When Councillor Pio Smith asked the Local Authority at yesterday’s Drogheda Municipal District meeting to cost the reconstruction of the Buttergate and to explore the possibility of providing a footpath from the Bus Depot via the Buttergate to Millmount, the answer he received was less than encouraging.
Louth County Council’s Director of Services for Planning, Infrastructure and Economic Development, Frank Pentony told him: “This costing assessment would be a job for a team of a grade 1 conservation architect, a conservation engineer, an archaeologist and a quantity surveyor.”
“We do not have those specialisms within the Council and they would need to be hired in to do the exercise. We do not currently have a budget for these works, so we would need to apply for and obtain external funding.
“The Buttergate is considered to be a National Monument in the care or guardianship of the Local Authority. Any proposal to rebuild the Buttergate would require Ministerial consent. It is possible that this would be achieved as there is photographic evidence of how it looked before 1958.
“The creation of a walking link would also require Ministerial consent as it would require excavations through the line of the town wall. Of which the Buttergate was a part.”
Undeterred, Councillor Smith recalled the late Councillor Ray Dempsey who he said had fought for years for the rebuilding of Millmount which we all know has been a huge success.
“Here we have the Buttergate which is an historic part of the town which could be used as an attraction for tourists given its location close to Millmount and across the road from the bus station” Councillor Smith said.
He added that he’d like to see, at some time in the future, to see it restored and to have a connecting walk right up into Millmount.
“I think we should have that as a long-term goal and that we should be ready to move whenever funding does become available.
“We’ll just have to keep the pressure on and eventually we will be in a position to create this vision for the town that we want because tourism is vital and we have to make the best use of the assets, the architectural gems that we have”
He said that Drogheda has a lot more to offer than Kilkenny but added that Kilkenny is streets ahead as regards attracting tourists.
