Lissadell House closure: 11 to lose jobs

ELEVEN people are to lose their jobs with the decision of the owners of Lissadell House in Co Sligo to close the historic estate to the public.

The owners of the ancestral home of 1916 leader, Countess Markievicz, and her sister, the poet and suffragette Eva Gore-Booth, will close it to the public from next Monday.

Barristers Edward Walsh and Constance Cassidy, who bought the historic estate in 2003, said the decision had been forced on them by the actions of Sligo County Council.

Last month, members of the council unanimously passed a motion that the county development plan be amended to make provision for the preservation of public rights of way on a number of routes through the estate.

Eleven of the 24 Lissadell staff will be laid off but the family said yesterday that all existing commitments would be met and that necessary ongoing maintenance would be undertaken.

“For this year, we will work towards achieving a limited summer opening in order to facilitate the commitments already made,” the couple said.

When the estate was sold by the Gore-Booth family in 2003, there was some criticism of the Government for its failure to purchase it for the state.

The owners say they have increased the number of visitors from 4,000 a year to more than 40,000 and have made Lissadell a focal point for tourism in the north-west without getting any state funding.

In a statement yesterday, they said they had purchased Lissadell as private property and that, at the time, the vendor, Josslyn Gore- Booth, had given a sworn declaration confirming that no public rights of way existed over the property. Sligo County Council had also stated that the roads through the estate were not in the charge of the council, they said.

The closure comes in the wake of the ruling by Sligo County Council last month to enshrine a provision for the preservation of the public rights of way through the estate.

The couple have objected to what they said amounted to uncontrolled access to the estate.