Ms Rosemary Collier:

St. Laurence's Gate in Drogheda is an important national monument. The public realm area around it is in the control of the local authority and we are working with it in that regard. I understand it has a scheme in development to improve the public realm area.

On public access, the gate was open again this year during the Seán Corcoran festival that took place in Drogheda as part of National Heritage Week. We have a great team of people based in the Trim depot who will go out and provide access on request for festivals like that. The problem is it is not possible to provide a health and safety-compliant public access regime at the monument on an ongoing basis. The Deputy has been there and knows it is extremely difficult, and very unsafe, to climb the steps. It is just not possible to provide a regime for a level of public access on an ongoing basis. However, we are committed to ensuring we provide access for special occasions, including National Heritage Week and local festivals, and we will try to increase that level of access. We are totally committed to doing so and we have demonstrated that we can provided the people to enable that, as required. Particularly during festivals in the town, it is really important that the gate is accessible to people.