Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

For the benefit of the meeting, I have asked. I would like to use this forum to have it stated publicly. It continues to be our stated ambition that we want to reunite the land at Castletown. We are open to discussions - call it what you may – with the current owner to see how that could be achieved. However, we need to have regard to the public purse, the public spending code and committees of the Oireachtas like this one, which would inquire into how we came to purchase that land in the event we did so. However, it is our stated ambition that it is of national and international significance. The meeting on Friday may have to be repeatedly reconvened. I am not putting a time limit on this other than to use this opportunity to say to that my bona fides in this regard are, first, to make sure people locally do not have to expect to have anything surreptitiously done by the OPW. That will not happen. Nothing will be done on the estate without the proper consultation that is required and that the people locally expect.

Looking at similar estates we have, for example Doneraile Court in County Cork or Kilkenny Castle, vehicular accesses are maintained cheek by jowl with pedestrians. Even at St. Stephen’s Green just across the street from here, pedestrian and vehicular accesses for the service vehicles needed by the OPW are able to be done on a daily basis without any issue.

I appeal to everybody going into this process on Friday to come to a solution. I believe it is not unreachable or unmanageable and I think the Leas-Chathaoirleach would agree with me. Then we can work towards a far bigger prize for the State and the people of north Kildare, which is to attain those lands. I would like to get to a situation where everybody can enjoy Christmas and not have this issue with regard to feeling they need to man a protest line. I cannot state it any more clearly than I have stated it before in private meetings with Oireachtas Members, to the local community groups and here now in the committee. It is not our intention to do anything on that estate that will upset anybody. We know the value of what the people of Celbridge, Leixlip and north Kildare have done in terms of their interest around the house and the demesne. Our stated objective continues to be to unite the land. I have no doubt the Leas-Chathaoirleach will feed back to me next Friday, if not before. I wish that process well on Friday and I hope we can move forward with Kildare County Council, An Garda Síochána and any other agencies and community groups that Oireachtas Members deem necessary to try to facilitate this.