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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 5 Dec 1963

Vol. 206 No. 6

Committee on Finance. - Funds of Suitors Bill, 1963 —Second Stage.

I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. The purpose of this Bill is to enable part of the funds of suitors vested in the Accountant of the Courts of Justice to be used to help towards the rebuilding of the Opera House, Cork.

When the Cork Opera House was destroyed by fire at the end of 1955, its loss as a cultural amenity was keenly felt by the residents of the city and county. The strong desire to restore it resulted in the forming of a new Cork Opera House Company in 1958 by a number of public-spirited persons, who immediately set about the formidable task of raising the necessary funds for a new building. The company is a public one with an authorised share capital of £125,000 in ordinary shares of £1 each and its directors are six prominent Cork citizens.

The company's professional advisers estimated at the time that the overall cost of re-building would be approximately £150,000 and it was clear from an early date that no more than half of this sum could be raised by subscriptions from the public and by local fund-raising activities. In 1959, the company approached the Government, through the Minister for Industry and Commerce, for assistance in reaching the total amount of £150,000 then required, and they were informed that the Government would be prepared to seek approval for a State guarantee of a loan of £50,000 to be provided by a commercial bank. The necessary steps are now being taken for the issue of this guarantee under the State Guarantees Act, 1954. The Minister for Finance will be moving at a later date for a resolution approving of a draft order. This draft order proposes to add the Cork Opera House Company, Limited, to the bodies scheduled to the State Guarantees Act, 1954, and states the maximum amount to be guaranteed, namely £50,000.

The Cork Corporation were also approached by the company and ultimately it emerged that the Corporation would be willing to provide an interest-free loan of £25,000 if it were endowed with the necessary statutory powers. In order to facilitate the Corporation in this respect, the Local Government Act, 1960, was enacted.

The complicated negotiations involved in the raising of these funds covered a prolonged period and the company were not in a position to put the work out to tender until late in 1961. When tenders were received, it became very clear that, with increased building costs and the necessity for compliance with stringent municipal standards of public health and safety, the minimum total cost of the new building would be about £200,000, as against the figure of £150,000 which had been estimated some years earlier. The Opera House Company thus found themselves facing the unpleasant alternatives either of having to seek another £50,000 or of abandoning a project for which three-quarters of the outlay had already been assured.

At this stage all local business concerns and many national ones had already been canvassed by them, but no further help of a substantial kind could be expected. A large amount had also been subscribed in small sums by many thousands of local people, who could hardly be asked to provide any more. A total of £75,000 has now been subscribed from private sources and the company has pointed out that the raising of such a large sum of money is evidence of the widespread desire that the Opera House should be rebuilt. Accordingly, they asked the Government, through the Minister for Industry and Commerce, to review the problem in a generous light so as to make it possible, by the provision of the additional funds now required, for the company to carry its plans to completion.

It was clear at this juncture that, without substantial Government aid, the project would have to be abandoned. It was evident also that aid in the shape of a further guaranteed loan or even an interest-free loan, would not solve the company's difficulties. The extent of the commitments already undertaken by the company made it impossible for them to assume any further financial burdens.

The Government feel that the re-building of the Cork Opera House is a worthwhile project and that its abandonment would be a national loss, particularly in view of the lack of adequate cultural amenities of this kind in the south of Ireland. We have decided, therefore, that, subject to the approval of the Oireachtas, a grant of £50,000 should be provided from the funds of suitors for the project. The purpose of this Bill is to enable that operation to be carried out.

It is proposed that the grant of £50,000 to be made available to the company from the funds of suitors will be given on the basis that—

(1) the grant will not be made available until all the other funds (private contributions, Cork Corporation loan and State-guaranteed loan) have been certified as expended on the building operations, and

(2) if within 30 years the Opera House ceases to be used for drama and opera, the grant must be refunded, an allowance of one-thirtieth being made for each year for which the premises have been so used.

It is proposed that the fulfilment of the latter condition will be secured by an indenture to be entered into between the company and the Minister for Finance and it will be arranged that the amount of any refund would be a charge on the premises.

The funds of suitors are the cash and securities belonging to suitors which have been transferred or paid into or deposited in the High Court. In the ordinary way, they may be used only for the benefit of suitors entitled. Part of the funds, however, consist of unclaimed dividends and balances which have been accumulating over more than 200 years. These are known as the dormant funds and they may be defined more precisely as balances in accounts which have not been dealt with for 15 years or longer. The total liability in respect of the funds of suitors on 31st October, 1963, was £10,323,000, of which the dormant funds amounted to about £947,000 consisting of cash of the value of £390,000 and securities to the nominal value of £557,000.

The position is, however, that actual funds, whether cash, money on deposit or investments standing in the name of the Accountant of the Courts of Justice do not amount to the totals which I have just mentioned. This is because cash and securities amounting to £648,150 and £130,000 respectively have been withdrawn from the funds of suitors under the authority of various Acts of the Parliament of Ireland, the Parliament of the United Kingdom and the Oireachtas. The purposes to which these withdrawn funds were applied included the building and improving of Courts of Justice and the enlarging of the Law Library in Dublin.

The last statutory authorisation for withdrawal from these funds was contained in the Funds of Suitors Act, 1959. This Act enabled a total of £323,000 to be utilised for a number of specific purposes, namely, to provide financial assistance towards the rebuilding of the Abbey Theatre, to finance the repair and renovation of the buildings of the Society of King's Inns and to provide for the creation of a fund for the maintenance of the Society's Library. All these Acts indemnified suitors for any loss which they might sustain by reason of the withdrawals. This indemnity is backed by the Central Fund.

