David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wonder if the Cathaoirleach has recently been down Fitzwilliam Street. It is very interesting. There is an enormous cleared vacant site. It is about the size of a city block. It is owned by a State company, the ESB, and in the 1960s it took on the longest continuous Georgian streetscape in the world and devastated it. It was quite extraordinary. It was an Irish State-owned company and it hired English architects who came here and made the most ridiculous and offensive comments. I recall one of them saying that buildings have a lifetime and these houses were beyond their lifetime. Look at Amsterdam or Rome. There is a church in Rome that was used as a pagan temple during the Roman empire. It is complete and absolute nonsense. This represented the greatest, most ignorant and concerted attack on our cultural heritage. There is nothing like this streetscape in the entire world. The ESB was originally told by the planning department in Dublin County Council to reinstate the facade it had destroyed but apparently it managed to weasel around that. It now intends to put up some other modern architect's idea of what a Georgian facade should be. I suppose it is too late to rectify this but I wanted to express outrage and also to say thank you to people like Desmond and Mariga Guinness who in the 1960s took up this very unpopular cause and set out to defend our Georgian heritage. It is a very sad day when an Irish State-owned company would launch such a devastating attack. This streetscape is irreplaceable. It has gone from being the longest continuous Georgian streetscape in the world to just being another inner city area. I thank the Cathaoirleach.