THE GOVERNMENT’S request to the Bank of Ireland to hand over its historic branch in Dublin’s College Green for use as a major literary centre should be resolved by autumn, Minister for Arts Jimmy Deenihan said yesterday.
“I would hope we would have something fairly well developed by October to coincide with a major conference in Farmleigh,” he said.
The Minister added he hoped “to have a fairly advanced proposal” ready by then.
Confirming a report in The Irish Timeson Saturday that he had written to the bank last Thursday to acquire the former Irish parliament building, the Minister said it would be a very good gesture to the Irish people to hand it over for that kind of use.
Speaking to journalists at the Daniel O’Connell commemoration in Dublin yesterday, he said that visitors to the capital city looking for “the literary experience” were unable to find it in one place.
He said while there was the WB Yeats exhibition in the National Library, Kildare Street, the writers’ museum in Parnell Square and the Joyce centre in North Great George’s Street, there was no one centre where Irish literature was celebrated.
“So I would hope it should be possible to create a centre of literary excellence, not only unique to Ireland but in a global sense as well,” he added. Mr Deenihan said the Arts Council was looking at centres of this kind around the world. It would be important, he added, to have a Dublin centre located near the other national cultural institutions.
The Government holds a 36 per cent share in Bank of Ireland which is expected to need further financial support in the coming months. While the bank has said it has no plans to hand over the building, it has acknowledged the Minister’s contact on the matter.
