Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

Consequently, it represents a consensus of sorts.

It is both telling and negative that Members are even having this debate in the Chamber this evening. I cannot imagine that in any other country or European democracy there would even be a debate around the necessity to preserve the national monument and to do so in the most fulsome of ways. Rather that limiting preservation to a number of houses on a terrace we should be preserving the entire terrace and looking to preserving the entire battlefield, including the laneways, which is the setting in which the heroic deeds of 1916 were played out.

That the proposal that has gained planning permission is for a shopping mall in an area that should be a national monument is damning. My colleagues have articulated the many reasons this monument must be developed and the gains it would represent in terms of tourism and a proper acknowledgement not alone of our history but of the real political relevance in the here and now of the leaders of 1916.

I represent the constituency in which Moore Street is located. Anybody who has been down that street knows that the entirety of it has been allowed go to rack and ruin.

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