Broom Na Boinne...OPW worker took down low-flying drone at Newgrange with a brush

A DARK Halloween incident involving some tourists, a flying drone, a sweeping brush and the Gardai has just come to light.

On Tuesday last week a person was seen flying a drone from outside the perimeter of the Newgrange monument. At one stage the drone was steered inside the perimeter and was allowed to fly low over the heads of a group of tourists visiting the site.

An Office of Public Works employee, fearing the tourists would be endangered, used a sweeping brush to knock the drone out of the sky.

The owner of the drone then phoned the Gardai about the incident and gardai from Slane arrived to investigate. People who may have witnessed the incident were interviewed and the drone owner was told that it is against regulations to fly a drone near people but apparently was not happy about that.

Regulations governing the flying of drones state that operators must not fly the drone out of their line of sight; fly over a group of people (12 persons); fly the drone more than 300m away from the operators; fly 120m over ground level; fly over urban areas; fly closer than 5km to an aerodrome; fly within 30m of any person; fly in civil or controlled airspace.

Gardai confirmed they had responded to an incident at the ancient site on 31st October. The OPW has also been contacted for comment.

Separately, Newgrange is one of the OPW sites where visitors made complaints following their visit. So far this year a total of 90 complaints were made in total against OPW sites across the country. One visitor complained about being “rushed” out of Newgrange.

Apparently, a group of visitors encountered delays getting to the site because bad weather delayed their bus. One person wrote about being rushed out of the site minutes after arriving. “We would dearly have loved to spend some time in silence, honouring the ancients who had been there before us”.

A spokeswoman for the OPW said the public could get in touch with them through a number of channels including email, phone, post or social media. “We strive to resolve any issues efficiently and effectively”, she said.