‘Minister has right to destroy monuments’

ARTS Minister Josepha Madigan has the power to demolish or alter any national monument she so wishes – and doesn’t need any planning permission to do so, the Court of Appeal has heard.

The comment was made by Attorney General Séamus Woulfe during a hearing of an appeal of a ruling on the preservation of Dublin’s Moore Street as a 1916 battlefield site. Mr Woulfe, representing the minister, said she had ‘wide powers’ under the law.

He argued that the High Court – in designating the whole of Moore Street an historic ‘battlefield site’, comprising a national monument that must be left untouched – had interpreted those laws in a ‘remarkable’ way. In appealing against the decision by Judge Max Barrett in March 2016 in favour of a group of relatives of the original 1916 leaders, the State argues that numbers 13, 18 and 19 Moore Street hold no historic significance and should be destroyed to make way for a museum.

Houses 14 to 17, where the Rising leaders met for the final time and decided to surrender, have always been protected structures. Mr Woulfe said: ‘It’s plain as a pikestaff that the minister had authority.’

Judge Gerard Hogan asked if that meant the minister, who was Heather Humphreys at the time, ‘could have built a commemorative centre on it without applying for planning permission’. Agreeing, Mr Woulfe said: Judge Barrett’s decision was ‘impossible as a matter of law’. The State was defeated last year by a group of relatives of the 1916 leaders who sued to protect the site, but it is now appealing, saying the High Court was simply not entitled to declare an ‘entire precinct’ of a city a national monument.

The hearing continues.