Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I support the Order of Business.

Last week, on different days, my colleague, Deputy Ivana Bacik, and I met the current Lord Iveagh, Ned Guinness, to take a look, for the first time ever, at the Iveagh Markets in the Liberties. I have raised this matter a number of times in the House. There has been ongoing mediation with the publican who was given the right to develop the Iveagh Markets back in 1997. A contract states he had 36 months to develop the site. He then applied for planning permission, which absolutely and finally ran out in 2017 or 2018. He lodged another planning application which was rejected and there is no planning for the site now. From all accounts and purposes, the inside of the market is structurally unsound and very badly damaged. An act of cultural vandalism has been done through the removal - I would call it the hacking away - of the Victorian tiles. Last week, another architect visited the place, according to the dispatches of Lord Iveagh, and said the marble and lead was nowhere to be seen. Bricks that have been taken down are visible. What has been allowed to happen to the building over the last 20 years is vandalism.

If I had made an awful lot of money in a certain industry and I was considering how I would be remembered in time, I wonder if I would go around saying I would hold something up in the courts for 20 years and destroy a gem of Dublin or if I would consider the type of legacy I was going to leave. This man will be remembered for what he did to the building and all of the other achievements I think he would like to think about himself will be wiped on the basis of what he has been allowed to do to the building. I hold Dublin City Council responsible as well for not acting on this matter because it had the powers and should have intervened. The contract clearly states that there were 36 months to develop the site.

Government intervention is needed. Thankfully, the Minister of State with responsibility for heritage, Deputy Malcolm Noonan, is very committed to heritage in general and matters like this one in particular. We should all work together to save this important building in Dublin. I was disgusted by what I saw last week when I visited the market. I feared it was bad but it was worse than I expected. The Iveagh Markets were handed over by the ancestors of Lord Iveagh who developed a large amount of social housing in this city. So much of Dublin 8 and Dublin 2 was built by the Guinness family and to see the market destroyed is nothing short of a disgrace and shameful.