I want to make some observations on the various sections of the Bill in addition to the general references I made before the Adjournment. My principal objection to this Bill is based on the setting up of this commission to replace elected members. Under section 5 it will be one of the duties of the commission to secure an improvement in environmental conditions, in the safety of pedestrians and the appearance of streets and buildings. Cleansing is mentioned in this section and in another section.
Dublin Metropolitan Streets Commission (No. 2) Bill, 1986 [Seanad] Second Stage (Resumed).
Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
That sort of examination is more appropriate to Committee Stage.
I understand that but I have no amendments in. We are not on Committee Stage.
The Deputy could not have amendments in at this stage.
I take the Chair's point. Am I to take it I am precluded from taking the relevant paragraphs, the relevant words, the relevant phrases, of each section as I go along?
You are indeed, Deputy. Let me be helpful here.
I would be glad of your assistance.
A Second Stage debate deals with the general principle of the Bill and the Committee Stage deals with the drafting of the Bill or amendments to it. A fine comb examination of the Bill at this stage would not be in order.
I will find a way of adhering to your decision. It is quite simple. From now on I will not refer to each section.
Might I say to the Deputy in passing that I hope he falls in line with the Chair's ruling both in the letter and more particularly, in the spirit.
I have no wish to be anything but in accordance with your ruling and with general practice and behaviour. I will not discuss sections of this Bill, although I thought that was the proper way to conduct this debate, but if you say that is not the general practice I will accept your ruling. I am sure as I glance through the Bill I will be able to speak about the phrases and terminology which catch my eye. I will, of course, refrain from saying anything that would not be in accordance with your ruling and the general practice of how the Second Stage debate is conducted.
The Bill refers to the improvements required in Dublin city centre and the responsibilities for such improvements being charged to the commission. The elected members and the statutory authority of Dublin Corporation are being replaced by this commission. This proposal has a relevance to other urban areas. I know there are improvements needed in places like Cork city——
I do not want to interrupt the Deputy, but this Bill is confined to the city of Dublin and only passing references to other cities are relevant.
I accept that and agree that only a passing reference is needed. I believe that the setting up of this commission to replace the elected representatives on Dublin Corporation could lead to something similar being done in other boroughs. I fear that something like this might be applied to Cork.
A sum of £10 million is being made available for the commission over three years, and the annual budget for Dublin Corporation is £292 million for 1986. Why does the Minister think it necessary to take from an authority like Dublin Corporation the powers and functions of a local authority? This is unnecessary and I do not see any reason for it. That is my opinion.
If improvements are identified for the safety of pedestrians, buildings or whatever, the commission will submit to the Minister any such proposals and the Minister will consider any objections made to the scheme by Dublin Corporation. That is fine as far as it goes, because at least it recognises the responsibility of the corporation, but in comparison with the 1963 Planning and Development Act, and the amendments to that Act in subsequent years, I fail to see any allowance being made in this legislation for the private individual who may wish to lodge an objection. The people have that right under the existing Planning and Development Acts but that is not recognised in this Bill. The public should be considered when we are drafting legislation like this because very often their opinions are taken into account by the planning authority or by An Bord Pleanála, but not always. We all admit there are occasions when there are differences of opinion, but I am concerned that provision be made for the private individual to make an objection.
The cleansing of the Dublin metropolitan area is also covered in this Bill and we have run into very serious problems there. I want to make a passing reference to the fact that Cork city too is experiencing difficulty in this area. Do I take it that the commission will have their own staff for the cleansing of the areas under their jurisdiction? That being so, surely they will require further administrative staff. I am not too happy with that overlapping. It is a further indication that we do not need this proposal. Does the Minister think a commission would be more successful in cleaning this area than the Corporation were?
In relation to traffic control, will the commission at least renew consultations and be part of the system that has been successfully used until now in regulating traffic? From my understanding of this Bill, it seems to transfer the management functions to the commission and it appears that the corporation and the Garda will have less and less input into traffic management.
Controls in relation to litter are referred to in other sections of the Bill. If one drives through the streets of Dublin or any other town one will draw the conclusion that the Minister's litter awareness campaign has been ineffective. That is regrettable having regard to the Minister's public relations exercise in launching this campaign. Perhaps the Minister feels the commission will be more effective in handling an anti-litter campaign, although I do not have evidence that that will be the case.
Section 11 of the Bill, which refers back to section 6, deals with planning. I understand the ruling of the Chair as to the difference between Second Stage and Committee Stage, but I am very concerned that the planning functions of the local authority in addition to other functions will be taken away from the elected representatives and placed in the hands of the commission. The Minister should look at that section again. A local authority will have built up a bank of experience in the area of planning and development and that is a most useful aspect of their functions in planning and development. It is not a good idea to transfer the planning and development functions for this area to the commission. We do not yet know who will be on the commission and I doubt that they will have available to them the acquired experience of the planning authority. That is one of the most serious shortfalls in this Bill.
