Adjournment Debate— Government Building Schemes.

General MacEoin

I regret that owing to the fact that I had to visit hospital yesterday I was unable to be present when the reply was given to this question. The question put down by Deputy Briscoe was as follows: To ask the Minister for Finance if he would state if and when a Fianna Fáil Government approved these schemes: (a) £9,000,000 for the building of a new Dáil; (b) new Government buildings at the Phoenix Park costing £11,000,000; (c) a new jail at Chapelizod costing £1,000,000, and (d) washing the face of Dublin Castle costing £1,500,000. The question asked the Minister to state when the schemes were approved. I did not say that the Government had approved of a scheme. I said they had plans for a building scheme and the Parliamentary Secretary said, quite correctly, I think, that no such plan was approved for, if it had been approved they would, of course, be building and the Parliamentary Secretary got away on a technicality. My assertion is thatthere were proposals by the then Government for such buildings and for such developments. Perhaps I should have used the phrase "lifting the Castle's face" instead of "washing the Castle's face" because that would probably be a more correct description.

The idea behind all this was I think, to keep me right for I will not impute to Deputy Briscoe any idea of trying to make me out a public liar. I think Deputy Briscoe was anxious that I should know the truth as a matter of fact, as he knows it; but as he knows it and as I know it are two entirely different things because I, personally, saw the plans and maps for these schemes. I saw more than that. It was more than an idea. When I said "lifting the Castle's face" to the tune of £1,500,000, I regret to say I was £500,000 out. The figure was £2,000,000. Let me be quite definite on this: on that scheme alone there is one of the finest models ever made in my opinion lying under a revolving glass case showing what the plans were for Dublin Castle, and that model cost £600. The Taoiseach and the Parliamentary Secretary said yesterday there was no cost; that model alone cost £600.

I feel it is imperative that this matter should be placed on record once and for all. It is already on record and, in that connection, I want to draw Deputies' attention to Volume 114 of the Official Report. I refer the House to the speech made by Deputy McGilligan, then Minister for Finance, on the Vote on Account as reported at column 1901 and subsequent columns of Volume 114 on 29th March, 1949. There the then Minister for Finance very clearly sets out the plans. It is strange that the present Minister for External Affairs, then Deputy Aiken, did not challenge the accuracy of Deputy McGilligan's statement. I would like everybody to take note of this. I would not like Deputy Briscoe to be under the impression that he was right and I was wrong. I want to inform Deputy Briscoe and every Deputy listening to me now of the facts. Deputy McGilligan, as reported at column 1901 said:—

"In 1933 the last Government set up a Committee consisting of the then Minister for Local Government and Public Health, now the President, the then Minister for Finance, Deputy MacEntee; the then Minister for Defence, Deputy Aiken, and the late Mr. Flinn, to consider a plan for the housing of this Parliament—as if we were not comfortable enough— and of the civil servants attached to the Government. A report was produced by that body in January, 1934. It was decided to have a comprehensive plan for these new Government Buildings. The suggestion was made that an area in the City of Dublin should be scheduled and that legislative action should be taken to prevent undue inflation of site values inside the scheduled area. Those who know Dublin might be attentive to this. The scheduled area, as recommended, was the whole portion of the district bounded by Merrion Street, Lower Baggot Street, the Canal and Fenian Street. In other words, you turn right from Government Buildings and go up towards the turn left towards Baggot Street, go along Baggot Street to the Canal, turn left along the Canal passing Mount Street Bridge until you turn left where Sir Patrick Dun's hospital is and go along Fenian Street until the corner of Westland Row and left again to Government Buildings. That was to be scheduled——

Captain Cowan: Wiped out.

Mr. McGilligan: ——wiped out. and a new Government Building with civil servants' offices to be put there.

Mr. Davin: It would be a royal republic then.

Mr. McGilligan: It meant the wiping out of two hospitals, I think a couple of churches, a variety of professional men's houses, a convent——

Mr. Madden: They should have taken the Grangegorman site."

There was a plan definitely outlined then.

Mr. Killilea

According to Deputy McGilligan.

