Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I welcome this opportunity to debate such an important issue. In particular, I welcome the many interested parties who are seated in the Visitors Gallery. I especially thank Helen Litton and James Connolly-Heron who kindly met me and briefed me on the issue yesterday. I also thank all of the 1916 relatives and relatives of the signatories of the Proclamation who have been so involved in the project.

I am conscious that there has been a long campaign to preserve Moore Street broadly. It is a campaign in which the Labour Party has been closely involved, and I speak as the Labour Party leader in the Seanad. Others have mentioned the Tánaiste, Deputy Joan Burton, who added her name to opposition of a previous planning application. Deputy Joe Costello, and I think Deputy Ruairí Quinn was mentioned, and Councillor Dermot Lacey have all been involved in working towards the regeneration and preservation of Moore Street. I am very proud that the Labour Party, in government, has been party to the decision, which was finally taken on 31 March of this year, to purchase the national monument that is Nos. 14 to 17 Moore Street and to develop it, as the Minister of State has said, as a commemorative centre in time for the centenary next year.

Fianna Fáil put forward this legislation. However, it is noteworthy that no previous government has taken the step to purchase the buildings. In 2007, a previous government declared Nos. 14 to 17 Moore Street to be national monuments but not the rest of the terrace. It is a crying shame that the decision to purchase these specific houses and to develop them as a commemorative centre, for the people of this State and future generations, was not done for the 50th, 60th, 70th, 80th or 90th anniversary of the Rising.

I have seen the photographs of the interior of the buildings for which I thank the people who briefed me on the subject. The photographs showed the appalling, shameful and dilapidated conditions of the buildings. A great deal of work needs to be done simply to preserve and make them fit to be visited. I refer to Nos. 14 to 17 Moore Street which are the subject of the State's purchase decision. As we know, it was in No. 16 Moore Street where the decision to surrender was taken. The project also includes the building from which the founder of the Labour Party, Mr. James Connolly, was carried out on a stretcher. It was put to me in a very poignant way that Connolly, and some of the other signatories of the Proclamation, spent the last few hours of their freedom in those buildings. That is a hugely poignant and noteworthy statement. It is a shame that the project has not been done before. I welcome the fact that we have now moved to preserve and refit the buildings in a sensitive manner, as befits a national monument, and to make these buildings fit to be used for a commemorative centre.

I am conscious also, although I had not been aware, that the full terrace of Nos. 10 to 25, in a more general sense, is significant as it has remained intact since 1916, albeit in an appallingly dilapidated state. Also, much of the terrace did not have to be rebuilt after 1916, unlike the GPO and much of O'Connell Street. I would like to see the preservation plan further expanded in line with one of the plans that relatives put forward. The project would be attractive but the question is how do we go about it.

I am mindful of what Senator Mac Conghail has said. Initially, when I heard this Bill was coming forward I thought that the Government would be able to take it through Second Stage. I only saw the legislation today. When I read it I was dismayed, like the Senator, to see that it does not contain any indication of the plan put forward by the relatives to expand and develop more of the terrace as a commemorative centre. Instead, the Bill re-creates a model, as its proposer has said, along the lines of Temple Bar Properties.Senator Eamonn Coghlan and others have pointed to the hugely problematic nature of that model. As a lawyer I must read the small print and I am struck by how little accountability there would be in the model contained in this Bill. There is provision for the appointment of the directors of Moore Street Renewal Limited by the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, but there is a question as to why that Minister is involved when the broad Moore Street area is not designated as a national monument. There is no provision for the removal of the directors, for their tenure or for any type of democratic accountability by the company. I would be concerned about that model.

On the other hand we have a model with Dublin City Council. The Minister has spoken of the initiatives that are being taken. One initiative I strongly support, as a client of Moore Street traders like many others, is Dublin City Council's reinventing and rejuvenating the market element of Moore Street in consultation with the street traders. The council has a development plan process under way that will encompass the area. Senator Mac Conghail and the Minister have spoken of the other important initiatives alongside the initiative on the Moore Street buildings, including the initiative on the GPO visitors' centre, the initiative in Parnell Square and the tenement museum in Henrietta Street. I have confidence in Dublin City Council as the appropriate democratically elected body through which we should make proposals to create a proper and fitting commemorative centre in Moore Street.

There is huge support across the House for the spirit of this Bill and for the motivation so eloquently expressed by its proposers. However, all of us should work on two fronts: first, to support the initiative to develop Nos. 14 to 17 Moore Street as a commemorative centre in time for the centenary year and, second, to work with Dublin City Council on the broader development of the Moore Street area in a fitting manner. That is the more appropriate mechanism.

I was privileged to take part in the wonderful commemoration on Easter Monday that was run by Dublin City Council and RTE, the "Road to the Rising". It commemorated not only the military history of 1916 but, importantly, the economic, social and living conditions of people and communities in 1915 and leading up to 1916. That social history and the commemoration of the deaths of civilians and children in the Easter Rising, which were not spoken about often until relatively recently, are the commemorations that are hugely meaningful to us and younger generations. I brought my children to O'Connell Street for that and I was privileged to speak from a tram about the suffragette movement, which was very important in 1915 and 1916. That is the type of inclusive and pluralist commemoration with which we should be involved and which Dublin City Council has been good and proactive in bringing forward.

I commend the proposers of the Bill for giving us the opportunity to debate the issue not just of Moore Street but more broadly how we commemorate 1916 and the struggle for independence, and I thank my colleagues for expressing broad support for their motivation and principles. I also thank the Minister for his contribution.