Historic Dáil library is now ‘like a semi-used backroom in a down-at-heel hotel in the middle of nowhere’
OIREACHTAS authorities have broken planning laws as part of their ‘refurbishment’ of the Dáil library, the former Attorney General Michael McDowell has claimed.
The embarrassing charge was made during a cross-party Seanad onslaught on alleged plans to close down the historic library and to turn it into a ‘super committee room’, as revealed in our sister paper The Irish Daily Mail this week.
The new plans are also believed to involve using the library as a second Dáil chamber for Taoiseach’s questions and committee stages of Dáil b-ills.
Amidst growing all-party resistance however, Mr McDowell warned that the scale of refurbishments required to create a third Dáil chamber would be in breach of current planning laws if planning permission wasn’t sought.
The former AG also claimed that a previous refurbishment of the library had broken the planning laws.
Speaking on the floor of the Seanad, Mr McDowell said of the controversial initial refurbishment: ‘It is a breach – and I want to put this on the record – of section 51 of the Planning and Development Act 2000, to do this to a preserved structure.
‘If you own a house in Merrion
Square, you cannot rip up the floorboards and put down chipboard without consulting the planning authority, but it has happened in this House without our knowledge.
‘This has involved the serious mutilation of a protected structure.
‘The original floorboards of a protected structure have been taken out. The entire character of the room has been dramatically changed. It looks like a semi-used backroom in a down-at-heel hotel in the middle of nowhere’, he added.
Seanad Leader Lisa Chambers has also raised concerns about a ‘laissez-faire’ approach to planning laws by the House authorities.
‘It certainly seems as though there might have been a more laissez-faire approach taken to adhering to those things inside Leinster House and there are questions to be answered.’
Independent Senator Victor Boyhan, a senior member of the Oireachtas Housing and Planning Committee, also warned the current Dáil library is a protected structure and cannot be tampered with,
He said: ‘I took the time to look at a number of architectural conservation reports on the restoration of this building. At all times, I was reminded that it is a protected structure [and] the designation of a protected structure is made by the planning authorities.’ Given that the library is maintained by the OPW, he called on Minister of State Patrick O’Donovan to intervene.
Mr Boyhan also called on
Dublin City Council planning enforcement to ‘wake up, investigate, and ask the hard questions’.
Any final decision on the fate of the library will be made by the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission with Mr McDowell warning that ‘fixed estimated costs for making that conversion involve an outlay of €3.7m’.
‘The annual extra cost for having it as a committee room would be €1.63m, meaning that in the first year of operation this would cost more than €5m,’ he added.