General MacEoin

Perhaps I had better deal with the Chapelizod plan next:—

"Let Deputies think of themselves standing at Kingsbridge, with their back to the mouth of the Liffey, and think of the buildings right and left of them as they look down towards Chapelizod. Those properties to the right and left from Kingsbridge to Chapelizod were to be cleared. It meant the disappearance of Cahill's, the Lucan Dairies and a host of places along that bank, but the people would have had a pleasant riverside walk. I think Deputy Aiken made his contribution to the plan by saying that, if that did not protect the people's amenities far enough, they should have, not a compulsory scheme but a compulsory controlled scheme of the amenities of the Liffey Valley to Lucan and finally to Leixlip.

Mr. Aiken: Do you object?

Mr. McGilligan: I was about to ask if the Fianna Fáil back benchers thought I was telling the truth about that, but Deputy Aiken agrees.

Mr. Aiken: You are not telling the whole truth."

Minister for Justice (Mr. Boland)

There is no worse lie than a half truth.

General MacEoin

I continue the quotation:—

"Mr. McGilligan: There may be additions. There were minor schemes, I must admit. There was the Dublin Castle scheme, which was to cost £2,000,000."

Yesterday, it was alleged that I was drawing on my imagination. I saw the plans and I saw the maps. I ask the Taoiseach now to bring over the finest piece of work that one could see and leave it on the centre of that table, the model proposed for Dublin Castle, costing £600. The work that itrepresented was to cost £2,000,000. Deputy Briscoe quite recently charged the inter-Party Government with having stopped this work on the Castle. He made it one of the charges.

Mr. Briscoe

Not washing its face.

General MacEoin

What I take exception to is that Deputy Beegan, the Parliamentary Secretary, in reply to this question of Deputy Briscoe's, tried to assert in this House in public, that I was guilty of a falsehood when I said that the Fianna Fáil Government were on a spending spree far greater than anything the inter-Party Government had ever thought of, when I enumerated these items along with others — I want to say that I enumerated more than these in my Greystones speech and elsewhere over the past two years —I am held up as telling an untruth. The Taoiseach yesterday said that it was untrue, but then at the end he admitted that it was only an idea.

The Taoiseach

The Deputy gets an idea sometimes, does he not?

General MacEoin

I do, but the idea is something that was found by a commission when I set up three people to make a report to me on what they would do to build these things. It was more than an idea you had then when you suggested to them to make a report how to do it, and set out what they would do. I said the jail at Chapelizod. That has never been denied. When I became Minister for Justice there was the farm of land — it is there on the top of the hill at Chapelizod—of which I was notified by the Office of Public Works, that it was available for the building of this, and that the Government had decided to go on with it. I will admit quite frankly that the difference between the present Minister for Justice and myself on that was that he was calling it a borstal and I was calling it a jail, but it is a jail just the same.

Mr. Boland

On that occasion the Deputy said that he had mentioned no figure although I pointed out that the Irish Timeshad a figure of £1,500,000. He said he had no figure. He was drawing on his imagination.

General MacEoin

Does the Minister suggest I am drawing on my imagination about the report to the gentleman who is now the respected Head of this State and was then Minister for Finance?

Mr. Boland

We are dealing with the jail now.

General MacEoin

These people sat and made a report on what they were going to build. Where would I get the idea if they did not sit?

Mr. Boland

God knows where you got it.

General MacEoin

The Taoiseach will not deny that they sat, and I will leave that to him now. I was only pointing out that the Government were criticising the inter-Party Government's expenditure, and, as I said before, we could not hold a candle to them in their proposals. I pointed out that there was the Argentine wheat, the Canadian oatmeal and the South African coal, and that these expenditures were far out of proportion to anything we had ever dreamt of. I went further and said — I did not know that the Taoiseach was going to follow me so closely and corroborate what I said— that we left so much money behind us from the Marshal Aid Loan and the grant. Mind you, I was more prophetic than I thought when I asserted that these millions were nothing to a Government like Fianna Fáil, but the Taoiseach came out in Fermoy on the next Sunday and said that the £22,000,000 was only the remnants of Marshall Aid—the tailor's clippings, only a thing of nothing.

