Irish Houses of Parliament - Modern View

Modern View

Ultimately the old Irish Houses of Parliament, the world's first purpose-built two-chamber parliament building, has remained a curiously contradictory symbol for Ireland: a parliament based on discrimination and exclusion that nevertheless, through producing radical leaders like Henry Grattan, is seen generally with affection by a people whose ancestors were debarred from membership. A parliament that, though Protestant establishment in membership and loyal to the Crown, in 1782 produced the first real attempt at Irish independence, achieving the 'Constitution of 1782' that stressed its loyalty to the King by virtue of his Irish, not British Crown.

Although flawed in its working, discriminatory in its membership and powerless in its ability to control the executive, it was used as a symbol by generations of nationalist leaders from O'Connell to Parnell and Redmond in their own quest for Irish self government. In a particular irony, Sinn Féin, which as a republican party fought for Irish independence during the Anglo-Irish War, was founded by a man, Arthur Griffith, who sought to restore the King, Lords and Commons of Ireland and the 1782 constitution to the centre of Irish governance, and the College Green Houses of Parliament to its position as the home of an Irish parliament.

To this day some still lobby for the re-use of the College Green House of Parliament. In 2006, the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Eamon Ryan, met with Bank of Ireland's chief executive and chair to propose that the building be used as an electronic library. In 2010, Minister of State, Seán Haughey, proposed that the building be handed over to the state in return for the Irish state's bailout of the bank during the Irish banking crisis. Both suggestions were rejected by the bank. Other suggestions included that the building be used to house the bank's former art collection, that it be used as an office for an elected Lord Mayor of Dublin or that it house the Dáil or Seanad and act as a parliament building again. In 2011, Jimmy Deenihan, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, wrote to the bank setting out proposals to acquire the building as a venue for the state to use as a cultural venue and requesting a meeting with the bank's Governor.