Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I still find it really bizarre that the site of Moore Street and the area from the GPO, which was described by the National Museum of Ireland as the most important site in modern Irish history, should be in private ownership and in the hands of a developer who is in NAMA and owes billions of euro to the State and that the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and the Oireachtas can do nothing about it. The Minister talked about planning permission and An Bord Pleanála. That was given under a flawed premise because no independent assessment and survey was done of that whole site. The relatives eventually gained access to 18 Moore Street - the Minister knows how difficult that was and only for his intervention, they probably would not have been able to do so - and discovered that it is pre-1916. What else may be discovered if there is an independent assessment of that whole battlefield site?

We will be there next Sunday to commemorate the Easter Rising and, in two years' time, there will be a massive commemoration because of the centenary. Imagine what it will be like walking from the new museum in the GPO along a whole area still derelict into Moore Street where four buildings will be in some way preserved while the rest of place will be demolished.

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