I have some ten years learning and experience invested in perl, and at the moment I'd basically agree with your consultants. I haven't been hired solely for perl since 2003 (it was a web development gig) and I was musing just yesterday that I probably never would be again. I'm just a dinosaur in a world of fleet-footed MVC-wielding agile mammals ;) So I agree with your consultants: although perl is far from finished, it's not ideal for web dev work.
Having looked at Catalyst I'm not impressed - just look at their documentation (which seems to be a series of PODs) and compare it with Django, which has tutorials, detailed docs, etc. I'm no fan of Rails, so maybe Django is a better way to go? Django is very structured, very MVC (almost) and plays nicely with your HTML coders.
Whenever I have worked on a perl project which someone else has started, it's always been a hideous mess. Rather than fight to keep things as they are, if I were in your position I'd agree wholeheartedly with the consultants, except their conclusion - just name another successor product apart from Rails and make a strong case for it. (Although I'm sure there are plenty of people here who would defend Rails and I'm not looking for an argument with them.)
Having looked at Catalyst I'm not impressed - just look at their documentation (which seems to be a series of PODs) and compare it with Django, which has tutorials, detailed docs, etc. I'm no fan of Rails, so maybe Django is a better way to go? Django is very structured, very MVC (almost) and plays nicely with your HTML coders.
Whenever I have worked on a perl project which someone else has started, it's always been a hideous mess. Rather than fight to keep things as they are, if I were in your position I'd agree wholeheartedly with the consultants, except their conclusion - just name another successor product apart from Rails and make a strong case for it. (Although I'm sure there are plenty of people here who would defend Rails and I'm not looking for an argument with them.)