A MAJOR restoration project for Killarney House, means the amenity will no longer be an “embarrassment to the State”, Minister for Arts Jimmy Deenihan said at the weekend.
Mr Deenihan and Minister for Tourism Leo Varadkar were in Killarney on Saturday to confirm plans for a €7 million investment in restoring the 18th-century house, near the perimeter of Killarney National Park.
The building is to be extended to accommodate an interpretive centre for the national park, as well as an exhibition and cultural centre. Rooms are to be restored with original furnishings.
The pleasure gardens are also to be restored. The project is being undertaken by the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Mr Varadkar said the €5.2 million investment he was announcing under the Fáilte Ireland’s Tourism Capital Investment Programme would open the 10,000 hectare national park into the town.
“Many people don’t realise the national park starts right here in the middle of the town,” the Minister said in Killarney town centre at the entrance to the park. Killarney is also the headquarters of the Department of Tourism.
Mr Deenihan, who gave details of a further €2 million in funding for restoration work led by the OPW and the National Parks and Wildlife Service, said the funds meant an end to “the embarrassment to the State and to Killarney”.
The building, once part of an early 18th-century French-style chateau, was handed over to the State in 1998 by the McShain family, who were American philanthropists. It had been left to deteriorate and had become a den for squatters and drinking parties.
The McShains’ only child, a US-based nun, had strongly criticised the neglect of her parents’ home, saying she could not understand such neglect at the height of the Celtic Tiger era.
Mr Deenihan told how he had telephoned Sr Pauline McShain on Friday about the investment in her family home “and she was really thrilled and delighted”. Describing the 10,300 hectare national park – a Unesco biosphere reserve and part of a worldwide network of national parks – as his “garden of Eden”, Mr Deenihan said it was remarkable because of its biodiversity and also because of its architecture, from abbeys to castles to period houses. Plans were afoot to make Killarney a national centre for biodiversity, he also said.
“This is not just a local Killarney project, but one of national significance. It’s the combination of built and natural environment – of castles, abbeys, period houses, in a perfect setting in Killarney National Park with its native woodlands, blanket bog, heath, lakes and a wide array of wildlife habitats which are very special in Ireland and abroad that makes this place so precious.”