The reconstruction of St Mel’s Cathedral in Longford town created a minimum of 100 jobs and contributed €7.5 million to the State’s tax revenues.
According to the Chairman of St Mel’s Cathedral Project Committee, Seamus Butler, the biggest restoration project on a cathedral in Europe had received just €100,000 of tax payers’ money in a grant from the Heritage Council.
In total, €30 million was spent on the restoration project with the vast majority of that money coming from the Church’s insurers, Alliance. Another €1 million was donated in voluntary funds.
“We would estimate that the Irish tax payer gained handsomely from the restoration of the Cathedral,” Seamus Butler stated in the Octagonal room of the cathedral, where the recesses have been left unplastered as a reminder of the 2009 fire.
An average of 100 people worked on the site every day and it is estimated that for every on-site job, an off-site job was created.
The restoration project also brought about the setting up of two training courses for 60 people, one of which upskilled local tradespeople in heritage restoration.
Colm Redmond, the lead architect on the cathedral project, remarked that to “take the building from the condition of a shell to the completed work we see today is a remarkable achievement.”
He explained how every single one of the cathedral’s massive 28 stone limestone columns had had to be replaced as the originals have been severely damaged in the furnace which began in the boiler and rose to 900 degrees.
“It is my hope that the people of the Diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnois will embrace their cathedral as the return of an old friend, as they recognise in the building features they have known for many years, while welcoming the new intervention as part of a new phase of life of the cathedral,” he said.
In all ten artists, five men and five women, were involved in producing new religious art for the restoration project.
Among the features of the restored cathedral are a Carrara marble altar sculpted by Tom Glendon, a silver tabernacle created by Imogen Stuart and Vicki Donovan, a pipe organ, the largest in the country consisting of 2,307 pipes, built by the Fratelli Ruffatti of Padua in Italy, Stations of the Cross by sculptor Ken Thompson and stained glass windows designed Kim en Joong, a Dominican priest from Korea.
Bishop O’Reilly has expressed the hope that among those who come and visit the cathedral will be those of different faith communities.
“People who belong to the Protestant community will be happy to know that their tradition is making a contribution to the restored building. The design of St Mel’s altar was inspired by the communion table of the Church of Scotland Cathedral of St Giles in Edinburgh. While important furnishings such as the Bishop’s Chair were designed by the Anglican artist Angela Godfrey,” he explained.
