Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his intervention and his summation of this very important issue in his constituency. In October 2023, the Minister of State, Deputy O’Donovan, initiated a working group to progress the reuniting of the historic demesne and access issues to Castletown House and estate. This group includes representatives of the community and all of the political representatives in the area, including Deputy Durkan as a TD for the area. This working group has held three meetings to date to agree the terms of reference. To date, these meetings have focused on staff access. The officials of the OPW have been in ongoing, intensive contact with all members of the local community. They have made themselves available to meet with both representative groups and individual members of the community on an ongoing basis.

The key challenge remains that the OPW does not have vehicular access to Castletown House and estate. Without vehicular access for the OPW staff at Castletown, it will not be possible to welcome school tours, active retirement groups and other visitors to Castletown House in 2024. It is essential to understand that OPW staff have not had vehicular access to their workplace since September 2023. Their union withdrew their members on 25 October 2023 until the OPW could provide a safe working environment or safe access and egress for their members to attend their workplace. A skeleton staff continues to undertake the minimum operations on the site.

The OPW and the staff at Castletown House want to return to normal working arrangements and longer opening hours to welcome visitors both from the local area and beyond. The OPW wants to plan to welcome children for school tours and visitors to guided tours of the house, reopen the café, plan exhibitions and undertake all the biodiversity work Castletown House has become a leader in over recent years. This is not possible with the skeleton staff on site at present. Despite ongoing intensive efforts, it has not been possible to get agreement for the OPW staff to gain access to their workplace.

There is a continuing protest to any OPW vehicular traffic on Lime Avenue. However, it is critical to note that this does not extend to Kildare County Council or Irish Water. As the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donovan, has already shared, it is fully agreed that Lime Avenue is not suitable for the approximately 250,000 cars and one million visitors who came to Castletown House in 2022. The overwhelming majority of visitors to the estate are from the surrounding area. People on guided tours of Castletown House account for less than 1% of visitors. As has been made clear to the local community, the OPW does not have any permission to access Castletown House and estate from the M4 access road. Over recent months, as outlined to both the political representatives and the local community, the lack of access is causing ongoing damage to Castletown House, its collections and to the biodiversity of the estate.

To better understand the views of the local community, the OPW launched a public survey. This survey focuses on gathering information on how people travel to Castletown, what is important to them when they visit and how visitors can be supported to use active travel and public transport. The OPW and the wider community that visits the estate need to engage on this to find sustainable travel solutions. This survey will continue until 6 February and I urge the Deputy and all local political representatives to share it through their social media and constituency offices and to encourage their constituents to have their views recorded.

The OPW is not seeking to bring significant volumes of traffic through the Celbridge Gate and Lime Avenue. The OPW envisages Lime Avenue operating as a pedestrian priority road in line with current practice across numerous OPW sites such as St. Stephen’s Green and Farmleigh. The OPW has made written commitments that the volume of traffic would be approximately 20 vehicles per day for OPW staff and essential contractors. People with a disability would also be facilitated with access as required.

At this time, Castletown House and estate will not be offering car parking for visitors to Castletown. The practical implementation of this new reality and ensuring this does not have negative impacts on the local community within Celbridge is a key area of discussion for the working group. To date, the independent facilitator has convened three meetings and I understand another one is due shortly.

See this speech in context