuing with the scaled-down development at the Gortlecka site.
When he withdrew the original planning application in March 1995, the former minister announced that he had commissioned an overall management plan for the greater Burren area, which included proposals to develop visitor facilities at Corofin, Kilfenora and Ballyvaughan, as well as what Mr Higgins describes as "minimalist suggestions" for a scaled-down development at the original site.
The reason for this was simple: without some building at the original site, EU funding earmarked for it might be lost, he told The Irish Times. "In order to keep the European money, to keep anything, I took that minimalist road," he said.
"I could argue that what I was saving on ecological grounds I had a legitimate right to spend on places that were going to take the pressure off the main centre at Mullaghmore. You have to be sophisticated about these things."
THE original level of EU funding for the project was £1 million and about £800,000 of this was spent by the time it was abandoned in March 1995. It was feared at the time that the European Commission might seek a refund of the money; last March the Commission announced that it intended to do just that.
Mr Higgins said he was prepared to consider withdrawing the revised planning application for Gortlecka, right up to the time he left office, if it became clear there was a pollution danger from the proposed centre.
"If Clare County Council suggested at any stage to me that there would be any release of water into the underground water system, I would have withdrawn the application and gone ahead with just the development in Kilfenora, Ballyvaughan and Corofin," he said.
Opponents of the new plan had a "difficult choice", Mr Higgins added. "They had an opportunity of completing their business with me, on the minimum [plan]. But I'm gone now, and that minimum application, possibly falling with Clare County Council, is a matter for the new Government to decide."
Given Fianna Fail's enthusiastic support for the original proposal for a large interpretative centre at Mullaghmore, the Government's intentions are anxiously awaited by the Burren Action Group and others.
A BAG spokesman said, however, that much had changed in the intervening six years. One key change is that Mullagh more now lies within the constituency of the relevant Minister, Ms de Valera.
"There is a sense that now it's the Minister's constituency, money will be available to buy a way out of the problem," the spokesman said. He said there was a "strong chance" the attempt to get the material contravention through the council meeting in September will fail, as councillors take a fresh look at other options.
Ms de Valera is keenly aware that the Mullaghmore issue "has been festering like a sore" in the constituency for years, according to the spokesman. He said people on both sides were keen to re solve the problem so they could go on to tackle other urgent developmental issues in north Clare, such as the proliferation of holiday homes.