Naas Ball has no one to clean it 

It emerged at a recent meeting that there is currently no organisation or department tasked with cleaning and maintaining motorway artwork in Kildare, such as the Naas Ball.

Cllr Carmel Kelly brought forward a motion at the most recent meeting of Naas Municipal District calling on the council to identify ‘funding and resources to carry out a full clean-up, conservation, and maintenance works on the public sculpture piece commonly known as "The Naas Ball".’

She specified that she wants the works to include ‘professional cleaning of the sculpture to remove dirt and environmental staining, inspection and minor repairs to address any damage or wear and protective treatment to help prevent weathering’.

Senior Executive Officer Mark McLoughlin issued the council’s response, which outlined that the council had referred the matter to the Kildare National Roads Office, which said looking after the artwork is not part of the motorway maintenance contract, so it won’t be done by the motorway contractor.

If the artwork, located off the M7 motorway at Junction 9, is to be cleaned, repaired or restored, the local authority would have to arrange and pay for that separately.

Mr McLoughlin’s report stated that ‘the council will establish the appropriate section responsible for the management of this asset and will assess its current condition’. 

After that, if funding and staff resources are available, the council can look at whether any cleaning or repair work is needed, how much it would cost, and whether it is feasible.

At the moment, no money has been set aside for the work on the sculpture piece, officially known as “Perpetual Motion”.

Speaking at the meeting, cllr Kelly said that the steps outlined in the report were “very positive” and said that she had not realised the council did not have a department to manage public art pieces. She had thought that there was a budget to “manage, clean and preserve our art pieces”.

District manager David Creighton clarified that it was motorway art that was the issue, with the council having an arts officer that looks after the municipal collection. Motorway art falls outside of the officer’s remit.

Cllr Ger Dunne quipped: “I know it’s called Perpetual Motion, but we don’t want to run out of time on this (the cleaning up of the art piece)”.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme