Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach for selecting my matter today. The Minister of State is very welcome and I am delighted he is in as Minister of State with responsibility for the Office of Public Works when this an Office of Public Works issue. That is really good news. I have had the privilege of working with the Chapelizod historical society and a lot of those same individuals are in Chapelizod Tidy Towns. They are the most passionate, committed, wonderful people to have the honour of working with because they are so active on the ground. Chapelizod has an amazing history but right at the heart of it, as you go into the Phoenix Park, a cromlech was discovered about 200 years ago. It is a small dolmen and a piece of our nation's heritage that goes back 5,000 years. Remains and jewellery were found under it. It was a most amazing find and there is a whole piece on it in the visitor's centre of the Phoenix Park. Everything about it is there, including the history and how extraordinary it is. Yet, here you have the cromlech that has been weather-beaten and left to crack under the heavy snows that fell a couple of years ago. The Chapelizod historical society has been raising the need for this to be preserved and protected for 20 years. At one stage, it proposed having a perspex cover over the top of it to stop a terrible crack in it from getting worse. It has been repaired over the years.

Various commitments were given and its importance noted but actually getting the finger out and doing something about it did not happen until a heavy duty vehicle crashed into it and broke a piece off in the last 18 months. It took until something that had stood there for 5,000 years actually got broken to do something. It caused untold damage to the monument itself but the heartache and grief of those who have been passionate about this was awful. There was a profound sense of loss and abandonment. We brought through a heritage Bill here from the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, and I had raised it and asked him to come out to it on several occasions. He never once made a commitment to do so. He said he would but he never replied to any offers I put to him. It took until it was damaged before the OPW stepped up. I had believed it was a heritage issue; it is actually an OPW issue.

To be fair, the Chapelizod historical society held an event with the outgoing Lord Mayor of Dublin and invited me to it because its members and I have been passionate about this. At that event, officials of the Office of Public Works came forward and spoke about the repair of the damage and what they were going to do. They committed to engaging with the residents and the locals and I really believed them. On the day, I asked them if this was for real, as we have been talking about it for a long time and they said it absolutely was. They were not prepared to commit to a timeline and as you can imagine, things like that undermine confidence. I was eager to get it straight from the horse's mouth, that is, from the Minister of State, to find out where we are at with this cromlech. Let us see progress and let us see our 5,000 year old heritage protected.