Published: Wednesday, 12th May, 2010 5:30pm

Council declines to back down on castle closure

Councillors clashed last week over whether or not the complete closure of Athlone Castle this summer for refurbishment works was a necessity for safety reasons.

They disagreed after Mayor Mark Cooney suggested that the castle grounds should be open to the public until the construction work actually begins in July, while Cllr Gabrielle McFadden asked the council to reconsider the decision to close the castle for the entire summer period, when so many visitors are due to the area.

Cllr Cooney suggested that the castle grounds could remain open to the public so they could walk around the walls as long as supervision was provided. "Given that it's the tourist season and the number of events happening in the town, it should be open, and work might not commence until after the triathlon," he added.

Cllr McFadden said she recently had American visitors here but had no where to bring them. "The European Festival is bringing 5,000 people to the town, it's madness to close it when visitors want to use it," she said. "If we open it now it's not any less safe than it was three months ago."

However Town Clerk John Walsh insisted that the castle was a hazardous environment with dangers for visitors and that supervisory staff were not included in the council's budget this year. "It will become a building site from July and as no income or expenditure was provided in the budget for operational purposes in 2010 there is no scope to provide supervision for the next two months," he said.

Cllr Kevin 'Boxer' Moran said it would be crazy to open the castle as it was now a building site and there were security issues. He said the council had spent long enough debating the works and that it needed to be revamped because of the drop-off in the number of visitors and revenue.

Cllr Sheila Buckley Byrne agreed: "You can't have it every way. The contractors need to put a plan in place. It's not safe to allow the public to roam around. There's safety laws and liabilities... We have to take a little bit of pain for a lot of gain," she said.

Cllrs Paul Hogan, Kieran Molloy and Alan Shaw agreed with Cllrs Cooney and McFadden.

However, Mr Walsh insisted that it could not open, because there would be no supervision and the council had no budget to provide supervision over the next two months. "It would very quickly become a place for anti-social behaviour," he added. He said that the council had received 50 tenders so far for the refurbishment job and July was still the expected date for work to commence. The design team had a brief to open the castle by December.