-       Mr. Daniel Curley, Manager

The Cathaoirleach, Cllr. Connaughton welcomed Mr. Daniel Curley the Manager of the Rathcroghan Visitor Centre in Tulsk to the meeting to give the Members a presentation on the centre. The presentation focused on their activities and community involvement, past achievements, current projects and future works planned.

·         The formation of the Tulsk Action Group Ltd by the local community in 1996, was the foundation of the establishment of the Museum as a result of getting funding from the Irish Tourist Board.

·         In 2013 a Roscommon LEADER grant helped the reinvigoration of the facilities and the centre as a whole. On completion of the upgrade of the interpretative facilities, the staff completed the upgrade of the rest of the facilities including the café.

·         The visitor numbers have increased substantially year on year and have almost doubled from 7,500 in 2014 to 13,300 in 2017.

·         The services provided include – the interpretative centre exhibition rooms, guided tours of the Rathcroghan Archaeological landscape, local craft and gifts bookshop, Táin Community Café open 6 days a week year round and conference and meeting room facilities

·         The centre also hosts two annual conferences, a winter lecture series, a range of heritage week events and the Rathcroghan leg of the Táin march. The annual community archaeological conference every April and attracts visitors from the UK and Europe.

·         The visitor centre is maintained and operated by 7 staff including 3 full time roles. Community groups use the meeting rooms on a weekly basis.

·         The staff continue to develop and improve the centre and enliven the visitor experience with new and upgrade of exhibits including sawhorse exhibit charts, Rathcroghan trail booklet, replica Queen Maedbh chariot and signposting of the Táin trail funded by RCC.  The centre currently exhibits 35 local provenance artefacts housed in NMI spec museum display case.

·         The Centre is currently working towards receiving UNESCO World Heritage Site status.

·         The latest development is the Farming EIP Project Plan developed with the Rathcroghan Resource Community. The sum of €984k has been awarded for a 5 year pilot programme to facilitate farming activities to enhance the Rathcroghan site.

The Members warmly welcomed the presentation and congratulated Mr. Curley on the work done at the Centre and their ambitious plans for the future including the UNESCO Heritage status and the Farming EIP project. The centre was also congratulated on winning a Pride of Place Award recently.  Other contributions included:

o   Requirement for better parking for buses at the site and better toilet facilities. Roscommon County Council should liaise with the OPW on this. There is a need for an innovative approach to car parking.

o   The potential for Rathcroghan is finally utilised and developed but there is work that can be done at sites throughout the county.

o   Is there potential to link visitors from Clonmacnoise to Rathcroghan?

o   Looking forward to the animated story on cats and Rathcrogan.

Daniel Curley added that they need a project office to facilitate recent developments and ‘Kellys House’ would be an ideal location. The OPW have been approached about this as they own the property. The site often gets overflow visitors from Clonmacnoise as it can be oversubscribed. The centre also gets the benefit of a visit from the Ballintubber Field School from the USA annually.

Cllr. Ward asked about the return of the ‘Mill Wheel’ from Kilbegnet and asked if it could be returned to Roscommon and housed in the Derryglad Folk museum. It was previously proposed however to bring the Wheel to Drum Heritage Centre. And while it is very important that the wheel is returned, the cost of providing an air con room could be up on €100k pa.

The Chief Executive thanked Mr. Curley and his staff for the work done in Rathcroghan and Daniel’s leadership and expertise. The Farming Initiative will allow an overall plan to be developed for the area and give great confidence to the UNESCO bid. He gave a commitment to look at the carparking issue.