The building that has housed the Irish Cultural Centre in London since 1995 will be sold off at the hands of a Tory-controlled council. Hammersmith and Fulham Council has recently embarked on a massive cost-saving initiative to combat debt that is costing them almost £400,000 per month in interest, Mark Hennessy of the Irish Times reports.
The council may allow an interim, however, in which the centre could raise sufficient funds to purchase the building, which is valued at around £2 million.
The centre received a £175,000 government subsidy until 2007, when conservatives took control of the council.
The Irish Times quotes cultural chairman Jim O’Hara’s impassioned appeal to the council to act respectfully, saying: “If you are determined to go ahead and sell the centre at least give us an extension to the lease, so that we may have the time to raise the funds. If you do that, we both win. The council gets the funds that it says that it needs, we raise the funds, buy the building and continue the educational, welfare and welfare activities that we are involved in. I am appealing to you in this to be reasonable, to be fair and, above all, to use an old-fashioned word, to be honourable.”