Member's statement: Slieve Gullion

Member's statement by Ms Aoife Finnegan on 8 December 2025.

MLA

Ms Aoife Finnegan

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

8 December 2025

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Slieve Gullion

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5284166

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I rise to speak about something that matters deeply to the people of south Armagh. I will say it plainly so that there is no confusion: for the first time in over 6,000 years, the South Cairn on the summit of Slieve Gullion is closed. It is the highest surviving Neolithic passage tomb in Ireland, older than the Pyramids, aligned with the winter solstice and a place where families, walkers, tourists and schoolchildren have gathered for generations to witness sunlight travel through a stone chamber that was hand-built by our ancestors. However, this winter, for the first time in its history, they will meet a locked gate.

The Department for Communities closed the South Cairn due to safety concerns. No one disputes that safety matters, but it was closed without funding being in place to fix the issues, a clear plan or a timeline for reopening. That is the core of the problem. A monument that has survived invasion, weather, famine, plantation and conflict now has access to it stalled by bureaucracy. That tells us something that many in south Armagh already know all too well: too often, heritage is the first to be restricted and the last to be prioritised. The mountain is not geography; it is identity, memory and story. Tradition tells us that St Oliver Plunkett, Primate of All Ireland, once hid in that cairn, sheltered by the people of south Armagh, as the Crown hunted and sought to arrest him. A community that risked itself to protect its faith and culture now stands behind a fence at the very site that it safeguarded. That history of resistance, endurance and defiance is written into the stone of Gullion. It is who we are. Yet, despite its importance, tourism and cultural value and international archaeological significance, our council area does not even carry the name south Armagh. We sit inside the Newry, Mourne and Down District Council, even though south Armagh makes up more than one third of the district. Slieve Gullion is routinely marketed under the Visit Mourne brand, despite its not being in the Mourne region. Slieve Gullion is in south Armagh, which is a region of unique heritage, mythology, language, landscape and creative energy, and we deserve to be recognised, respected and invested in. Our people should not be locked out of their own history, and our children should not grow up being told that their identity is the footnote to someone else's brand. We want transparency, clarity and a commitment to reopen access to the South Cairn, not some day or when budgets appear, but with purpose, because heritage delayed is heritage denied. As a wise woman once said, we are women of south Armagh; born of granite, we endure. We will keep speaking up for that place, the mountain and the story until the cairn, Cailleach Berra’s house, is reopened.

477 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:08 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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