Susan O'Keeffe (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. The legislation is also welcome. As the Minister outlined, the Bill is a short and enabling piece of legislation. It is very welcome to see evidence of projects that people have wanted to happen and that there has been a groundswell of support for it in County Wexford. Anybody who knows Johnstown Castle knows how extraordinarily beautiful it is and what a generous gift it was all those years ago. The family is very happy to acquiesce to this new use of the facility and to see a way in which the place can be used for agricultural purposes as well as to continue the valuable work done by Teagasc, but also to have another capability, which is to give pleasure to visitors both local and international in addition to being able to provide a recreational facility, as Senator Michael D’Arcy suggested, perhaps for weddings and other events.

In the scoping of the options we must take care not to throw the baby out with the bath water and ensure that Johnstown Castle remains a beautiful place to visit and that those people who take it on will be the right people. I have no doubt that will happen. There is no urgency that everything would be done by tomorrow morning which gives time to ensure that the right people would be employed to seek to bring value to the historical dimension of the castle which is what people are increasingly interested in, and that would fit with the museum that already exists there. In Castlebar, there is great interest in the Museum of Country Life and matters from the past.

While we have this week wrestled with some of the dilemmas and dark secrets of the past, it is good to be able to celebrate some of our rural heritage and to see how that might be entwined into something we can celebrate and appreciate and share with our children and future generations while generating revenue in order to keep the castle standing. Old buildings are great until one has to look after them. I very much welcome the legislation and I wish well to those who are charged with the responsibility of taking Johnstown Castle into a new era. I look forward to paying a visit there in the future.