I accept that the planning authority for the area under discussion have allowed the erection of unsightly hoardings, placards and so on, and I am aware that one of the functions of this commission is to reverse that state of affairs. I do not disagree with correcting that trend. Why could not the local authority have been given the powers that are now being given to the commission in order to correct these developments. There is no need to set up a commission and fund them with £10 million to improve Dublin city centre. In Cork city and in other cities there are areas which need refurbishing and attention.
It would be more appropriate if the moneys proposed to be spent in the areas mentioned in the Bill were made available to those authorities who have made plans and proposals. I am sure the Acting Chairman is aware of Dublin Corporation's plan for the city centre. Would it not have been more appropriate for funding to have been supplied to Dublin Corporation to enable them to carry out their plans? Is it true that the EC indicated to representatives of Dublin Corporation that, if a plan was made available to them which had been approved by the Department, a contribution would be forthcoming?
I am sure my colleague on the Government benches will confirm that our land use and transportation study is going well. It was well planned and I am sure the Deputy would not welcome a proposal like this for Cork, to take away the functions from the corporation and to let someone else put the plan into operation. The kernel of the matter is that elected members will be pushed aside. I am afraid it will be indicated to them — as happened to members of Dublin Corporation — that they do not know how to do their job and that a commission will be brought in and given a sum of £10 million to spend. It is important to note that the elected members of the local authorities in Cork are composed of a majority from one political party who are not in Government, so they will not get any credit for achievements. We would not like to have the effectiveness of the land use and transportation study in the Cork area taken from us and credit for its success going to non-elected people. Any funds available for centre or inner city improvements should be given to the democratically elected local authorities who answer to the public every six or seven years, depending on the whim of the Minister for the Environment.
A Bill to remove powers and functions from elected members should never have been introduced. It is an insult to elected members to deprive them of such powers. It is also an insult to me, as an elected representative of another council. So much for the devolution of power to local powers about which we heard so much. If this is the criterion for the devolution of power to locally elected members, it falls very far short of my interpretation of such devolution. I unreservedly oppose the proposals in the Bill and I hope that Members of this House who are on local authorities will realise that it is an insulting Bill and take the necessary and appropriate action to ensure that it is not passed. It is disgraceful, obnoxious legislation and I hope it will be rejected.
The best that can be said about Deputy Lyons' speech is that at the commencement he described it as innocuous and at the end he described it as obnoxious. I congratulate the Deputy on the fact that in my 17 years in Parliament it is the first time I heard a five second contribution expanded to 55 minutes.
Some of the contributions to this Bill were extremely difficult to follow. The most honest speech from the Opposition was made by Deputy Nolan who acknowledged the tawdry, run down state of O'Connell Street, its unfortunate appearance and the fact that it is now at a stage where none of us could be proud of the main street of our capital city. He described it as the equivalent of a scar — not just on the capital city — but on the country. I did not use any of those expressions in introducing the Bill, or in my contribution in the other House. However, I suspect that much of what Deputy Nolan said would be reluctantly concurred with by the vast majority of the general public.
Deputy Nolan said whoever was responsible for allowing the capital city of any country to be reduced to that state bore a heavy responsibility. I agree with the Deputy's remarks. I wish to make it quite clear that it was the intention of the Government, in introducing this Bill, to recognise that the central core of the capital city is a special place, not just for Dubliners, although I suspect many of them think the area has a special significance, but for the people in general. They want to identify with the city, to be proud of it and they know it should be kept to a higher standard than any other public place. It is quite clear from contributions made here and in the other House, and from the reaction of the general public and interested parties, that my comments represent the view of the general public. There is, in effect, a consensus that the centre of Dublin has declined and that immediate action is needed to prevent further deterioration. The establishment of the Dublin Metropolitan Streets Commission will have that effect and I hope that in a very short time — three years is a relatively short time and the period was chosen deliberately — a radical revitalisation and refurbishment of the centre of our capital city will have been carried out. We need to identify that the area we are talking about is part of our heritage and that the city needs to build on its past in order to create the kind of environment which will help to attract people back to using the city centre.
A number of Deputies suggested that this Bill is an erosion of or an attack upon local democracy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Bill has been carefully designed to ensure that the commision will be established for a three year period to carry out specific work of improvement and refurbishment in the centre of our capital city, after which time the area will automatically, by provision of the statute, be transferred back to the care and maintenance of Dublin Corporation with one proviso: that it will continue to have, in law, a special status. An obligation will remain on the corporation to keep that area maintained at the special level to which it will have been taken by the Dublin Metropolitan Streets Commissioners.
