IRELAND: A small Co Mayo community mourned the death of Prince Rainier yesterday and expressed regret that nothing has been done over the decades to restore a local tumbledown cottage, which is the ancestral home of the late Princess Grace.
The three Grimaldi children, Prince Albert, Princess Caroline and Princess Stephanie, became owners of the now roofless, three-roomed building and an adjoining 35 acres when their mother died in a car accident in 1982.
But the property, which was first visited by Prince Rainier and Princess Grace in 1961, has lain idle and deteriorating over the years, despite occasional bursts of correspondence between Monaco and Mayo County Council as well as a local development committee.
Even a taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, intervened briefly but unsuccessfully in the 1980s.
On a visit to Monaco he suggested to Prince Rainier that the cottage, where Princess Grace's grandfather, John Bernard Kelly, eked out a living before emigrating to the US, should be renovated. The response, however, was cool.
Maureen Smyth, secretary of the Culmore Development Committee in the 1980s, expressed regret yesterday that nothing had been done to restore the cottage and make it into a tourist attraction.
"I am disappointed that things didn't work out. The provision of an amenity centre in Culmore took precedence over the Kelly cottage project. Plans for the cottage died a death. Unless the county council takes up the matter, I doubt if locals will.
"It is too big a project for a small community," she said.
Newport-based Frank Chambers, a member of Mayo County Council, who helped involve Mr Reynolds in the 1980s, said yesterday a restored cottage would have been a tourist asset not only for the west but for the whole of Ireland.
Despite the lack of progress over the years, Cllr Chambers, who is chairman of Newport and District Development Company, expressed optimism that the cottage might become some kind of a monument.
"Some kind of memorial, fitting and symbolic, should be put in place."