Patience needed to get St Mel’s Cathedral right

Patience needed to get St Mels Cathedral right

The unveiling of the architects who will draw up the plans for the new cathedral, with the help of parishioners, was viewed by Bishop Colm O’Reilly as a new beginning for St. Mel’s. However, he stressed the need for patience before they moved re-building stage of the project. Speaking at the press conference at his residence in Longford, Bishop Colm said, “I’m looking on this day as a day of new beginning, a day of re-emergence of hope for the future.

“We are very confident that with the help, expertise and professionalism of these two firms (Richard Hurley and Associates Architects and Fitzgerald, Kavanagh and Partners), we are going to get a very good end product.” Bishop Colm stressed that the architects and design team will need time to put together the plan for what will be the new-look cathedral. “This is the really important work; it’s not secondary, it’s central to the entire quality of work when it’s done,” he said.

Joan O’Connor, Director of Interactive Project Managers, echoed those sentiments. “To see the cathedral today, it was heartbreaking. It looked bad on the day after the fire, but it actually has been further de-constructed now so we can analyse what we need to do. I think we’re now at the starting blocks for putting it back together again.

The Longford Leader