Sinn Féin TD for Dublin South West Seán Crowe has called on the Government to not only support a Sinn Féin plan to establish a cultural quarter around Moore St and engage in a massive rejuvenation effort in the area, but to use it as a road map to do far more to preserve our heritage that is so routinely torn down and gone forever.

Speaking on the Sinn Féin Bill to establish a Cultural Quarter around Moore St in the Dáil today, Teachta Crowe said:

“We have an appalling track record of preserving our heritage in this country.

“From Georgian Dublin to the cottages of the West, we are more than happy to allow developers to buy up whatever artefacts of our history they like and tear them down.

“We saw it most recently with the O’Rahilly House. Pulled down to make way for a hotel. Will we see the same happen to the Markievicz Cottage in Sandyford? Will that other link to 1916 be torn down and paved over like the rest? However, it is not just the houses of 1916 Leaders or the big houses down the country that need protecting, although too many of those have been let fall to rack and ruin already.

“With our careless disregard for the past, we are allowing the snapshots of how ordinary Irish people lived and worked vanish.

“If this government had its way, Ireland would be nothing but steel and glass. Sterile and cold.

“Dublin is a modern and vibrant city, but every year it becomes a little more modern and a little less vibrant.

“We need preserve the built heritage of Moore Street, where the 1916 Rising Volunteers fought and died in their last stand, and protect it from destruction, but we need to go beyond that.

“We need to cherish what is left of our heritage before it is all replaced by shopping centres and hotels. We need not trade one for the other, but must always strive to incorporate those links to the past into our everyday environment.

“People should not have to visit a museum to see how history and our culture. It should surround us and inform us as we go about our day.

“The proposed Culture Quarter of Moore St should be a roadmap for how we preserve what brought us to the present day, lest we forget where we came from.”