CITY TRIBUNE
‘Give the castle back to Galway’ demands TD
BY ISABEL FILBY
A local TD has called on the City Council to create a civic space in Galway where important events can be held.
Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív has renewed his calls for the Council to begin negotiations with AIB, with a view to acquire Lynch’s Castle as a venue for receptions or other civic events.
Deputy Ó Cuív said: “The thing that Galway is missing, is a prestigious civic space in City Council ownership for such events, and that can also be hired out to other appropriate community events, charitable groups and such.
“We need a space for occasions such as conferrings of the Freedom of the City on notable people; receiving winning Galway teams and other famous sports people and also to hold civic receptions when prestigious conferences come to Galway.”
He noted that Dublin has Dublin Castle and the Royal Hospital, and other privately or State-owned prestigious venues, but Galway has nothing similar.
Deputy Ó Cuív said that Lynch’s Castle – parts of which date back to the 14th Century – was “bizarre and wasted as a mundane bank”.
“It is very urgent to hold negotiations now while the state still has a majority shareholding in AIB, before access to this important building is lost.”
According to Fáilte Ireland, business visitors can be worth two to three times as much to the local economy as a leisure tourist.
Business visitors tend to stay around the city, bringing in income for local businesses, while tourists head to surrounding areas for sightseeing.
Deputy Ó Cuív said his personal experience of business trips is never leaving the cities and not going beyond the main streets.
“We wouldn’t travel, because we were [there for] business, we were in a hurry, we had a council meeting and the night before a dinner, a reception, and by evening time we’d be back on a plane on the way home because that’s the way politics and business works. You wouldn’t have gone sightseeing, but you would have gone to town and bought something, spent some money.
“It is a shame that a building, with such a rich history, just sits there useless for the people of Galway, when it has so much potential, that would be so easy to harness.
“If Galway wishes to hold important events and invite important people, on the same level of some of the other major cities, it needs to provide the spaces to do so,” he stressed.
During the economic crash, Deputy Ó Cuív previously said Lynch’s Castle should be acquired at a nominal annual rent of €1 as a gesture of “atonement” and “repent for its sins” that contributed to the country’s financial collapse.
The Castle building dates from about 1320 and originally belonged to the Lynch family, who produced 84 Mayors of Galway, and was believed to be located right next to the exact centre of medieval Galway. Lynch’s Castle was rebuilt between 1493 and 1503 and was despoiled by Oliver Cromwell’s forces during the sacking of the city in 1652.
It was completely rebuilt after the trauma of Cromwell’s sacking and extended to the west before 1820. The exterior walls of the building have been unchanged since at least the 1810s and much of the walls date from the 15th century.
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
The new Salmon Weir pedestrian and cycle bridge will be officially opened to the public next Friday, May 26.
Work on the €10 million bridge got underway in April 2022, before the main structure was hoisted into place in early December.
A lunchtime tape-cutting ceremony will take place on Friday, as the first pedestrians and cyclists traverse the as-yet-unnamed bridge.
The Chief Executive of Galway City Council, Brendan McGrath, previously said the bridge, once opened, would remove existing conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and traffic “as well as facilitating the Cross-City Link public transport corridor over the existing 200-year-old bridge”.
The naming of the new bridge has been under discussion by the Council’s Civic Commemorations Committee since late last year.
One name that has been in the mix for some time is that of the first woman in Europe to graduate with an engineering degree – Alice Perry.
Ms Perry, who was from Wellpark, graduated from Queen’s College Galway (now University of Galway) in 1906. The university’s engineering building is named in her honour.
The bridge was built by Jons Civil Engineering firm in County Meath and was assembled off-site before being transported to Galway. Funding for the project was provided in full by the National Transport Authority and the European Regional Development Fund.
(Photo: Sheila Gallagher captured the city’s new pedestrian footbridge being raised on the south side of the Salmon Weir Bridge in December. It will officially open next Friday, May 26).
From the Galway City Tribune – Minister of State for Local Government and Planning, Kieran O’Donnell was labelled a “disgrace” for overturning councillors’ decisions to rezone land in the new City Development Plan.
Minister O’Donnell (pictured) confirmed in a letter to Council Chief Executive Brendan McGrath last week that he was reversing 25 material alternations made by councillors to the CDP 2023-29. He made the decision on the advice of Office of Planning Regulator (OPR).
Minister O’Donnell directed that 14 land parcels that were subject to land-use zoning changes by councillors as part of the Material Alterations to the Draft CDP should be reversed.
He directed that a further 11 land parcels in the city should become “unzoned”.
The Minister found that the CDP had not been made in a manner consistent with recommendations of the OPR, which required specific changes to the plan to ensure consistency with the national planning laws and guidelines.
At last week’s Council meeting Cllr Eddie Hoare (FG) asked for clarity on the process by which councillors could rezone the lands that had been changed by the Minister’s direction.
Cllr Declan McDonnell said, “What he [Minister O’Donnell] has done is an absolute disgrace”.
And he asked: “Do we have to have another development plan meeting to deal with it?”
Both Cllrs Hoare and McDonnell wondered what would become of the lands that were rezoned or unzoned by the ministerial direction.
Mr McGrath said the Council had put forward an argument in favour of retaining the material alterations in the plan, but ultimately the Minister sided with OPR.
He said if councillors want to make alterations to the new plan, they could go through the process of making a material alteration but this was lengthy.
The Save Roscam Peninsula campaign welcomed the Minister’s decision.
In a statement to the Galway City Tribune, it said the direction would mean the Roscam village area on the Roscam Peninsula will be unzoned and a number of land parcels would revert back to agriculture/high amenity.
A spokesperson for the campaign said: “the material alterations made by city councillors following lobbying by developers continued the long-standing practice of councillors facilitating a developer-led plan rather than an evidence- and policy-based plan that meets the needs of the city.
“The Minister’s direction is an important step in restoring confidence in the planning system. It is clear from the City Council’s own evidence on future housing projections that there was no requirement to zone these lands for residential purposes in order to meet the needs of the targeted population increase up to 2029,” the spokesperson added.
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