There is great merit in the idea of having a single function authority established to carry out a particular task and to do it in a defined timescale. One of the difficulties which all bureaucracies face, and Dublin Corporation are one of the biggest in the country, is that they are multipurpose and multifaceted authorities. They have to attend to a very wide range of functions in order to provide all of the services and endeavour to meet the requirements and needs of the population of the capital city. Accepting all those responsibilities, it is difficult to expect that the authority charged with a myriad of responsibilities under the various local government Acts can, as it were, turn their attention to an area designated for a particular length of time.
What I found extraordinary about the contributions from the Opposition was that they appeared to be opposed to the principle of establishing single function authorities to carry out specific tasks. When the Urban Renewal Bill was introduced and discussed in the House last May — a Bill to set up special tax and other incentives for designated areas in Dublin city centre and in the centres of four other cities — this principle was addressed extensively by the Opposition. The provisions of the Bill which established the Custom House Docks Authority were discussed in the House. The powers of that authority are very similar to those of the Dublin Metropolitan Streets Commission. On 28 May, during the debate on the Urban Renewal Bill, while deploring the fact that the Minister only had power to designate the Custom House Docks area, Deputy Burke said and I quote from the Official Report, volume 367, column 277:
... he has no authority to appoint development authorities for any other area in the country. We consider this to be a very shortsighted approach.
Deputy Burke went on to say in column 288:
I fully support it and do not find that it is anti-democratic. It supports the whole democratic procedure by giving extra powers to get jobs done which cannot be done using the present machinery and planning laws. We should take the opportunity to designate more areas and appoint more authorities. My only complaint with the Bill is that it does not go far enough. The Minister is tying his own hands is not allowing himself the opportunity to appoint more authorities.
The predecessor to this Bill was introduced a month later to establish a similar authority to carry out a specific task as suggested by the Opposition spokesman.
Not so; they are two different things.
His party opposed that Bill and this Bill today on the basis that they are anti-democratic. Why is it not anti-democratic to establish a Custom House Docks Authority to prepare improvement plans for the Custom House docks area and to see within a designated period an improvement in the refurbishment and the rebuilding of that area but it is anti-democratic to establish a commission to do something with an area which virtually everybody in the country accepts is run down, tatty and tawdry, an area which instead of being proud of virtually every one of us is ashamed of?
In the same debate Deputy Burke said, and I quote from column 319:
We on this side of the House feel very strongly that the concept of a development authority is such an excellent one that it should not be restricted to that one site. This Bill should be amended in such a way as to give the Minister of the day, whoever that may be, the power to establish development authorities for any other special urban area within the country where this spotlight treatment would be appropriate.
The urban development authority has very special planning powers, functions and controls which are not available to a local authority. Because of that, these powers should be used in very specific areas.
Which are not available.
We ought to have accepted the spirit of Deputy Burke's proposals in May and amended the urban Renewal Bill to take unto ourselves, as was suggested, power to establish development authorities in any area which the Minister considered appropriate for the revitalisation of particular areas of urban decay. Had we done so, this Bill would not be before the House and the Dublin Metropolitan Streets Commission would have been established as intended last summer and the centre of Dublin would look a lot better this Christmas than it will now. Because this area is of national significance it is appropriate that there should be a specific Bill to establish the commission and the House should have the opportunity to discuss the Bill in a constructive manner and make suggestions as to how the area might best be improved. I have not heard in this House, whatever about the other House, from the Opposition one single constructive suggestion as to how the commissioners might go about their work, or one single constructive idea which would help them in that task. I had hoped that might have been the general thrust of the debate on this proposal.
If I had accepted the Opposition's suggestions in May there would have been no debate and the commission would be in existence. Deputy Lyons' fear, as he invited us to meander with him through Cork, that a similiar commission might have been established in Cork could have been a reality by now had I accepted his party spokesman's proposal. I could have established a commission for Cork, Schull or Skibbereen but I felt that, if there were proposals from time to time on specific reasons to identify important areas and establish single function authorities to do specific tasks in those areas, it should be done on each occasion by a specific piece of legislation. Being reasonable, who could have thought, having heard those views expressed by the Opposition spokesman in May, that a proposal such as this would have met with outright opposition in June and the filibustering tactics displayed over the past few weeks? The genuineness of the Opposition's case has to be questioned when one compares the written record of what apparently was Opposition policy in May with the performance of the Opposition and their reaction to this proposal which was put forward in June.
I provided in the Bill that a commission should be established for a three year period and I chose three years deliberately. I support the principle of establishing single function authorities. They can carry out specific tasks by concentrating their efforts and the resources given to them to that task. It is right that there should be a time limit put on their work so as to impress upon them the urgency of the work and the fact that it must be carried out within a limited timescale and completed satisfactorily to allow their successors to continue to maintain the completed work. I fear that the impact of some other authorities or groups that have been established from time to time has not been as great as it might have been because very often a completion time was not imposed upon the group from the outset.
