Niall Horan Museum for Mullingar?

Teenage girls mightn’t always be the greatest fans of museums - but Mullingar could be the town to change all that, if a proposal agreed by local councillors at a meeting on Monday ever comes to fruition.

They’ve supported a call for the creation of a museum honouring One Direction's Niall Horan, and Mullingar’s other musicians.

The proposal was made at a meeting of the council’s Mullingar Area members on Monday, by Cllr Aidan Davitt.

He suggested that the county council and Mullingar Town Council liaise with a view to setting up a museum.

Davitt suggested that after the town council is dissolved, the museum could be located in the town’s Market House, currently home to the town council.
“We have a great resource in Niall Horan,” stated Cllr Davitt.

“He’s a great representative of Mullingar, and he has one of the largest Twitter followings in the world, and his family have been very good to Mullingar, and very involved locally, and Niall is involved in many clubs locally, and Niall is of the opinion that he’d back an issue like this if we had a shopfront to show off our wares,” he said.

At the moment, he added, fans even go to Tesco, which is associated with Niall’s dad, Bobby.

But, he continued, there were many other Mullingar musicians also worthy of inclusion in the museum, such as Joe Dolan.

Cllr Fintan Cooney agreed that the Market House could be an ideal location, and said that singer, Ailish Tynan should also feature in the list of musicians to whom the museum could pay tribute.

Cllr Mick Dollard argued, however, that a better location for such a museum would be in the county buildings, not only because it would keep all of Mullingar’s arts together, but also because there is no disabled access to the upstairs portion of the Market House.

The formal written reply to Cllr Davitt’s proposal was that the question of the future us of Market House, Mullingar is being dealt with by the Property Management section of Westmeath County Council on behalf of the Town Council.

“Any proposals arising therefrom will be put before the members for their consideration and approval,” it stated, going on to add that the council is open to suggestions for the future use of the Market House, “consistent with the needs of the public”, and would be hopeful that the right use is made of what is a “strategic and historic” building.

“However,” the reply went on to caution: “the ongoing operating costs associated with running a museum or similar facility would need to be fully examined before any decision is taken by the council.”

It added that any new use of the building by the public would require full disability access.