The matter before us arises, as I understand it, from the need for additional accommodation for Members of this House. The premises of the National College of Art and Design in Kildare Street are in a situation which, from our point of view, is very valuable because we are very much pressed for space. We appreciate the concern of the Government and the Taoiseach that we should be adequately accommodated and the efforts being made in that respect. However, it is my duty not just as a Member of this House but as someone who must be concerned about the interests of people outside this House to express concern at the manner in which decisions seem to have been taken at a very late stage with regard to the taking over of this accommodation and the displacement of those at present in the college of art.
I hope the Minister will clarify the process by which this situation has come about. There is a long history behind this matter going back many years but I am concerned with the immediate future rather than the distant past. On 6 February the board of the National College of Art and Design unanimously resolved urgently to request the Minister for Education to begin negotiations immediately with the authorities of University College, Dublin to acquire premises at Earlsfort Terrace and Iveagh Gardens as a permanent solution to the accommodation problems of the college. They made it clear to the Minister that they could accept temporary accommodation only at Earlsfort Terrace. I do not know the process by which we have moved from that to a situation where the board appear to have been told that they must move within six weeks and be installed in Power's distillery, a totally different premises to the one which they have identified as appropriate to their needs. They are to be installed there by next September.
When I raised this matter in the House recently the Minister gave a very easy assurance that there would be no problem about their being installed by next September. Nothing in the history of the acquisition and conversion of accommodation for the public authorities of this State since its foundation justifies that optimism. I say that with no disrespect to those concerned. The procedures and mechanisms of public authorities in dealing with these matters are necessarily time-consuming. The property or at least a lease must be acquired and things rarely happen rapidly where lawyers are involved. There are problems of design and in this instance a feasibility study was carried out several years ago. Since then I understand the number of students has increased by 60 per cent and it seems improbable that the provisions of the feasibility study would be adequate for the present number of students. Perhaps the Minister would clarify this. It may have been a very farsighted feasibility study which would have seen the accommodation at Power's as being far beyond the immediate requirements. Again nothing in the history of the way in which the public authorities of this State operate suggests that it is probable that such a feasibility study would leave room for that kind of expansion. If it did not, that feasibility study is no basis for the conversion of Power's distillery.
The buildings there are substantial and it may be that they are convertible for the use of the college and that this conversion can be planned and carried through, but it is not credible that it could be done at such a pace as to be able within six weeks to move from the Kildare Street premises the heavy equipment and many objects necessary for the work of the students. The Minister does not carry credibility in assuring us that this can be done in a matter of weeks and recent experience suggests that it is highly improbable.
The College of Art is divided into four different parts and I understand that one section was abandoned last year and a move took place to one of three sites in the vicinity of City Quay. The assurance was given that the move would be completed in time and that builders would be out of the way by September. In the event people were still hammering around the place finishing it off last Easter, seven months after the date by which this work was to be completed. That work was not rushed or decided at a few week's notice; it was prepared in advance, but it still over-ran by seven months the period provided. The heavy equipment belonging to the college of art has remained in Kildare Street because of the difficulty of removing it to another site and now we are told that everything can be transferred and installed within six weeks in a building which is miraculously to be converted from a distillery into a college of art.
The Minister should not over-strain the credulity of this House in the matter. He should come clean on the problems and in fairness to the board, students and staff they should be told exactly what will happen. I have put down questions to the Minister as to what communications have been sent by him or other members of the Government, and on what dates, to the board of the National College of Art and Design relating to a proposed move by the college from the existing premises in Kildare Street and also asking what communications he has received from the board, the FWUI and the NCAD Students' Union. I hope the Minister in his reply will enlighten us on these matters. He should tell us whether he or the Taoiseach wrote and what were the terms of these communications. What notice was given of this move? Has this move been accepted by the board? Have the board decided to accept this accommodation which by implication they rejected as recently as February last in saying that the only accommodation they would accept was in Earlsfort Terrace? If the board have taken such a decision, have they communicated it to the staff or to the students? I understand there has been no communication, possibly because there was no decision. Neither staff nor students know what is intended and it is not all clear that the board know what is intended. They do not seem to have been able to communicate.
This is a thoroughly unsatisfactory position, particularly as this institution has had an unhappy history of neglect by the public authorities of this State which culminated in great difficulties ten years ago and led to the introduction of legislation in this House to reconstitute the college on a new basis. This legislation was in many ways inadequate but gave some basis for the college to operate. The difficulties which arose at that time and the disturbances related to them reflected the neglect of the National College of Art and Design by the Government of the day and probably by other Governments, although the Government of the day had been in office for twelve or thirteen years and certainly bore the principal responsibility for that neglect. This institution is central to the whole question of art and design in a country whose deficiencies in this area are as legendary as our feats of literary prowess.
Is it the case that this institution has been given an ultimatum at a few months' notice to move to a building not yet leased or acquired whose conversion from one use, a distillery, to a different use, a college of art and design, is obviously a major operation, contrary to their own clear will unanimously expressed to the Minister a few months ago? If the institution are accommodated there, with whatever hammering will be going on for many years thereafter, distracting the students from their work as the process of conversion goes on, is it the case that they will find themselves on three other sites 20 minutes walk away, as they are at the moment in three buildings ten minutes walk from Kildare Street? Is it proposed to move them temporarily for a few years to Power's Distillery with a view to a later move to Earlsfort Terrace? Is it the case that the complete conversion of Power's Distillery is likely to take three years during which the College of Art and Design will be divided on four different occasions and that by the time the hammering stops and the conversion is completed they will be moved again to Earlsfort Terrace?
The board, staff and students are entitled to know the situation. They are entitled to fair treatment. It would be wrong if we, in our legitimate and understandable concern to alleviate problems of accommodation here which are so acute for Members of this House, should be so totally lacking in consideration that the present generation of students and possibly students for several years to come will be discommoded in a way that will interrupt and damage their education in order to gain for us a few months in the matter of additional accommodation.
The answer is that if this had to be done it should have been done much quicker. If we need this accommodation next September or October, the process of making the change should have been initiated much earlier. The distillery should have been acquired on a temporary or permanent basis and the conversion should have been proceeded with. The staff, students and board should have been in a position to see the work nearing completion and they should have visible assurance that they could settle in next year without the kind of disturbance that went on for several months after their move from Clarendon Street to a new location at City Quay. They did not get that assurance. At this stage they do not know if the accommodation has even been acquired, never mind any work of conversion.
The experience they had in the case of Clarendon Street and our general experience of the pace at which this kind of work is done means they have little prospect of being adequately housed next September having regard to the way the decision is being proceeded with without warning. There is every certainty that next September they will find themselves in a number of different sites, having to trundle backwards and forwards during the day in hail, rain and snow from one place to the other ten years after this Government enacted legislation which proposed to set up a structure—I think it meant a physical as well as an administrative structure—for this college, one that would do credit to the country and which would be fair to the students.