I should like to draw your attention, Sir, and the attention of the House, to work that has begun outside the Dáil Chamber, and to say that it is work which I think would be a great disfigurement to the building and which should not be carried out. It should be said, Sir, that since 1922, the Office of Public Works have carried out a great deal of excellent work in this building. Now a plan has been submitted to the Committees on Procedure and Privileges of both Houses for an extension of the building. In connection with that particular extension, there has been a suggestion that certain Seanad rooms should be given over to the Taoiseach. To give access from our landing to the Dáil Chamber work has now begun for putting a gallery five feet wide over the entrance to the Dáil Chamber and beside the entrance staircase.
Though work has actually begun, no plan for that gallery was ever submitted to the Seanad Committee on Procedure and Privileges. I have been making inquiries and I understand that no plan of that kind was submitted to the Dáil Committee on Procedure and Privileges. There seems, therefore, to be no authority for that work, because it has been understood at all times that no change in the fabric of the building would be undertaken, without consultations with both Houses. The work which has now begun would mar the elegance and dignity of the approach to the Dáil Chamber and it would be a disfigurement of the building of which we are tenants.
May I ask you, Sir, whether you have been consulted, and whether you would use your influence to see that the work is postponed, that the whole question is postponed, until such time as both the Dáil and Seanad Committees on Procedure and Privileges have an opportunity of discussing the plan. I have no doubt neither would agree with any such plan.
