Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

Yesterday, Taoiseach and leader of Fianna Fáil, Micheál Martin, unveiled the Government's intention to convert the GPO for the purposes of retail units and office accommodation. This is the Government's shameful plan for the most iconic site of Ireland's struggle for freedom. This is the building outside which Pádraig Pearse in Easter 1916 read aloud the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. This is the building inside of which James Connolly led brave volunteers to fight for Irish Independence. Dublin is the city that fought the British Empire. The Irish revolution broke the most powerful empire on earth at the time, and the GPO was at the epicentre of that rebellion. Our patriots took on the British colonisers and beat them. Nowhere else in the world, in no other country that has fought for its independence, would there be a government so determined to desecrate its hallowed ground. I ask that a stop is put to this cultural and social vandalism.

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