Minister says gardaí will take 'whatever steps are necessary' to protect library staff

“Those people who come in and abuse the staff at the library, are doing society a huge injustice,” she said.

She was speaking in Cork on Thursday at the official opening of a new and architecturally stunning €4.8m library in Kinsale which has been developed in a historic 19th century mill. It is the fifth new library she has opened this year.

Ms Humphreys said she hopes people will use and enjoy their new public library. When asked if she would like to see gardaí adopt a more robust approach to the policing of library protests, she said that was a matter for gardaí.

“The gardaí always deal with these instances and they have the expertise to do that,” she said.

“And I’m very satisfied that the gardaí will provide the support that’s needed to the staff and give them any advice that they can.”

When pressed on the matter, she said: “I am satisfied that they [gardaí] will do and take whatever steps are necessary to address this issue." 

We have wonderful library staff up and down the length and breadth of this country, that they deserve to be able to go to their work and know that they’re not going to be intimidated or upset in any way.

“I know that they have received extra training to help them deal with these difficult situations and I know that the local authority has been supporting them with that. And there’s also constant contact with gardaí.”

Kinsale’s new library on Church Square has been developed in the historic former James O’Neill mill, which lay derelict for almost a century. Its transformation into a state-of-the-art library and cultural space was funded under the Rural Regeneration and Development Fund (RRDF) to the tune of €2.17m with an additional investment of €2.6m from Cork County Council.

Heather Humphreys said the project is a shining example of what the RRDF is all about — tackling vacancy and dereliction and breathing new life into rural town centres.

Later on Thursday, the minister officially opened the Ballydesmond pocket park project which was delivered as part of an overall project to improve the village centre which received €870,000 in RRDF funding. 

Father and son have a special connection to Ireland’s newest library 

Nine-year-old Luke Moloney from the Old Head, Kinsale, in Cork, won a competition to design the membership card for the town's new €4.8m library. 

And his father Barry, who leads historic walking tours of the town, is the author of a local history book on the shelves of the library. 

“It was a proud moment to see Luke’s library card and my book about Kinsale in the library," Barry said at the library's official opening on Thursday. 

Luke, a pupil in third class at Scoil Naomh Eltin, was honoured at the event for his winning design which shows a young boy reading a local history book with the new library inside a thought bubble alongside. 

“I love libraries,” he said. "You can come there and read books, they have lots of variety. I like Roald Dahl, and some other authors as well." 

His dad, Barry, said it is great to see the once-derelict mill building brought back into use. 

“James O’Neill, who built it, was born in 1850 and died in 1922," he said. 

“He was an amazing entrepreneur — he was a baker and built this building to store grain, but he was also a publican, a pawnbroker, a magistrate, a local politician, a shipping agent, and he generated the first electric power for Kinsale."

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