Keeping those principles in mind I sat down to prepare the Bill before the House and I decided on the period of three years for a specific reason. Had the Bill been enacted in June by the Dáil and in early July by the Seanad, a three year period would have meant that the area to be administered by the commissioners would have been returned to the care and maintenance of Dublin Corporation several years before the present corporation finished their term of office. Even with the quite unnecessary and upsetting delay brought about by Opposition tactics between early summer and now, if the Bill is enacted this month the area will be returned to the care and maintenance of the corporation before the next local elections are due.
I must absolutely and utterly refute any suggestion that the Bill was conceived, published or introduced because a particular group happen to be in the majority on Dublin Corporation. The Bill is based upon proposals contained in a policy document published by my party in early 1981. When I was made Minister for the Environment earlier this year I set about preparing the Bill and getting Government agreement to the proposition. I must emphasise that irrespective of which party grouping might or might not have been in a majority at any time in the local authority concerned, I would have advanced the Bill because I believe it to be the best way to deal with what is a very difficult task, the refurbishment of the core of the capital city. The way to do that is to invite a small number of people to come together and give all their time and expertise to concentrating on the problem, how to address it and to bring the centre of Dublin to a standard comparable with but, hopefully, better than most equivalent capital cities throughout the world.
I found the contribution of some of the Deputies opposite who are members of Dublin Corporation difficult to understand. Today the Opposition Whip, Deputy Brady, bemoaned the fact that there are so many gambling arcades in the city centre. He sought to attribute their presence to some other body, suggesting they were in existence as a result of decisions of An Bord Pleanála. That is not so. Permission has been obtained for some of them, not all, from An Bord Pleanála but those who engage in gaming do so under the aegis of Dublin Corporation. That body have the legislation in the administrative area governing such gaming arcades. In that respect Dublin Corporation have the remedy in their own hands.
We have already adopted it.
Deputy Brady and others complained about the lack of litter control in the centre of Dublin but Dublin Corporation, the biggest local authority in the country, like the majority of local authorities have yet to adopt litter by-laws under the Litter Act, 1982. Deputy Nolan referred to this matter. I find it very difficult not to be critical of local authorities who have not taken onto themselves the powers available to them under that legislation. It would have helped them in a marked way to bring about improvements in regard to litter control. The last anti-litter by-laws adopted by Dublin Corporation were adopted in February 1938 and the last by-laws regarding the cleansing of footpaths under the public health Acts were adopted by Dublin Corporation on 5 June 1899. Those by-laws provided for the cleansing of footways and pavements, the removal of snow, dust, ashes, rubbish, filth and house refuse, the cleansing of earth closets, privys, ashpits, cesspools and dust bins and they were made by the Rt. Honourable Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses of Dublin and adopted by the municipal council on 5 June 1899.
I would have thought that some of those who have a dual responsibility, as Members of this House and as members of the corporation, would have looked first at how they could update their own powers and implement new powers that are available to them before bemoaning the fact, that they did not, apparently, have those powers. I find it difficult to comprehend Members of the Opposition deploring, as I have done, the growth and proliferation of plastic shop fronts and facades in the city centre when we all know that an amount of that proliferation is there without planning permission of any kind and that quite an amount of it is there on foot of permission granted by the local authority concerned. There has been extraordinary activity in the past two months and we have been told that the corporation are going to wage war on authorised shop fronts and advertising signs.
If we are to believe newspaper reports, the Lord Mayor has established a committee to try to decide what should be done with O'Connell Street but in all reasonableness one must ask, why is it only now, after the Government have published their proposals and had this Bill dealt with by the Seanad, that attention is being paid to this matter. Why is it only now after all these years that the local authority in the capital city are turning their minds towards the main street of their entire functional area?
Much play has been made by Members of the Opposition with some supposed plan prepared by the corporation in 1985. Unless I have been misled by officials of that body — and I do not for a moment suggest that I have — there is in reality no such plan. There are a few sheets of paper which were presented amongst other documents to members of one of the corporation committees in early 1985. There was reference in these sheets of paper to possible pedestrianisation of various parts of the centre city. These are laudable objectives but they are far from being a plan to cover or embrace the same area which is addressed in this legislation.
One of the documents refers to pedestrianising a route between Henry Street and Grafton Street. The core of it suggests designating a route and improving facilities for pedestrians from Henry Street, along Upper and Lower Liffey Street, the Halfpenny Bridge, Merchants' Arch, Crown Alley, around the Central Bank, across Dame Street at a pedestrian crossing, Trinity Street, St. Andrew's Street and Suffolk Street to Grafton Street. That was published on 11 February 1985. I hope I am referring to the correct documents; I suspect that I am. This is the great plan upon which I am supposed to have modelled the Bill before the House.