The Taoiseach

I did not make any comments of that kind on it.

General MacEoin

I am pointing out that the figures that are challenged are that there was any proposal of this type approved of. When the question is put in that particular way, the Government, of course, can say quite accurately that they were not approved of because if they were there would now be buildings. But they had theseplans ready for submission to the House if and when the time, as they thought, was opportune to get away with it.

As I say, the thing I object to is this—a Deputy of the Fianna Fáil Party putting down a question to impugn the honesty of the other person and holding him up to public ridicule by saying he was drawing on his imagination.

The Minister for External Affairs, then Deputy Aiken, went on to say that the inter-Party Government was going on with these, including the Castle. Deputy Aiken said:—

"You are not telling the whole truth.

Mr. McGilligan: There may be additions. There were minor schemes, I must admit. There was the Dublin Castle scheme, which was to cost £2,000,000.

Mr. Aiken: And which you are going on with.

Mr. McGilligan: No, we are not.

Mr. Aiken: You have it in the Book of Estimates."

Now, washing the Castle's face was more than an idea. It was in the Book of Estimates, and that is considerably more than an idea. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, in answer to Deputy Briscoe, may have said indeed: "There were some things that we had not fully decided to go on with but there were some of them that we had decided to go on with". But when the Parliamentary Secretary in answer to a parliamentary question informs Deputy Briscoe that there was none of these things to be gone on with, none of them were approved, and yet here in the Book of Estimates you have the £2,000,000—I was only £500,000 out—to do the Castle, then the Taoiseach, the Head of the Government, gets up and says it was only an idea.

The Taoiseach

I did not say it with reference to that.

General MacEoin

The Taoiseach said it with reference to——

The Taoiseach

In a general context.

General MacEoin

——the subject matter of the question. The subject matter under debate was whether the Government had approved of these things and then Parliamentary Secretary Beegan said that none of the schemes was ever approved by a Fianna Fáil Government. Deputy Briscoe asked from what source the Deputy— meaning Deputy MacEoin — got his information and then we have the Minister for Health, Deputy Dr. Ryan, saying: "From his imagination." I respectfully submit that that is not the line of thought that I would expect from the Taoiseach or from any member of that Government on a question that can be proved in this way.

The Taoiseach

I regret that the time is much too short to point out all the misrepresentation that has gone on for years with respect to this whole question of Government buildings and parliamentary buildings. When in 1922 there was the question of an Irish Parliament sitting in the open, the question of buildings arose. In 1923, I think, a Committee was set up, a Joint Committee of both Houses, to consider this particular matter. These buildings here were taken at the time for temporary accommodation. When we came in in 1932 we found that the Museum, the Library, the National Gallery — institutions of public importance — were being crowded out and they wanted more space. We also had a number of Government offices scattered throughout the city. There are even at this day some 64 of them accommodated in private houses. We began to consider whether it would not be in the public interest to design or get a plan which could be carried out over a long period of years according as the need arose, according as there might be a slump in employment, in construction work and so on.

The first question that has to be decided, naturally, is, if there is a plan of that sort to be carried on, where is the site to be. The first question was to consider was there any suitable site. A number of suitable sites, as the basis of a plan for construction, were suggested and finally it was suggested that the neighbourhood of the present Government buildings, that area facingthe Government buildings, would be in the long run the most suitable. The next thing was to examine what were the possibilities of such a site, what the development of such a site would mean. You have to have a site if you are going to have a plan and you have to have plans in preparation a long time if they are going ever to be put into operation and to be effective for the purposes you have in mind.

The consideration of that led to a number of questions. In one way or another, the consideration of the matter lasted from 1932 to 1937. There is no evidence there of our having been in much of a hurry about a spree, I think. If we were all on the spending spree that the Deputy suggested, we would not have spent five years in just considering the matters that would arise in connection with a site. In 1937, the scheme was put completely aside because of the fact that it was decided that the Board of Works should give priority to the consideration of arterial drainage. The whole idea was put aside until, in the middle of the war, a Cabinet Committee was considering the question of post-war planning. One of the things we had to consider was the possibility — which might have happened had there been a genuine peace after the last war — of a number of young people who had gone over to England, craftsmen and others, coming back in large numbers.

