Is there an Irish version of the UKs National Trust card?

Jaybor

Is there an Irish version of the UKs National Trust card?

That gives you free entry into hundreds of places/

The one that comes to mind is the OPW heritage card, but its limited in the things you get in to see with membership.

There are probably others too but i'm looking for one that covers everything. or at least the most things.

I really am against buying several different memberships, so would much rather one with the biggest and most interesting benefits.

Judgement Day

Jaybor wrote: »

Is there an Irish version of the UKs National Trust card?

That gives you free entry into hundreds of places/

The one that comes to mind is the OPW heritage card, but its limited in the things you get in to see with membership.

There are probably others too but i'm looking for one that covers everything. or at least the most things.

I really am against buying several different memberships, so would much rather one with the biggest and most interesting benefits.

Nope, since apart from the OPW sites most other heritage properties are privately owned with the exception of a few 'managed' by An Taisce.

Peregrinus

Yup. The National Trust actually owns all the properties that your NT card gets you into. After the state, it's Britain's biggest landowner, by a long measure. There is no corresponding body in Ireland owning such a range of heritage places, and so on equivalent to the NT card.

bbam

Peregrinus wrote: »

Yup. The National Trust actually owns all the properties that your NT card gets you into. After the state, it's Britain's biggest landowner, by a long measure. There is no corresponding body in Ireland owning such a range of heritage places, and so on equivalent to the NT card.

I think the closest equavilent here in landownership terms and public access is Coilte. You can get an annual pass for accessing Coilte Forest Parks.

http://websales.coillteoutdoors.ie/

Corkblowin

There a card to get you into the OPW sites - quite a list of them in fact. Colleague of mine swears by them.

http://www.heritageireland.ie/en/Info/HeritageCards/

L1011

The price of that Heritage Card has either kept pace or possibly outstripped the drop in average entry fees to OPW properties (a lot are either free or otherwise tiny amounts when they used to be dearer). Fantastic value if you do intend to tour around.

tac foley

Peregrinus wrote: »

Yup. The National Trust actually owns all the properties that your NT card gets you into. After the state, it's Britain's biggest landowner, by a long measure. There is no corresponding body in Ireland owning such a range of heritage places, and so on equivalent to the NT card.

Uh, not quite.................
The top ten UK landowners have been revealed -

1. The Forestry Commission
2,571,270 acres
Owned by the Government - which wants to privatise it -on behalf of the public, Britain's largest land manager leases 208,895 acres of the 2.5 million acres in its care. Created in 1919, the Forestry Commission looks after 1.4 billion trees and has helped to expand Britain's woodlands by an area more than three times the size of Greater London in the past 20 years.

2. The National Trust
630,000 acres
With more than 350 historic houses, gardens and monuments in its care, as well as tracts of coastal, farm- and moorland, the Trust remains one of our most important national institutions. Indeed, 14 million people visit its ‘pay for entry' properties every year.

3. Defence Estates, for the Ministry of Defence
592,800 acres
More than two-thirds of Defence Estates' land is considered to be ‘rural estate' and is held solely for the purpose of training the armed forces. Encompassing 3,600 sites, the land -which makes up 1% of the UK's land mass - it ncludes 171 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), 700 scheduled archaeological monuments, 50,000 service homes and more than 800 listed buildings. It also has more than 700 rural tenants and licensees.

4. The Pension Funds
550,000 acres
Many of the UK's 2,800-plus major pension funds have invested in land for hundreds of years, attracted, no doubt, by a possible rental income of more than 7% per annum.

5. Utilities: water,electricity, railways
500,000 acres
Although it has proved impossible to break down the exact acreage of land owned by the UK's 18 energy, 22 water and 32 rail companies, we estimate the total acreage (think of huge power stations such as Didcot, reservoirs such as Bewl Water and water-treatment works such as the new Thames Barrage site) comes to about half a million acres.

6. The Crown Estate
358,000 acres
There is no other organisation in the world quite like The Crown Estate. With a portfolio worth more than £6.6 billion, it encompasses a wide variety of land, from beef farms in the north of Scotland to offices in the West End of London, from Portland stone mining in Dorset to forests in the West Country, as well as much of the UK's coastline and some of the sea bed.
It also boasts significant holdings in London's Regent Street, Regent's Park and St James's, as well as agricultural estates of 265,000 acres (made up of 780 tenancies), including the 15,600-acre Windsor estate. Although the rural land holding estate amounts to 358,000 acres, if the acreage of the sea bed, foreshore and urban estate were factored in, the land-ownership figures could stretch to millions of acres.
The Crown Estate ‘belongs' to the reigning monarch, but it is not the private property of The Queen or the Government. It is independently managed, and its surplus is revenue that is paid to the Treasury. The monarch receives a fixed annual payment in return, which we call the Civil List.

7. The RSPB
321,237 acres
The RSPB is not only mighty in terms of its one million-plus membership, its 200 nature reserves cover about 321,237 acres of UK land. Founded by volunteers 121 years ago, the organisation-which is now one of the UK's richest charities-is continuing to grow at a rapid rate of knots. Last year, The Scotsman reported that RSPB Scotland's landholding had increased to 124,000 acres from 87,000 acres in 2000, making it the eighth biggest landowner in Scotland.

8. The Duke of Buccleuch & Queensberry
240,000 acres
Queensberry and Langholm estates in Dumfriesshire, Bowhill in Selkirk-shire, Boughton in Northamptonshire and Dalkeigh Palace, on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

9. The National Trust for Scotland
192,000 acres
The National Trust for Scotland has, in the past, acquired large areas of land that are bequeathed to it. However, due to recently exposed financial difficulties, it is expected to limit the amount of land it takes on in the future.

10. The Duke of Atholl's trusts
145,700 acres
The Atholl estate in Perthshire.

Hope this is helpish.

tac

An Ri rua

You could purchase membership of the Irish Georgian society at e60 and that allows access to all of the OPW sites, which is a e21 value (sorry can't locate euro symbol on Xubuntu yet ).

So, effectively e39 gets you a concession card to many privately owned sites. Plus further benefits. I haven't used one so can't comment on how good that value might be. The talks alone however, would be quite worthwhile. Plus supporting their commendable work.