L/R: Minister Damien English, John Mulligan, Alison Clarke O’Shaughnessy, Maire Paul, Margaret Mulligan
Damien English, Minister of State with responsibility for Housing and Urban Renewal at the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, last week (Thursday 26th.January) hosted a meeting with representatives of the Boyle Albergo Diffuso Alliance in his office in Dail Eireann. The project already has the support of Roscommon County Council as well as a critical mass of property owners in the town.
The ‘Albergo Diffuso’, or scattered hotel, is an Italian concept that has successfully revived over forty towns in Italy to date and has been copied in Croatia, Switzerland and Mexico. In essence, it consists of a high-end hotel with a central reception area and with the hotel rooms scattered throughout various buildings in the town centre, over shops and in empty houses. Minister English had already expressed a keen interest in this Boyle initiative, seeing it as an effective way to provide key tourism infrastructure in heritage towns while helping to preserve town centre buildings and put them back into use. The meeting was arranged to brief the Minister on Boyle’s readiness to implement this project once support from government is forthcoming, and to show that the town is well placed to develop a pilot model that can be applied across rural Ireland.
The Minister said that Boyle appeared to be a perfect town for an Albergo Diffuso project, given its intact historic streetscapes, its valuable tourism and cultural hinterland, and the lack of an hotel in the town. He thanked the group for their valuable input and added that he is committed to find a way to make this project happen for Boyle.