Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Successive Governments and local authorities have appalling records of preserving our heritage. From Georgian Dublin to the cottages of the west, we are more than happy to allow developers to buy up whatever artefacts of our history they like and then tear them down with JCBs. We saw that most recently with the house of The O'Rahilly, which pulled down to make way for a hotel. Will we see the same happen with the Markievicz cottage in Sandyford? Will that other link to 1916 be demolished and turned into a modern bungalow?

It is not just the houses of the 1916 leaders or the big houses down the country that need protecting, although too many of those have been allowed to fall into wrack and ruin. With our careless disregard for our past, we are allowing the snapshots of how ordinary Irish people lived and worked to vanish. If this Government had its way, Ireland would be nothing more than steel and glass, sterile and cold.

Dublin is a modern city and its people are its heart, but every year it becomes a little more modern and a little less vibrant. We must preserve the built heritage of Moore Street, where the 1916 volunteers fought and died in their last stand, and protect it from destruction. We go beyond that as well, however. We must cherish what is left of our heritage before it is replaced by shopping centres, hotels and offices. We need not trade one for the other, but always to strive to incorporate those links to the past into our everyday environment. People should not have to visit a museum to have to get a snapshot of our history and our culture. It should surround us every day in our daily lives and inform us as we go along.

The proposed cultural quarter for Moore Street should be a roadmap for how we can preserve what brought us to the present, lest we forget of course where we came from. I commend the Bill, and I look forward to other Members supporting it. However, it is not just about supporting the Bill; we must move on this issue and preserve this site.

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