Kilkenny visit of An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar & Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy

On Thursday, August 1, An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar & Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government Eoghan Murphy paid a visit to Kilkenny.

Their first stop was at the Abbey Quarter, site of the former Smithwick’s Brewery, for the launch of the Brewhouse Refurbishment Project. This is part of Phase 1 for the area which also includes public realm works at Mayfair, Brewhouse Courtyard & Horse Barrack Lane.

The plan is to provide “4500 sq metres of high Grade A office space, divided into 12 units wrapped around a central atrium with the building ready for fit out by the end of Summer 2020”.

For more on this & some of the other projects set to roll out, KCLR spoke to a number of people involved – here you can hear from Lisney’s Aoife O’Neill, Chair of the Abbey Quarter Development Ltd Billy Murphy, Chief Executive of Kilkenny County Council Colette Byrne but first from one of the people who started the ball rolling …

About 100 invited guests attended the event and they were greeted by five people outside the site’s gates who between them were concerned about a number of issues …

Inside, An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar gave this speech:

That was followed by a tour of the site …

… and a press conference with the gathered media:

Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Eoghan Murphy, also spoke at that event – hear what he had to say here:

Minister Murphy had other sites to visit – we’ll hear from him shortly but first from Director of Services with Kilkenny County Council Mary Mulholland …

While Minister Murphy was doing that, An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar stopped by the offices of accountants & financial advisors IFAC at Danville Business Park to herald their new two million euro shared services centre and the creation of 200 new jobs across the country in the next three years, 50 of them locally. He gave this speech …