Call for Ballincollig Powdermills to be rebuilt 10 months after fire

Ten months after a historic Ballincollig building was destroyed by fire, a local councillor has called for reconstruction to begin urgently.

The old mill building on the Powdermills site, in Ballincollig’s Regional Park, was destroyed in the early hours of Saturday, June 18 of last year. The building, a reconstruction of an original mill, had been commissioned by Cork County Council in 1993. At the time of the fire, Chief Superintendent Tom Myers, head of policing in the Cork City division, denounced the suspected arsonists as “just gurriers”.

Ballincollig-based Cork City councillor Derry Canty had said, last month, that he had been advised that Cork City Council intended to replace the ruin with a modified design in the coming months. Now, the Fine Gael councillor is frustrated that the work has yet to begin.

“In the regional park, the unit that was burnt, I was told they were after meeting the person who originally built the timber structure and now they are proposing to put a steel-framed structure in its place, reducing the flammability of it,” Mr Canty told The Echo.

The hope was that the new structure would be a reinstatement of the original, but allowing people to see the purpose of the building in its context as part of the powdermills.

Mr Canty said that he was extremely frustrated that no work had begun on reconstructing the building.

“Here we are now in May, and in May, June, July, you will have visitors coming up and down through the regional park and looking at this burnt-out structure that is putting a really bad look on Cork City Council and on the area locally here,” Mr Canty said.

“I am calling on Cork City Council to please go to work, because I was told they are very near to beginning, so I would ask, please, do it now rather than later.”