It will be apparent from what I have said that a portion of the funds of suitors amounting in the aggregate to £778,150 is represented not by cash or securities but simply by the liability of the Central Fund to indemnify suitors against any loss. The present Bill proposes the withdrawal of a further sum of £50,000 and provides for the usual indemnity backed by the Central Fund. The withdrawal of this amount will almost exhaust the so-called dormant funds. As I have said, the dormant funds amount in all to £947,000. When account is taken, however, of the fall in the value of the dormant securities, the net value of the funds is £866,000. The total withdrawals which have been authorised by the various statutes in the past plus the amount of the proposed withdrawal under the Bill amount to £828,000, leaving only £38,000 untouched. As time goes on there will, of course, be a further accumulation of dormant funds.

I have already referred to the assistance given by the State towards the rebuilding of the Abbey Theatre under the Funds of Suitors Act, 1959. Deputies will recall that, when the Abbey Theatre was destroyed, the directors had to approach the Government for help in rebuilding the theatre, and this appeal was met by the grant of a sum of £250,000 from the funds of suitors. The rebuilding of Cork Opera House is also an enterprise of national concern. It has been recognised elsewhere that projects of this nature cannot in modern conditions be undertaken successfully without the patronage of the wealthy, or of the State or local authority. There is no doubt that this is a most desirable form of public investment since it will provide suitable entertainment for our own people and, at the same time, constitute an attraction for tourists whose business is such an important item in the economy of the south.

The business community and members of the public have given an earnest of their real interest in the project by putting up the very substantial sum of £75,000 in the form of shares and interest-free debentures and it is now appropriate for the State to come to their support to enable them to complete the worthwhile task they have undertaken. Building work has commenced and payments to the building contractors and architects are being made out of the £75,000 which has been raised from private sources.

Cork city and its environs have already benefited from the spate of industrial and commercial development which has taken place in recent years. Major undertakings such as the new oil refinery, shipyard, and airport have been supplemented by numerous smaller, but no less welcome, concerns, and together they have led to a vast improvement in the employment situation in that area. This has been accompanied by the provision of adequate housing and other welfare facilities. The material needs of the citizens are therefore well catered for and I think it behoves us now to see to it that the picture is suitably rounded off by the provision of a wellappointed cultural centre in this second city of the State.

Finally, let me say again that, as in the case of previous withdrawals, the Bill affords complete indemnity to suitors so that they will be absolutely protected from any possible loss.

I commend the Bill to the House and ask that it be given a Second Reading.

We support this Bill. It is important from the national point of view and from what may be described as the local point of view in Cork that the Cork Opera House should be rebuilt as soon as possible. The Government apparently feel it necessary now to scrape the bottom of the barrel in order to get money, but I believe the money in this instance is being found for a worthwhile project. This is not money the Government are spending from revenue. It is not money the Government themselves are raising. It is money lying dormant to the account of suitors in the courts. The Government are finding the money only to the extent that they must, and obviously they must, guarantee absolutely the funds in court. Should there be a demand in respect of any of these dormant accounts, quite clearly, once the Government have allowed the money to be used, they must see to it that it will be replaced. I hope the re-building of the Cork Opera House will proceed as quickly as possible.

I should like to support the decision to spend this money on the rebuilding of the Cork Opera House. This seems to me to be a veritable Aladdin's Cave for wealth, wealth which appears to have been reasonably well spent by various Governments over the years. It is particularly important, and significant from any Government's point of view, to support the extension of the cultural pattern of the life of our people at a time when the philistine influences of the other media of education, such as television, the cinema, and so on, are making such great inroads into the quality of that life. This represents a very significant stand on the part of the Government in that they support the ambition of the Cork people, and Cork, as has been said, is the second city in the State, to have this mark of regard and affection for culture to the extent that they are actually putting up hard cash for the realisation of those ambitions.

That is rather an advance on Dublin, where we have had the precedent of the Abbey, which had to be replaced by the Government, and we have the present position in relation to the Olympia, which is in very serious straits and in danger of closing down. If that happens, it will represent a very serious setback to the cultural life of Dublin. For that reason, it is a very good thing that the citizens of Cork have shown an earnest of their intention and determination to retain this mark of their cultural advancement and that the Government intend to give them this support.

The attitude towards living art, such as the theatre, is a mark of the level of culture attained by a civilised society. I understand that the opera house in Stockholm was built entirely by the people themselves at a time when they wanted to show the very high level of appreciation of the arts in Sweden. Where an art form of this kind is concerned, there are many aspects of it which ultimately have a very deep influence on the whole life of the country. If artists, writers— actors, in particular—musicians, performers and interpretative artists of one kind or another have not an opportunity in our various cities of earning their living, to put it at its lowest, an opportunity of expressing the talents they have, then the love of art and of these qualities tends to die out, in so far as the demand is not there for them. The competition is very strong at present from the television and the cinema, and it is a very good sign to see that Cork city is determined to hang on to what it has got in relation to this outward example of a highly-cultured civilised city.

I am very grateful to the Deputies who have spoken for the manner in which they have received this Bill and for their support of it. I agree with both Deputies who have spoken in what they have said about the desirability of this project, not just from the point of view of Cork city but from the point of view of the nation as a whole. Those of us familiar with Cork and its people have always noted one particular outstanding characteristic of the Cork people, that is, their passionate attachment to their institutions. In this regard, in their efforts to reprovide themselves with their opera house, we have a further example of that fine civic spirit. The manner in which the House has received this Bill is sheer evidence that the Oireachtas appreciate the public-spirited effort by the Cork people to provide themselves with this essential cultural institution.

Question put and agreed to.
Agreed to take remaining stages to-day.
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