I should like to support very strongly the argument put forward by Deputy Kelly against the utilisation of Maple's site in the way in which the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary say it is to be utilised. I should further support the Deputy's appeal to the Government to face, in a national spirit, having regard to the claim they make at times to a cultural aim, the problem of setting up a suitable hall in the City of Dublin which would serve as a national, cultural and musical centre.
I do not want to go into the economic war, but there is one thing that is very patent all over the country in connection with the present position, and that is that nothing that the Government may say or nothing that they may do in the matter of fostering and helping on national culture, whether in musical matters or in any other aspect of it, has any chance of thriving at the present moment. It is being throttled in the city and in every part of the country by all the economic difficulties and all the bitternesses and disagreements that are springing up around the country. It may be that the Government would like to do something that would offset that and, in setting their faces to the setting up of a hall of the nature and description that Alderman Kelly speaks about, they would be making a present-day gesture that would be, to some extent, an offset to the blows that are being struck at national culture throughout the country and providing something that, in the near future, might help to foster the cultural side of things that, at the present moment, they say they have at heart. Anybody interested in the development of orchestral music and other types of music in the City of Dublin, apart altogether from people who want assembly halls, must be struck at the way in which all chance of having it is being throttled in the city. The only large hall capable of being used for an orchestral performance was closed down comparatively recently and there is no hall to-day in which a reasonably large audience can be treated to an orchestral performance.
The gesture, in the first place, is wanted on the part of the Government. In the second place, the normal civic requirements of the City of Dublin require a hall of that particular kind. In the third place, the cultural requirements of the city require it, and it would be apart altogether from the necessity of spending £100,000 on the provision of central offices for the Department of Industry and Commerce. The Ministry should not take a decision to utilise the site that is available behind the Mansion House without fully considering and again discussing with those interested in that aspect of things, and with the Dublin Corporation, the utilisation of that site for culural and civic purposes. They should not utilise it in any other way without carrying those discussions to a further point and without giving the Oireachtas a further opportunity of discussing the disposal of the site of Maple's Hotel in the light of further arguments that may be brought forward by the bodies interested in this matter and by the Dublin Corporation with regard to the purposes about which Alderman Kelly speaks.
In the second place, the necessity which dictates the spending of this money on new offices for the Department of Industry and Commerce ought to be further elaborated. I think that the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Industry and Commerce have been trying to persuade the country recently that we have less civil servants in the country than ever before. Nevertheless, we are aware that the growth in the number of officials in the Department of Industry and Commerce is such that the offices attached to the Minister's Department are spreading themselves out in all directions. They have invaded the precincts of the Dáil as far as Dawson Street since the other day and they are spread out in all sorts of other directions too. It would be desirable, in passing this particular Vote, to have some discussion as to the staff development in the Department of Industry and Commerce. I think it would be well also, in telling the House that they were proposing to spend £100,000 on a building like this and proposing to advertise for a design in connection with these offices, to tell the House what prize they propose to offer to the successful architect, and what connection the successful architect would have with the subsequent erection of these buildings, if they are to be erected.
