The Stage

Dail to approve Abbey’s transfer to docklands site

Published Tuesday 21 June 2005 at 13:35 by Anthony Garvey

Irish Arts Minister John O’Donoghue is to seek formal government approval for the redevelopment of the Abbey Theatre on a new site in the Dublin docklands.

The announcement, made to parliament last week, should mark the final act in a five-year search saga to find a new home for Ireland’s national theatre. The proposed venue, covering 4,700 square metres, is close to the International Financial Services Centre and just a few hundred yards from the Abbey’s current site.

According to the minister, negotiations on the deal are close to completion. Looking to the new Abbey, he described the current Irish generation as “among the most creative we’ve ever had” and said the new site “marks an opportunity to provide a piece of public architecture which gives expression to that imagination and creativity”.

Welcoming the announcement, the main opposition party’s arts spokesman, Fine Gael’s Jimmy Deenihan, said the new theatre should be a landmark building. “It will make a statement about our nation and of how we have progressed at this stage of our history. We should have a theatre that is comparable to any in the world.”

Mr Deenihan described the proposed site as “an ideal location, close to O’Connell Street, around the corner from the existing Abbey and in one of the most vibrant and exciting parts of the city”. But he regretted that the search had been “so long and so tortuous” and that a new home had not been found last year, when the Abbey celebrated its centenary.

An international architectural competition is likely to be organised to choose a design for the new theatre, which will remain in Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s north inner-city constituency - a key factor in winning government approval. Five years ago, opposition by Ahern prevented a move to a docklands site on Dublin’s southside.

A subsequent proposal to redevelop on the Abbey’s existing site was abandoned because of the heavy cost of acquiring neighbouring buildings. Then a planned site on Parnell Square, near the Gate Theatre, also had to be abandoned because of cost and other considerations, while a proposed move to O’Connell Street was scuttled by an ongoing legal dispute over the site. Several other possible locations were examined as the search dragged on and on.

At the Abbey, board chairwoman Eithne Healy said she was delighted by the minister’s announcement and looked forward to an early government decision. But a former Abbey artistic director, Tomas MacAnna, now an honorary director and senior shareholder, said that while he accepted a move had to take place, he would have preferred to see the theatre redeveloped on its present site. “I just hope,” he added, “that the new Abbey will be as intimate as the old Abbey was.”

Meanwhile, back in parliament, Minister O’Donoghue accepted that the recently discovered million euro hole in the Abbey’s accounts was “incredible”. As a result of the discovery, he said, he had considered imposing direct government control of Abbey funding rather than having it administered through the Arts Council. He had finally decided not to do so and instead intended to have an official from his department sit on the theatre’s finance committee.