Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 27 November 2025
Public Accounts Committee
Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts 2024
Vote 13 - Office of Public Works
Report on the Accounts of the Public Services 2024
Chapter 5 - Development of a Proposed National Science Centre
Chapter 6 - The OPW's Management of Office Accommodation
2:00 am
Mr. John Conlon:
The potential is very significant. To remind people who might not have been as involved as the Deputy, we had 1 million visitors a year to Castletown House until 2022. That is a very significant footfall in tourism for the north Kildare area. We want to get back to that quickly and we will. In addition to that, I mentioned earlier we bought the Donaghcumper estate adjoining us. We will work with Kildare County Council in doing a massive plan both for Castletown and Donaghcumper. That has great potential to achieve huge synergies in tourism, as I just spoke about, and to allow Kildare County Council to provide the facilities that Celbridge and Leixlip need for sport etc. We will work hard with it over the coming years to achieve all those objectives. It will incur further investment in Donaghcumper in particular. We want to make sure Castletown itself receives investment and we have plans for that over the next number of years. We will try to work hard with everyone to make our plans clear. The benefits, as the Deputy knows, are huge. If we can get back to 1 million visitors a year to Castletown quite quickly, the Deputy knows the benefits it will have for Celbridge and businesses there.