Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This motion speaks for itself but I want to put the background to it on the record. The Houses of the Oireachtas Commission has not decided anything on the closure of the Members' reading room. The Committee on Standing Orders and Dáil Reform has received a submission but has not approved it. The submission would mean the existing reading room, which is the shared facility of Senators and Dáil Deputies, would be converted into a fifth committee room. I want to put on the record of this House that the fixed estimated costs for making that conversion involve an outlay of €3.7 million and that the annual extra cost for having it as a committee room would be €1.63 million, meaning that in the first year of operation this would cost more than €5 million.The proposal is being mooted at the Dáil committee on the basis that the Dáil is going to expand, it needs to be more family-friendly and that somehow, if items such as Taoiseach's Questions and Minister's questions were taken in the reading room below, the Dáil could sit fewer hours. No proposal has been made, for instance, to use Mondays, Fridays or, indeed, to ask for the use of this Chamber on occasions when it is not in use by this House, but this proposal has been put forward.

It has been represented to the Library staff that this proposal is unstoppable, the direction of travel - the phrase that was used - is clear, it will be approved, they say, within the next three weeks, and there is nothing they can do about it. This means that the Library staff in this House will be no longer here at all and they will be in a premises in Merrion Square. There will be no direct face-to-face librarian service, even though the print collection is in the basement of Leinster House 2000.

This will be the only parliament house in western Europe which does not have a Members' reading room and library service, if this goes ahead.