I refer the House to the policy document of my own party which is, as I have explained already, the basis for the proposals before us. It was published in 1981. The 1981 Fine Gael policy document A New Deal for Dubliners stated:
We further propose the establishment of a major pedestrian area within the heart of Dublin by linking the pedestrianised Grafton Street with Henry Street along another new pedestrian route through Suffolk Street, the Central Bank plaza, Merchants' Arch, the Halfpenny Bridge and Liffey Street, as was, we understand, proposed some time ago by the City Centre Traders' Association.
The plan to pedestrianise certain streets in the city centre, streets not covered by the proposals in this legislation, put forward some time in 1980 or 1981 by the City Centre Traders' Association and adopted and endorsed in a Fine Gael policy document in 1981, eventually found its way in February 1985 into a document from Dublin Corporation Roads and Traffic Department, submitted to the members of the corporation. That has been dragged in here and I have been accused of modelling my proposal on some document or plan put forward by the corporation.
A Fine Gael plan.
That proposal was first put forward by the City Centre Traders' Association.
It was put forward by Fine Gael in 1985.
Eventually a map came with these documents. This is supposed to be the plan on which the Bill before the House is based. None of the area covered by the Metropolitan Streets Commission Bill is covered or addressed in the plan which accompanies those documents, except Grafton Street. O'Connell Street, Westmoreland Street, D'Olier Street, College Street and College Green are not addressed in any way. It shows, of course, the pedestrianised route I have outlined, the pedestrianised Henry Street and the occasionally pedestrianised Grafton Street. From the point of view of colour illustration, the greatest trouble they went to was to colour the Liffey blue.
Virtually every city and every urban centre of any consequence throughout Europe has had major city centre revitalisation plans in progress for some years. They have major areas which are traffic free, permanently and exclusively devoted to the use of pedestrians so as to encourage them to use the area on a 24-hour basis and bring heart and vitality back into the city centre. What have we, as a capital city, to show? It is 19 years since Grafton Street was first occasionally pedestrianised. Whenever the corporation want to dig up an adjoining street the traffic is diverted through Grafton Street, as happened within the past few years. It is also turned back into a traffic route every evening of the week. We should be ashamed of ourselves if we talk about a supposed commitment to pedestrianisation.
It takes money. What about the £10 million?
It involves the same sort of problems which face public authorities in every other country, but they have addressed these problems. I recognise that to carry out this plan in a structured way would require an additional allocation of money and that is why the Bill provides for an injection of Government or taxpayers' money to the extent of £10 million on a three-year basis so as to make this concept a reality. Questions have been asked as to whether £10 million is enough or even perhaps too much. I do not know, but I know on the record to date that unless a body like this is established, given a mandate, given particular powers and finance, it will never be done. The centre of my city, our city, the nation's city is daily running down and being degraded. The time is not now; something like this should have been done years ago.
I invite any Deputy, any Member of this House, to go out as I have done and walk through the streets of Dublin. Start at the top of Grafton Street, walking perhaps a little more slowly than usual, and go as far as the Parnell Monument. Look at the surroundings — the clutter of street furniture, its poor condition, the broken flagstones in the footpaths, the areas where flagstones have been lifted and replaced with lumps of tarmacadam, the amount of litter, the filth, the stains on the pavement, the street markings. Look too at the quite beautiful examples of architecture at various stages along the route, most of them obliterated or defaced with generally tawdry plastic or neon-type signs.
I invite them to look at the state of traffic in the principal street of the city and the pollution caused as a result. I defy any Deputy who has any interest in the city to walk that route and not be pretty ashamed, disgusted and despondent by the time he or she reaches the Parnell Monument. I defy any Deputy in the House not to decide that some major initiative is overdue.
Would the Minister give the powers of the commission to the Dublin Transportation Authority for that area?
The commission will have the powers of the Dublin Transportation Authority. That is contained within the Bill.
So the Dublin Transportation Authority will have no say in that area. The powers will be with the commission.
That is correct. An amount of the powers being given by this Bill to the commission are also powers which were already vested in Dublin Corporation and which they, for whatever reason, have not used. Deputy Keating earlier in the House complained about the lack of thought in the siting of bus stops and the clutter of street furniture and sign-posts generally. Again, that is a power in which the corporation are directly involved at present. The siting of bus stops is a matter ultimately for the Commissioner of the Garda Síochána, who consults with the corporation and with CIE. The question of where buses stand in the street ultimately involves the corporation. The question of the coordination of road openings about which Deputy Keating complains so bitterly rested with the corporation under a particular arrangement, admittedly apparently not very satisfactorily. Under the Bill dealing with Dublin transportation, the DTA will now have the statutory power to decide in relation to co-ordinating road openings, but in this designated area to be administered by the commission the commission will have that power for the three years.
