Theatre plan should be decoupled from City Deal

IN the wake of the Irish government announcing funding for the arts as part of the Shared Island Initiative the former president of the Newry Chamber has shared  how  this could be used to make the town theatre project a reality.

 Jerome Mullen was commenting after Taoiseach Micheál Martin announced that as much as 14.5   million euro of the Shared Island fund has been earmarked  for an expanded Creative Ireland and Arts Programme.

Although no exact amount has been attached to the Irish government's commitment  to the development of the theatre project, which would see the demolition and rebuilding of the city's existing Arts centre along with the refurbishment of the adjacent Town Hall and linking of the two,  it is  thought to be in the region of just under €5m.

As Mr Mullen explains this lucrative amount could be just what is needed to get work on this long anticipated project, which has been held back due to its association with the controversial new civic centre both of which are funded by the Belfast City  Region Deal, underway.  

Decoupling of Civic Centre

“If we get this 5 Million euro this would be an extremely welcomed and generous development” said Jerome. “This is a wonderful surprise. It will be very welcomed funding for the new theatre.”    

“Really and truly what needs to happen is that the theatre centre should be decoupled from the rest of the application for the city deal to get on and build this.

“This would be particulalry important in the context of the Shared Island Fund.

“What has happened is that with the city deal there were three elements which the council applied for. One was the Civic Centre, the second was the theatre and the third was the public realm.

“Because of the controversy over the Civic Centre, which has now gone into a judicial review, this means that this will affect all the other elements which includes particularly the theatre centre.

“ I understand from the information that has come from the council in the past that these three things were tied together and therefore this was the problem.

“On the Civic Centre there are many objections regarding this and now we have a judicial review. You can take it that the judicial review is probably going to take at very minimum a year. From past knowledge that I picked up regarding Judicial reviews it generally drags out for at least 12 months.

“This means that all of these other developments, the theatre centre and the public realm will have to sit their until this matter is adjudicated upon in the judicial review.

“However there is no issue around the theatre, it could go ahead tomorrow morning if planning approval was granted and I think planning approval was got for it. There is no issue, it could be proceeded with now. This I believe is a very welcome development that is much needed for Newry.”

Urgent Matter

As Jerome explains the urgency to have the Newry Theatre operational cannot be understated as currently the only venue by which to host productions is Newry Town Hall, a venue which although capable of doing so is not ideal

“This to me is urgent. The Sean Hollywood Arts centre has been closed now for five years. It closed during Covid and it never opened again, this is tragic that this has happened.

“The only thing available is the Town Hall and the Town Hall is due to be closed for some time in order to facilitate the building of the new theatre centre. If this is closed then in all probability it may be two years.

“This is not good for Newry because it will be left without a theatre for any particular event. All the things that you can think of such as the Pantomime in Christmas, the weekly drama festival, the Irish dancing events that take place each year and so on. It is a very important issue.”