Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This has dragged on for many years with so many different variations, given the fact that Dublin City Council, as the planning authority, has responsibility regarding applications that come before it for planning permission both in respect of Moore Street and the lanes of history at the back of O'Connell Street and so on.

In respect of the centenary commemorations for 2016, the Government decided to purchase this for a sum of €4 million and to restore this building in a proper, authentic and time-of-the-period fashion. As I understand it, the maps and other documents show clearly that buildings on either side were either non-existent or in a state of collapse before the Rising took place in 1916. The Deputy is right that this was the centre of the end of the evacuation process from the side door of the GPO, in that the several hundred who evacuated the building were not in a position to go up Moore Street because of gunfire from the top of the Rotunda.

Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan knows that what the Government wants to do for the people here and for posterity is to take the buildings where the surrender was commissioned and preserve them as a national monument in respect of one of the first small countries to strike out for independence, politically and economically, at the start of the 20th century, but the Government does not own all of the streets and the buildings on either side of Nos. 14-17. The Government does own, in respect of the people now, these buildings and the intention is to have these restored in a proper and fitting fashion. It is not just a case of the vulture capitalists, venture capitalists or capitalists doing what they like in respect of the remainder of the surrounding area. The responsibility for planning and for approval of that lies initially with Dublin City Council and beyond that, if there is an objection, with An Bord Pleanála, and that is independent of the process of government.

I thought it appropriate, to be honest with the Deputy, that, given what was happening and what was not happening, and nothing was happening, it was right that the Government should purchase this in the interests of the people, preserving it as a lasting exhibition centre and an authentic recreation of what was there in 1916 when those who led the Rising in the GPO said, "Let us decide to burrow through the houses to Nos. 14-17", from where the order was given for Nurse O'Farrell to take the note in respect of surrender.

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