Besides the other plans, we had this question of the possibility of having a plan for Government buildings, a comprehensive plan, to be operated over a long number of years, to be carried out according as the need would arise, a plan which was definitely stated to be subject to other considerations and to take its place in the queue — to be subject to the question of the availability of supplies, the question of house building, the question of schools and other more immediate and necessary public works. It had been put aside, then, completely for the time being in 1937. It was further considered in 1943 and 1944, and in December, 1944, it was decided to consider the setting up of a Committee of all Parties to go into the question of the selection of a suitable site. In 1945, the then Minister for Finance was asked toapproach the Leader of the largest Opposition Party to find out what his Party's reaction would be towards a scheme of that kind and to see whether there was going to be any co-operation in considering a matter of that sort. It was quite clear from the report we got that co-operation as far as he was concerned—though he promised to consider it with his colleagues, he made quite clear his own reaction——

General Mulcahy

Do not develop that.

The Taoiseach

Is it not true that your reaction was against it and that you promised to consult your——

General Mulcahy

I said that we would not be prepared to consider it at all until there was a greater advance made in dealing with the housing question.

The Taoiseach

That was your own reaction, but the promise was there and we were waiting for a reply,

General Mulcahy

In any case, it was not worth doing anything about it.

The Taoiseach

Then it was not worth your interruption.

General Mulcahy

I could make several interruptions.

The Taoiseach

I was trying to give the facts, as I have been able to get my memory refreshed by having documents consulted.

General Mulcahy

Give your own side of things.

The Taoiseach

I am giving it as I got it, that the reaction of the Leader of the Opposition or of the principal Opposition Party was against it. There was reported to me the promise that he would consider it in consultation with his colleagues. After that, the Minister became President and no further reply was received. Finally, the last thing we did was to set up — I think in August, 1946—an interdepartmental committee to consider this whole question but not to have their consideration based on MerrionSquare which had been abandoned from that point of view. One of the principal reasons for abandoning it was that there were certain institutions within the area which it would have been impossible to disturb and not right to disturb, so it was completely abandoned. Then the inter-departmental committee was asked to consider the question of a site in an open space in the Phoenix Park, for which plans could be easily made, where there was no question of having any demolitions or acquisition of houses or anything of that sort. My recollection is that that committee was still sitting when we left office in February, 1948.

I know nothing about the model that has been referred to, but if there is one and if it is a question of the Castle, the Castle came in in this way. At one stage of the consideration, it was pointed out that there is a number of offices which it is convenient for the public to have situated near the centre of the city.

That being so, the question of the Castle site had been considered very early, from that point of view — in order to convenience the citizens, it was considered that the best thing that could be done would be to take that area, the Castle area, and to deal with the buildings there — there were offices there already — to see how that could be developed so as to meet the needs of those offices which, for the convenience of the public, ought to be near the centre of the city. As to the time, I think it was a period of 20 years that was envisaged for the development there.

Now, it is quite clear from what I have said, which can be easily brought out by a question in much more detail than I can give — with day and date for the incidents I have recalled — that what was happening was that the Government was considering whether it would not be advisable to have in a central place close to each other a number of these scattered offices and to have also a pool of constructional work which could be used to give employment if there were a sudden slump of any kind in employment in thebuilding industry. There is nothing that we have to retreat from in the slightest. What we have to object to and what we do object to, of course, is the misrepresentation that, in the circumstances of the time, we had actually decided to go on and start that work. You can have plans which need not be put into operation for years. The whole thing, at the time when we were considering it first, was that it was considered desirable — it is good practice in every country — in order to meet conditions of a slump, to have a pool of public works, of useful public works, available. This particular set of public works was definitely stated on the files to be work which was to be special,which was to be put in the queue, if I may put it that way — to take its place after the building of homes, after the building of schools and hospitals and after other works of greater public importance.

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 11 Jun 1953