MINISTER FOR HERITAGE Jimmy Deenihan has said he will undertake a formal environmental impact assessment of numbers 14 to 16 Moore Street before making a decision on proposals for a shopping mall that would include a commemorative centre to the 1916 Rising.
The buildings and surrounding area were a battlefiled site and headquarters to the Provisional Government during the 1916 Easter rising. A preservation order was places on the site in 2007 which means that no changes to the building can be made without ministerial consent.
Responding to questions in the Dáil yesterday, Deenihan said he has visited the site and met various interest groups, including relatives of the 1916 leaders.
Planning permission for the site, which is under the remit of NAMA, has been granted by Dublin City Council and confirmed by An Bord Pleanála, and Deenihan said he understood there were no objections to the planning permission made to the council.
“I need to adjudicate on a national mounment and determine whether the proposal is adequate and whether it would fulfil the function of properly recognising the people who occupied that building in 1916 where the final war council decision was made to surrender,” he said.
“However I need to adjudicate on the works that might happen on the site and how they would affect the monument.”
Deenihan said he is now awaiting the environmental impact statement which he hopes to receive “in the near future”.
Related: Sinn Féin disappointed with ‘inadequate’ protection of Moore Street>
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