This is a Bill to enable part of the funds of suitors vested in the Accountant of the Courts of Justice to be utilised for three specific purposes, namely, to finance 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 Capital Fund for the maintenance of the Society's Library and to recoup the Exchequer a sum advanced in 1944 by way of a grant-in-aid for the rebinding of books.
The funds of suitors consist of cash and securities belonging to suitors transferred or paid into or deposited in Court. They can only be used for the benefit of suitors entitled. However, part of the funds consist of unclaimed dividends and balances that have been accumulating for more than 200 years. These are what are known as the dormant funds, which may be defined as funds in accounts that have not been dealt with for 15 years or longer. The total of the funds in Court on 30th September, 1959, exceeded £8,862,000 of which the dormant portion was represented by a sum of about £860,00 made up of cash to the value of £315,000 and securities to the nominal value of £547,000.
It might be thought that there could be found standing in the name of the Accountant of the Courts of Justice actual funds to the above mentioned amounts whether cash, money on deposit or investments. In fact, this is not the case as cash and securities to the amounts respectively of £325,150 and £130,000 have been withdrawn from the funds of suitors under the authority of various Acts of the Parliament of Ireland and the Parliament of the United Kingdom for purposes which included the building and improving of the Courts of Justice and enlarging the Law Library in Dublin. The Acts in question afforded an indemnity to suitors for any loss they might sustain backed by the Consolidated Fund.
From what I have said, it will be apparent that not all of the Court funds are concrete things vested in the Accountant of the Courts of Justice but that a portion of these funds amounting in the aggregate to the sum of £455,000 is represented by nothing more than the liability of the Central Fund—which has replaced the Consolidated Fund—to indemnify suitors against any loss. The Bill proposes the withdrawal of a further sum of £323,000 and provides, of course, for a similar indemnity backed by the Central Fund. The effect of the withdrawal of this amount will be to exhaust the so-called dormant funds when account is taken of the fall in the value of the dormant securities the market price of which is some £85,000 below their nominal value. There will, of course, be a further accumulation of dormant funds with the passage of time but the present Bill will exhaust this source of supply for the present.
Coming now to the purposes for which the moneys are to be utilised, the first of these is to finance the rebuilding of the Abbey Theatre. A suggestion that the State should provide assistance towards the cost of rebuilding was first put forward in 1937. Although the idea was received favourably by successive Ministers for Finance, the matter had not come to a head when, in 1951, the then existing building was damaged by fire and left unfit for further performances. Alternative temporary accommodation was obtained in the Rupert Guinness Memorial Hall and afterwards in the Queen's Theatre which is still being used.
In December, 1954, an undertaking was given by the Government that, subject to the approval of the Dáil, they would supplement whatever funds the directors of the Abbey had or might have to rebuild the theatre on the old site in accordance with plans to be approved. Negotiations were then entered into for the acquisition of an adjoining public house with a view to enlarging the site. These premises were eventually acquired in 1957 and a sum of £26,000 was voted by way of Supplementary Estimate in 1957-58 in respect of their acquisition. Plans for the new theatre prepared by Mr. Michael Scott, in consultation with Monsieur Pierre Sonrel of Paris, have since been received and approved by the Minister for Finance and it is hoped that the contract for the work will shortly be placed.
The Abbey has been accepted by the Government and by the people generally as a national theatre with long standing cultural traditions associated with the Irish revival as regards both the national language and the dramatic arts. Although it is conducted by a private company, the National Theatre Society, it has received annual State assistance since 1925-26. The current year's provision under this head is £14,000—Subhead B of Miscellaneous Expenses Estimate. So long as the grant continues the Government exercises the right of appointing one of the directors.
By its articles of association, the company is precluded from declaring dividends or paying directors' fees and in the event of the winding up of the company, its assets could not be distributed amongst shareholders but would have to be applied to an approved cultural purpose in Ireland. There is a covenant with the Minister for Finance not to use the new theatre that is to be built for any purpose other than the purposes specified in the articles of association and not to assign, transfer, underlet or part with the possession or control of the premises or any part of them without the Minister's consent.
It is not possible as yet to give a firm estimate of the total cost of the building proposed to be erected and what proportion thereof will be provided by the National Theatre Society itself which is the owner of the site. The figure of £250,000 mentioned in Section 2 (1) (a) of the Bill represents the limit of the contribution to be made from the funds of suitors.
With regard to King's Inns, some two years ago the Chief Justice approached the Government on behalf of the Benchers, who are the controlling body of the Society of King's Inns, to ask for financial assistance because of the difficulties they were experiencing in maintaining the Society's buildings and running its Library notwithstanding that heavy increases had been made in the fees and subscriptions which constitute the Society's principal source of income.
Later, there was a meeting between the representatives of the Benchers and the Taoiseach at which the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Justice were present at which the matter was fully discussed. As a result of these discussions and the inquiries which followed, it became evident that the buildings, which were erected at the beginning of the last century, were in danger of falling into ruins unless money could be found to undertake an extensive programme of renovation and repair and that this danger had been much increased by the appearance of dry rot. Such a programme, it was estimated, would cost about £45,000 to complete.
Expenditure on this scale is quite beyond the resources of the Society which unlike some of the English Inns of Court has benefited from no rich endowments. At the same time, the running of the Society's Library has been a heavy financial burden. Its only income is a grant of £433 a year which was authorised by the Copyright Act of 1836 when the privilege of receiving free books was withdrawn and the whole of this sum has to be expended on the purchase of books and is, in fact, insufficient for that purpose.
King's Inns was the last work in Dublin of James Gandon, the architect who was responsible for some of our most beautiful buildings. There is, I believe, agreement amongst those best qualified to judge that the building of which King's Inns constitute the north wing is one of the finest buildings of its kind in Dublin. In the Government's view, it is well worth preserving. The Library contains a very valuable collection of books. As well as being used by students and barristers it is open to the public on certain conditions and permission for reading and reference is freely given. Subsection (4) of section 2 of the Bill provides for the payment to the trustees of the Society of sums totalling £70,000 of which the sum of £25,000 is for the creation of an investment fund and the application of the income thereof for the maintenance of the Library or the general purposes of the Society, the balance being earmarked to recoup or defray the cost of expenditure incurred or to be incurred on the Society's buildings.
As I mentioned earlier, the funds of suitors have been resorted to from time to time for public purposes. In general the direction of these appropriations has been for such purposes as the building of the Four Courts, the Public Record Office, the Bar Library and purposes in connection with the Superior Courts in Dublin. Their use should, I think, be restricted to special cases of a "once and for all" type which are of a national character though outside the ordinary field of State expenditure. The Abbey and King's Inns are such cases. It will be observed that, as in the case of previous withdrawals, the Bill affords a complete indemnity to suitors by which they will be absolutely protected from any possible loss.
