Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

NAMA can take instruction from the Minister for Finance, as it has done on 15 separate occasions since September 2009. I ask on this occasion that the Government, which includes the Minister, ask him to issue the required instruction to ensure the portion of Moore Street not currently designated as a national monument be designated and protected as such.

The Minister said it should be a fitting tribute next year. I do not see how sending in the bulldozers to Moore Street would be seen in any way as a fitting tribute. It might be appropriate from the historical viewpoint of some people in this country, but I have worked since 2006 on the decade of commemorations committee, and the one before it. I have helped it and given it ideas which have been taken on board by the Government. I have attended many meetings. There is no separation from a Sinn Féin or Government programme, and they should not be competing. Rather, they should be complementary. We have always said that and worked based on that view.

Having said that, it does not seem that the Minister or his Department is working to help and complement programmes developed by political parties. Today in The Irish Timesit is stated that the Minister, or perhaps his Department, is refusing to give permission for an event in O'Connell Street which would involve a projection of sounds and images onto the portico of the GPO. That is politicisation of the events of 1916 without having any knowledge of the content or anything else. If that instruction came from the Minister, it would have been very helpful if he had, first and foremost, replied to the letter which was sent to him seeking permission rather than he or somebody from his Department running to the journalist, Fiach Kelly. There has been no correspondence to date to indicate to us that the Minister is refusing that permission. If he is not, perhaps he might want to take the project on board. Is it the case that there is jealousy among some about some of the imaginative ideas Sinn Féin has come up with to try to highlight and pay fitting tribute to the men and women of 1916?

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