Decision to give Newgrange land to OPW for €500 criticised by councillor

A decision by Meath County Council to give half an acre of land at the Newgrange complex to the Office of Public Works for €500 has been sharply criticised by a local councillor who said that the council should have looked for much more money to help with badly-needed road works in the general Donore area.

Council members agreed at a meeting last week to give two parcels of land totalling 0.686 of an acre at the entrance to the complex and across the road for use as a bus pull-in area and a tourist information office. In gifting the land to the OPW, the council said that it was no longer required by the council for any of its powers and duties and the proposed price for the disposal would achieve economic or social or tourist benefits for the area.

However, Fine Gael Cllr Paddy Meade said that while everyone loved Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth for what was being done there, local people would be very disappointed that such a low price was being sought for the land. He said that locals had been campaigning for some time to have improvements made to the road structure in the area because of the heavy bus traffic coming to and from the Bru na Boinne site. He said that the land would have been worth e100,000 on the open market because of its location but he would have expected OPW to pay at least e20,000 of “goodwill money” to help with local road improvements. He said that a meeting of the Bru na Boinne Steering Committee set up some years ago to guide development around the megalithic sites had not been convened for the last five years.