Fine Gael Kildare South TD and Minister Martin Heydon welcomed today’s announcement by Minister of State for Heritage and Electoral Reform Malcolm Noonan TD that €24,293 has been approved for the Curragh under the Community Monuments Grant 2021 Fund.
The core objective of the Community Monuments Fund is to support the conservation, maintenance, protection and promotion of local monuments and historic sites. It contains a number of different measures aimed at enabling conservation works to be carried out on archaeological monuments which are deemed to be significant and in need of urgent support, encouraging access to archaeological monuments and improving their presentation and also building resilience in archaeological monuments to enable them to withstand the effects of climate change.
Minister Heydon said “Following Minister Noonan’s recent visit to The Curragh at my invitation where I highlighted and discussed the ongoing Curragh Consultation process with him, I am delighted that funding of €24,293 has been approved to facilitate a Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) survey of the Curragh and parts of Knockaulin. The information gathered from the survey will be used to inform the Consultation Management plan for the Curragh. The funding will also compliment the geophysical survey scheduled for Old Kilcullen.
“I would like to acknowledge the Heritage Department within Kildare County Council and their commitment to progressing the Curragh Consultation process and I look forward to the next phase of this project.”