I am sorry to dwell on this point but because I pointed it out so often already I feel hurt that misstatements are being repeated. This Bill was not introduced because any particular party happened to have a majority in Dublin Corporation. This Bill was not modelled on any corporation proposals; I do not want to appear denigratory about them, but they are relatively modest proposals of a small nature and do not at all address, in the way the Bill does, the core area of the city as I am trying to do. The Bill is not modelled in any way on document 185 or anything else. I never heard about these documents until this debate began in the House; I had to seek them out from the corporation. The Bill sets out to address a particular problem and to do it in a structured way in a limited time span on the basis that when the work is done and the completed work is transferred back to the corporation it will be an area of which all of us will be pleased and proud. The corporation will then maintain it to that level because of the special status that it will have.
I am disappointed, in comparative terms, in the contributions here and the discussion on this Bill in the other House. A large part of the success of the commission will depend on a close co-operation between the corporation and the commission. I always envisaged that that would be so. The House will appreciate that it is usual to suggest publicly the names of any persons who might serve on a commission or authority set up under statute before the statute is enacted, quite simply for fear that the debate often happens then to centre around the names suggested for membership rather than on the proposal itself. I took the unusual step at the outset of indicating that I felt it would be appropriate and self-obvious that the Dublin City Manager should be a member of the commission, so as to emphasise the close linkage I saw between the responsibilities of the corporation and the work of the commission. I very much hope there will be the closest of relationships between those two bodies so that a mutual objective of seeing the centre of the city raised to the highest possible level can be brought about.
I feel disappointed that Deputy Tunney is not present at the moment. I took the trouble, some hours before I announced this proposal publicly, to visit Deputy Bertie Ahern's predecessor as Lord Mayor, Deputy Tunney, and I brought Deputy Fergus O'Brien, Minister of State at my Department and himself a former Lord Mayor, with me to that meeting. I dislike having to say this, but I feel that Deputy Tunney ought to have referred to this in his contribution. I outlined to the Lord Mayor of the day the proposals, the Government's intention to establish a commission, their decision to allocate funding to that commission and the purpose of the commission. At that meeting those proposals, which took printed form in the legislation now before the House, were welcomed by the Lord Mayor of the day, who wished the Minister of State and myself the best of luck with this commission and expressed his hope that it would be successful. I invite the House, when the printed record of today's debate is published, to read the contribution of Deputy Tunney and compare it with my report of the conversation I had with the Lord Mayor of Dublin in June of 1986.
I have a suspicion that a number of Deputies from all sides of the House are in favour of this proposal but some feel obliged to subscribe to a particular party line. I do not understand the basis for that party line. I would not have thought, even for the most pragmatic of reasons, that it was electorally popular, but I have a suspicion that a number of Deputies who contributed here might perhaps privately have some different views as to how this commission might go about their work. All I shall say further in that respect is that I hope, when the commission are established, that those Deputies — especially those who are also members of the local authority involved — will, because of their commitment to this city, endeavour in whatever way they can to help the commission in their objectives and to help what I think must be regarded generally as the worthwhile objective of restoring the centre of Dublin to the grandeur it once had.
I was rather disappointed and surprised at Deputy Mac Giolla's description of Dublin of 30 or 40 years ago, because it gave me a fairly rare old insight into perhaps the political ideology behind it all. His description of the centre of Dublin was presumably based on recollection. I presume it is not particularly party ideology in the way that Deputy Mac Giolla describes his recollection of O'Connell Street at that time.
Ice cream parlours are not part of our ideology.
His description of O'Connell Street varies extraordinarily with my recollection of that street. While there may be a small difference in our ages, I doubt if the street could have deteriorated or transformed so much between the time he was describing and the period, perhaps less than ten years later, which I remember as a young child. This extraordinary description was given of a downtrodden, blowsy, fly blown city — I think he had fleas hopping out of some of the premises.
That was Deputy Kelly's description of it.
Get to Deputy Kelly's description.
The Deputy concedes, the pillar cafes——
Tell us about John Kelly.
I really felt that the O'Connell Street and the centre of this city Deputy Mac Giolla described sounded like the centre of some Eastern European cities I have been in from time to time.
It would have to be, of course.
I wondered if the Deputy had not got his recollections confused, that he was perhaps decribing the centre of some other city with which he might have been familiar because the Dublin I remember——
——in the rare auld times.
——was a vibrant, entertaining, exciting place for me, as a young child to go to. My recollection was of that city centre being a place where whole families of Dubliners and those who came from other parts of the country to visit Dublin, did not just go to shop——
Different times, different worlds.
They went to visit, to walk about in parts of the evening as well as in the daytime. It was an area people liked to enjoy themselves in. That is part of what we need to do to restore that idea.
What about the Knickerbocker Glory?
One could probably get a Knickerbocker Glory in East Germany——
——or hamburgers.
