Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 21 June 2018
13. Deputy Niamh Smyth asked the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht when the cultural and heritage centre at a location (details supplied) will begin hosting exhibitions; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [27112/18]
Amharc ar fhreagraAn arrangement was arrived at with the Bank of Ireland on College Green in Dublin, under which the State would be given the use of a facility for ten years to host exhibitions. When will this happen because it has been a long time coming?
I am delighted to inform the Deputy that the cultural and heritage centre at Bank of Ireland on College Green will be launched on Wednesday, 4 July 2018. I will open the new centre alongside Ms Francesca McDonagh, the chief executive of Bank of Ireland. The first exhibition to be housed at the centre is entitled "Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again". It will celebrate the life and work of our great Nobel Prize winning poet and will be launched by President Michael D. Higgins on the same day. The centre and new exhibition will open to the public on 6 July. The exhibition will draw on the extensive literary archive donated to the National Library in 2011. I take this opportunity to thank the Heaney family for their remarkable philanthropy and for strongly supporting this initiative. The exhibition will be an exciting partnership between the State and the private sector and will run for four years.
The Heaney exhibition will be the first at this dynamic new cultural and heritage centre at the Bank of Ireland's premises on College Green in Dublin which is the home of Ireland’s first Parliament. Part of this iconic building has now been transformed to welcome the public in partnership with the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. The exhibition will be accessed by the public through the Gandon designed entrance to the College Green building on Westmoreland Street, which has not been used for many years. It will be a superb addition to the cultural landscape of Dublin.
The recent opening of the Luas line across Dublin city centre will facilitate visitors and tourists in coming to an area that has been little more than a pedestrian and traffic throughway for too long. The new culture and heritage centre at the Bank of Ireland premises is held under licence between the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and the bank for ten years from 27 November 2017. The National Library of Ireland, through a memorandum of understanding, is responsible for the first exhibition to be hosted at this unique venue. It is envisaged that further exhibitions involving other national cultural institutions will be hosted at the venue in the future.
I am not certain that it was the first parliament. My father wrote a book about parlaimint na mban, or the women's parliament. I must check the date to find out whether the Minister is correct. On a more serious note, the agreement to use this venue for ten years was reached four and a half years ago. Why did it take so long to get this up and running? On the day the doors open, will we have five and a half years to go or ten years to go? It will be most disappointing if there are just five and a half years to go.
As I mentioned, this venue will open to the public on 6 July next. The Deputy will appreciate that organising something of this significant nature involved the collation of archival records as well as the Seamus Heaney collection. I thank his family for the work involved. A great deal of work, including work on the building, has had to be done to put an exhibition of this size together and bring it to the public. Expressions of interest were called for in 2014 to animate the centre. Submissions were received from a number of institutions and organisations. An expert selection committee was established to examine the submissions. The National Library of Ireland was selected for its proposal to curate an exhibition on the life and works of Seamus Heaney. As I have said, the exhibition is based on the literary archives which were donated to the library by Seamus Heaney and his family in 2011. The exhibition, which is entitled "Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again", is curated by the National Library of Ireland and by Professor Geraldine Higgins, who previously curated Emory University's successful Heaney exhibition, "The Music of What Happens", which celebrated the life and work of the great Nobel Prize-winning poet.
The first meeting of the First Dáil, the lasting effect of which we are still talking about almost 100 years later, was organised in less than two months. The timescale was even shorter than I thought it was when I raised this matter with the Minister previously. It seems extraordinary that the venture now coming on stream was announced in February 2014, which was almost four and a half years ago. I will repeat the simple and plain question I have already asked. Does the ten-year period for which this venue is being made available start in 2018, or are we still working on the basis that it started in 2014? If there are just five and a half years to go, we have spent nearly half of the time getting the first exhibition going.
As I said in my original response, this venue is held under licence for ten years from 27 November 2017. No time has been lost. The official opening will take place on 4 July next. The exhibition, which will be free for everyone, will run for between three and five years. It is the aspiration of the National Library of Ireland that the exhibition will move permanently to the library's historic building on Kildare Street at the end of that period. It will take its place there alongside the award-winning exhibition dedicated to W.B. Yeats. This will bring two of Ireland's greatest writers together in a library they both loved. The Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht has given the National Library of Ireland an additional capital grant of €615,000 towards the cost of designing and building the exhibition. Bank of Ireland has generously provided the space in College Green and will contribute towards the cost of running the centre.
The question has not been answered.
The Chair has no function in that business.
The Chair does have such a function under the new Standing Orders.
The Deputy will have to write to the Ceann Comhairle if he wants a different answer to the question.
The Chair is incorrect. If the Chair checks the Standing Order, he will see that-----
We are not going to have a debate on it now.
-----this can be raised.
If the Deputy was sitting in this Chair, he would not allow a debate on it either.
I would.
In honour of the decision he would make in that kind of situation, we will move onto Question No. 17, in the name of Deputy Burton.
