Rural Schemes Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-17 ============================================================ Fiona O'Loughlin (FF), Administrative Panel The Minister, Deputy Calleary, is very welcome to the House. Of course, he is always welcome to Kildare. I know he has been there a number of times and if he would like to come to see the area I will talk about, he would absolutely be more than welcome. It is just a small detour on the way home to lovely Mayo. I raise a Commencement in relation to the Moore Abbey estate in Monasterevin, A monastery was originally founded on the Moore Abbey estate in the 6th or 7th century by St. Evin, whom Monasterevin is called after. This monastery was built in a wooded area, Ros Glas, which is now Moore Abbey. In the 1100s, a new abbey was built on the same spot and in the 1760s the 6th Earl of Drogheda acquired the beautiful Moore Abbey estate. He commissioned what is a wonderful historic house, which is rarely open to the public. Sometimes, at the Manley Hopkins festival, I have had the opportunity to be in there. Count John McCormack rented this house for ten years during his successful career. There is talk in the annals about local people hearing the beautiful music and singing coming from Moore Abbey; that was from 1925 to 1935. It then became a convent and now the Muiríosa Foundation owns the House and estate. The Muiríosa Foundation does excellent work for people with autism and people with intellectual disability. At one point, this was a residential home but now, following all the good practice in this area, the people who are clients of Muiríosa Foundation moved from residential out into the community, which is absolutely working for everyone else. This is a lovely site, with lovely woodland, beautiful walks and a swimming pool. A sale was announced last week of the site of the old St. Paul's Secondary School, which is very happy to have a new St. Paul's Secondary School that opened two years ago. I had hoped this site might transition into an apprenticeship school and had been liaising with the Minister, Deputy James Lawless, in relation to that, but it has been sold to a commercial entity, Lidl, to provide a low-cost shopping supermarket for people in the area. I am sure that is very welcome news, however, the fact is that a very significant sum of money will be going to the State from this sale through the Department of education. That money should be spent in the Monasterevin area. I cannot think of a better acquisition than to try to reach an agreement with the Muiríosa Foundation to be able to acquire part of the Moore Abbey estate. South Kildare only has one public swimming pool. For the people of Monasterevin, Kildangan, Rathangan and Kildare town, it would be a great boon. Part of the site was already sold a number of years ago to the Department of education to get the new St. Paul's Secondary School. I was involved in that when I was on Kildare County Council. Part of the site is now going for a new fire station for Kildare County Council but it would be wonderful if, through his Department, the Minister could liaise with the Department of education to support this very viable project for the people of Monasterevin and the area. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:38+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-17