Remarks by President McAleese At the official opening of Cork Civic Trust’s Pope’s Quay project
Remarks by President McAleese At the official opening of Cork Civic Trust’s Pope’s Quay project
Dia dhíbh a chairde. Tá áthas orm bheith i bhur láthair ar an ocáid speisalta seo. Tá mé buíoch díbh as an gcuireadh agus as an bhfáilte fhíorchaoin a chur sibh romham.
I am delighted to be here today with Cork Civic Trust to officially celebrate the completion of its flagship project at 50 Pope’s Quay, and I thank your Chairman, Seamus Scally and Director, John Miller most sincerely for the kind invitation to join you today. My last encounter with the Trust was in 2002 when you were the proud winners of the Heritage Award from the Irish American Cultural Institute. You have been busy since, both enhancing our built environment and helping us to understand the importance of our architectural heritage.
There is little doubt but that society in general now has a greater appreciation of the wealth of buildings in this country and the way they contribute to the quality of life of all our communities. Your work takes us back through time to other lives lived here and it takes us forward in time as responsible guardians of what we inherited. You link past present and future in a sacred stewardship which is not afraid of change but which is afraid of the damage done to the very character of our lived environment by neglect and disinterest. You take your stewardship very seriously and it is your work of conservation and restoration that makes converts of the disinterested and creates a new civic pride in a new generation. The considerable progress made in the last 10 years in protecting and conserving the architectural heritage is a significant achievement and Cork Civic Trust can lay claim to some of the credit. Leadership at national and local political level has also been crucial and no doubt the work of the statute-based National Inventory of Architectural Heritage will help us as a society to chart a better way to the future through a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of our past. I know it is currently carrying out an architectural survey of Cork inner city to be published in 2004. Once completed, this important project will provide us with a much clearer insight into the fullness of life lived here by many past generations. It will also give the Civic Trust plenty to draw inspiration and ideas from! Not that you are short of either as this project clearly shows. Nor are you short of determination for the road to completion of this six-year project was far from smooth and might have daunted a lesser organisation. The funding alone caused huge headaches with money from the EU, from public and private bodies and of course from the Musgrave Group whose donation allowed the stalled work to continue to the final curtain.
Now thanks to your dedication we have the chance to enjoy this fine early eighteenth century house, one of the finest houses from that era to survive in today’s Cork. It has had a very colourful career from a fine home for the landed gentry, to the site of a cooperage business, from a hospital for women and children to a family home for the Ryan family who lived here until the 1980’s. Now it has another career to look forward to as an exceptionally fine venue for receptions, exhibitions and meetings and as the headquarters for Cork’s reign as the European Capital of Culture in 2005. It seems entirely right that this eighteenth century building so lovingly refurbished in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries should be at the heart of Cork’s opportunity to showcase to the rest of Europe just what a vibrant, dynamic place it is today and always has been.
I wish John Kennedy, Director of Cork 2005 and his staff the best of luck in organising the programme of events for the year from their home here at Pope’s Quay. I would like to take this opportunity to commend Cork Civic Trust for the role it has played in broadening public awareness of the unique resource that rests in our architectural heritage and the serious responsibility we all share for its preservation. In protecting the stones, the fabric, the furniture, honour is paid to the skill of past craftsmen and women. In breathing new life into historic old buildings you confer a renewed dignity on the lives of those who lived here and an appreciation of the steps which brought each of us into this century of opportunity.
I congratulate and thank everyone involved in giving that new life to this beautiful property at 50 Pope’s Quay and a new gift to our national patrimony. I have no doubt that your Chairman, Seamus Scally and Director, John Miller, will continue with single minded dedication to pursue your aims and objectives and I trust that this magnificent facility will enable the work of the Trust to be considerably enhanced going forward.
I now take great pleasure in declaring the Cork Civic Trust restoration project at 50 Pope’s Quay officially open.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.