What we need to do is to identify the great architectural features of the street and its surrounding areas. There is an enormous amount which can be built up. There is an enormous amount of restoration work which can be done on facades of buildings. There is an enormous amount of goodwill on the part of property owners who, once they see a plan being devised and addressed, will respond positively. There are examples of how that has happened in other parts of the country, admittedly in smaller towns on a much smaller scale where, of necessity, the problem, once reduced in size, becomes easier to address. I am quite convinced that, with goodwill on all sides, it will be possible to do the sort of thing we want to do here.
Of course, the central median of O'Connell Street should be the focal point of the street and should be restored, as was the original intention of the wide streets commissioners. It should be restored to a uniform width along its entire length. That central mall should then be used for the provision of items of street interest, street furniture, whether they be fountains, pieces of sculpture, cafés, display boards, adequate seating, security kiosks, perhaps even Garda kiosks. The footpaths in O'Connell Street need to be widened. There should be proper kiosks provided for street vendors. Enormous care and attention should be given to every single item of street furniture.
The first thing that should be decided is: is it necessary at all? The second thing that should be decided is: how can it most tastefully be provided in a way that enhances the street? There should be an overall style to the street furniture provided, running from O'Connell Street right up into Grafton Street. There should be decisions taken on whether items such as ESB junction boxes and lots of the other clutter are necessary at all. There should be somebody with a guiding hand — the commission — to decide on how that entire area is furnished. I believe that, if the commission attend to the smallest detail of how the street is set out, how traffic is regulated and street furniture provided, traders and shopowners will respond very positively in setting about the refurbishment of their shop fronts.
The corporation plan was a good one.
Before Deputy V. Brady came into the House I explained that, as far as I can establish, there is no Corporation plan.
There is, and was.
Would the Dublin Transportation Authority plans be affected in other areas since the main streets in the area are the ones to be controlled by the commission?
Again, that is a matter of co-operation between the Dublin Transportation Authority and the Dublin Metropolitan Streets Commission.
It is very important.
It is one to which I have already directed my mind. Obviously it would be quite impractical to decide, in improving the area to be covered by the Dublin Metropolitan Streets Commission, to cause traffic chaos in adjoining areas. There are already certain proposals afoot in that regard. Perhaps in the course of the Committee Stage debate those points can be addressed more fruitfully, I have to say, than they were in the gist of the Second Stage debate.
This Bill, to be successful, requires the co-operation of very many people. It requires the co-operation of officials and members of Dublin Corporation, of the Garda Sióchána, especially as one of the points most emphasised by people talking about the city centre area is that, if they are to use it, they must have a feeling of security, they must feel happy and safe. They must feel it is a place to which they can bring their children and feel safe in so doing. Perhaps the most acid test of all for adults is: do they feel safe being responsible for children in an area like that? It requires the active co-operation of the Garda, of bodies such as CIE, the Dublin Transportation Authority and the city centre traders——
——and the Chambers of Commerce.
All of those involved, for one reason or another, in the provision of services in that area. Deputy Skelly spoke this morning about CIE. He complained about advertising on Butt Bridge. I have to say that I share his view regarding that advertising. In fact I took the matter up recently with the chairman of CIE who wrote back to tell me he believed, according to surveys carried out in other areas, that people favoured large, outdoor advertising in urban areas because they brightened up the scene. I find that a little difficult to credit. I especially found the last part of the letter of the chairman of CIE a little difficult to take when he suggested to me that advertising on Butt Bridge was a part of Dublin.
It is like the building society advertisements on O'Connell Bridge.
I have not got round to replying to the chairman of CIE. I am thinking of writing back to him saying: "If advertising signs on Butt Bridge are a part of Dublin so were Guinness drays and trams, the Pillar, Monto, The Capitol, and Bang Bang, but they are all gone". There are other things like pollution from heavy traffic, dereliction, plastic shop fronts and begging on O'Connell Bridge which should have all gone. What must now happen, as is happening in so many areas all over the world, is that all of us must realise that, for whatever reason or combination of reasons, we have allowed what can only be described as an attack on our heritage to continue over a protracted number of years.
For a long time we did not realise just how important our inner city and urban areas were, not just this area but urban areas generally in towns and cities throughout the country. We have allowed many of them to run down to a dangerous extent. There is now a very special task facing all of us, whether at national or local government level — to endeavour to identify what is best in what remains, ascertaining how best we can go about restoring what is restorable and building on what was originally provided. We must identify, in every way we can, how we can build on that heritage, endeavouring to render it better for those who will succeed us. The wide streets commissioners received an amount of criticism and had their work disregarded in their early years. The recognition of the importance of their work did not come about until virtually after they were disbanded. Now everybody realises that the centre of Dublin would be radically different and worse today had not the wide streets commissioners been established. I am satisfied that the task facing the Dublin metropolitan streets commissioners is just as significant and that the work they have to do is just as important. As I said in the other House, if they are successful, generations of Dubliners will be in their debt and the success of their work will be to their credit. If they are not successful the Deputies can come back afterwards and blame me.
