The Stage

Irish arts minister pledges that Abbey Theatre project will be completed

Published Thursday 5 March 2009 at 11:40 by Anthony Garvey

Completing the new Abbey Theatre remains a top government priority, despite the worsening economic climate, according to Irish arts minister Martin Cullen.

He was being challenged in parliament in Dublin this week on the seeming lack of progress on the project, which was given the official go-ahead back in 2006. An opposition party spokeswoman on the arts, Olivia Mitchell of Fine Gael, pointed out that two of the minister’s predecessors had announced an international competition would be held to choose a design for the new building, but it had still not been launched more than two years later.

“It’s incredible it could take so long,” she said. “It is not as if the minister is designing the building - he’s merely presiding over the drawing up of competition guidelines for someone else to design it. If that process can take years, as it has, how long will it take to build the theatre? The project has turned into a dramatic saga to rival anything the Abbey might stage.”

But the minister insisted progress was being made. “The project is complex,” he said. “There is a myriad of technical, procedural and legal factors to address, but the final work is being done at the moment.”

A free site has been provided for the theatre in the Dublin docklands and the project is to be developed on a ‘build, finance and maintain basis’ through a public-private partnership arrangement.

Mitchell questioned whether it was realistic to depend on public-private partnerships in the current uncertain economic conditions. “Was the project really being put on the long finger?”, she asked.

In reply, the minister said that delivering the new theatre was a top government priority. The design competition would get under way shortly, he promised, and added: “I am confident that when the competition is complete, we will have a world class design for a new iconic building for the city.”