Fiona O'Loughlin (Fianna Fail)

The Curragh Camp is a very special place in County Kildare and nationally. It was a thriving community but is not so much now, sadly, because a lot of facilities have been moved from there and a lot of the accommodation for married people and families is no longer available. At the same time, many families were reared in the Curragh Camp. There is still a military community and two schools are still operating from there.

My Commencement matter relates to two iconic buildings. The camp dates back to around 1855 and was used during the Crimean War by the Royal Engineers. It was later expanded with a permanent barracks, a post office, a fire station, churches, a water tower and a courthouse. The post office itself is of considerable social and historic importance because it was the first purpose-built post office completed in Ireland after Dublin's GPO. It was constructed in 1899 and there is a preservation order on the building. It became a template for numerous other Irish post offices and served not just the Curragh Camp community but the surrounding villages like Brownstown, Suncroft, Gormanstown, etc., until July 2019, when the then postmaster retired. Facilities were moved to a modern facility so, thankfully, the service itself was not lost to the Curragh Camp and surrounding areas. It is an absolutely beautiful building and has been unused since 2019, after 119 years of service. Since the building closed, it has suffered vandalism and deterioration, which we see all too often with vacant buildings. Kildare County Council had to take enforcement action to ensure some of the building was boarded up. It is very important that a plan be put in place for this iconic building, which is in the heart of the Curragh Camp.

The fire station was built not long after the post office. It was erected around the year 1900. It is a five-storey red-brick fire station with a very prominent, six-storey water tower. It was among the very first of Ireland's purpose-built fire stations and was built extremely well. It has a very imposing tower that makes it a centrepiece of the Curragh Camp civic square. Local people talk about being born under the shadow of the tower. It was a very important building, both in terms of the service it provided and the structure itself. Sadly, the fire services are no longer based there, as of only last month. That was a military decision, taken due to the working time directive. I do not propose to get into that issue now but I think that the decision was an absolute shame. Fire services do continue to be operated by Kildare County Council as a replacement but are not based at the Curragh Camp fire station.

These are two very fine buildings, and people who live in the Curragh now and also those who come from families who originally lived there are very concerned about these two iconic buildings. Is there a plan for them?