Question put.
The Dáil divided: Tá, 75; Níl, 64.
Tá
- Barnes, Monica.
- Barrett, Seán.
- Barry, Myra.
- Begley, Michael.
- Bell, Michael.
- Bermingham, Joe.
- Birmingham, George Martin.
- Boland, John.
- Cooney, Patrick Mark.
- Cosgrave, Liam T.
- Cosgrave, Michael Joe.
- Coveney, Hugh.
- Creed, Donal.
- Crotty, Kieran.
- Crowley, Frank.
- D'Arcy, Michael.
- Deasy, Martin Austin.
- Desmond, Barry.
- Desmond, Eileen.
- Donnellan, John.
- Dowling, Dick.
- Doyle, Avril.
- Doyle, Joe.
- Dukes, Alan.
- Durkan, Bernard J.
- Enright, Thomas W.
- Farrelly, John V.
- Fennell, Nuala.
- FitzGerald, Garret.
- Flaherty, Mary.
- Glenn, Alice.
- Griffin, Brendan.
- Harte, Patrick D.
- Hegarty, Paddy.
- Hussey, Gemma.
- Kelly, John.
- Kenny, Enda.
- L'Estrange, Gerry.
- Bruton, John.
- Bruton, Richard.
- Burke, Liam.
- Carey, Donal.
- Collins, Edward.
- Conlon, John F.
- Connaughton, Paul.
- Coogan, Fintan.
- McGahon, Brendan.
- McGinley, Dinny.
- McLoughlin, Frank.
- Manning, Maurice.
- Mitchell, Gay.
- Mitchell, Jim.
- Molony, David.
- Moynihan, Michael.
- Naughten, Liam.
- Nealon, Ted.
- Noonan, Michael (Limerick East).
- O'Brien, Fergus.
- O'Brien, Willie.
- O'Keeffe, Jim.
- O'Leary, Michael.
- O'Sullivan, Toddy.
- Owen, Nora.
- Pattison, Séamus.
- Prendergast, Frank.
- Quinn, Ruairí
- Ryan, John.
- Shatter, Alan.
- Sheehan, Patrick Joseph.
- Skelly, Liam.
- Spring, Dick.
- Taylor, Mervyn.
- Taylor-Quinn, Madeline.
- Timmins, Godfrey.
- Yates, Ivan.
Níl
- Ahern, Bertie.
- Ahern, Michael.
- Aylward, Liam.
- Barrett, Michael.
- Brady, Gerard.
- Brady, Vincent.
- Brennan, Mattie.
- Brennan, Paudge.
- Brennan, Séamus.
- Briscoe, Ben.
- Browne, John.
- Byrne, Hugh.
- Byrne, Seán.
- Calleary, Seán.
- Collins, Gerard.
- Conaghan, Hugh.
- Connoly, Ger.
- Cowen, Brian.
- Daly, Brendan.
- De Rossa, Proinsias.
- Doherty, Seán.
- Fahey, Francis.
- Fahey, Jackie.
- Faulkner, Pádriag
- Fitzgerald, Liam Joseph.
- Flynn, Pádriag
- Foley, Denis.
- Gallagher, Denis.
- Gallagher, Pat Cope.
- Geoghegan-Quinn, Máire.
- Haughey, Charles J.
- Hilliard, Colm.
- Hyland, Liam.
- Kirk, Séamus.
- Kitt, Michael.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- Leonard, Jimmy.
- Leonard, Tom.
- Leyden, Terry.
- Lyons, Denis.
- McCarthy, Seán.
- McCreevy, Charlie.
- McEllistrim, Tom.
- Mac Giolla, Tomás.
- Moynihan, Donal.
- Nolan, M. J.
- Noonan, Michael J.
- (Limerick West).
- O'Connell, John.
- O'Dea, William.
- O'Hanlon, Rory.
- O'Keeffe, Edmond.
- O'Kennedy, Michael.
- O'Leary, John.
- Ormonde, Donal.
- O'Rourke, Mary.
- Power, Paddy.
- Reynolds, Albert.
- Treacy, Noel.
- Tunney, Jim.
- Wallace, Dan.
- Walsh, Joe.
- Walsh, Seán.
- Wilson, John P.
- Woods, Michael.
Tellers: Tá, Deputies F. O'Brien and Taylor; Níl, Deputies V. Brady and Browne.
Question declared carried.
When is it proposed to take Committee Stage?
Next Tuesday, subject to agreement between the Whips.
Committee Stage ordered for Tuesday, 11 November 1986, subject to agreement between the Whips.