Senator’s bright idea would have a dramatic impact on the nation

I MET Senator David Norris last week on the final episode of Questions & Answers.

He was in his usual irrepressible form and chose on air to be very forgiving about the legend of one Charles J Haughey.

As David told the audience, whatever Haughey might have done wrong, he was sure the former Taoiseach would have supported the proposition that the Abbey Theatre and the GPO should be united as one great national building.

Now I haven’t the faintest idea what Haughey would have supported – it always seemed to me that he was a grand man when it came to spending other people’s money, but he was never averse to pocketing a little of it himself.

But after the show, I asked David if he was serious about the idea because I must say it intrigued me no end.

Many years ago I used to have a friend whom I admired enormously because of his passion for the grand gesture. Every now and again he would ring me and announce that he had booked a table (I lived in a student hovel in Cork in those days) and was bringing me out to dinner.

When I would ask what the occasion was, he would say the only reason we were going out was because he was down to his last £5 and he had decided that if he was going to have to starve tomorrow, he wanted to dine in style tonight.

Those were the days when £5 would secure a very good blowout – all you could eat and drink – for two. Of course, younger readers won’t remember those days – but then, younger readers probably don’t have the faintest idea of what a pound was.

I’m telling you this because when I elaborate on David Norris’s idea, it will sound at one level a bit like the grand gesture that we can’t afford.

I have to tell you though that the more I thought about it, the more I thought – why bloody not? Why not rebuild the Abbey in the GPO?

We talked about David’s idea for a while outside RTÉ that night and the following day he sent me an email.

Here’s some of it, just to give you a flavour: “My proposal was that it should be done to commemorate the 1916 Rising and open Easter Week 2016. There is still plenty of time to do this. It could be opened on Easter 2016 with all the European heads of state attending, red carpet treatment, that magnificent portico and a revival of the O’Casey trilogy with Pearse himself appearing as a character as he does in the Plough and the Stars. This could be done quite easily because we already own the building and nothing in it is 18th century or protected except the portico. All the rest of it is smashed to pieces by the shelling from the gunboat Helga on the river.”

The more you think about it the more sense it makes. The GPO is one of the great iconic buildings of Ireland. It was almost a century old in 1916 when it became for a very brief time the headquarters of the Easter Rising.

There’s a new book about the GPO and its historic role, by the historian Clare Wills. According to one review I’ve read (I haven’t got my hands on the book yet, but I will), she describes the Easter commemoration at the GPO as “the equivalent of Independence Day in America or Bastille Day in France”.

While this is a bit of an overstatement, there is no doubting the importance of the GPO in modern Irish history and culture. Although it survived the Easter Rising with at least its frontage intact, it was badly damaged again during the Civil War and had to be rebuilt.

Ever since it reopened in 1929 there is hardly anyone born and raised in Ireland who doesn’t know where the GPO is and what it stands for.

It’s easier to find, and easier to access, than any other public building I know – people who couldn’t tell you how to find Leinster House or the National Gallery, or even Dublin zoo would have no difficulty in leading you to the GPO.

And more or less every form or public transport we have – to, from and within the capital city – passes within walking distance of the GPO.

For years, whenever a Dublin Bus was marked with the words An Lár (the centre) you knew at a glance it was going to the GPO.

And you only have to step inside the GPO to realise how redolent of Ireland’s recent history it is. From the portico where the proclamation of independence was read to the famous bronze statue of the dying Cuchulainn, the atmosphere brings to life some of the things that have most made us what we are.

One of Samuel Beckett’s characters described Cuchulainn as “the patron saint of pure ignorance and crass violence”, but for most of us, I suppose, his heroism mirrored that of many who died for Ireland.

Throughout most of the past 40 years, people like me would perhaps have been reluctant to acknowledge the importance of 1916 and the GPO because of the legitimacy claimed for a campaign of violence and terrorism by using a lot of the symbolism of the place. Now perhaps it’s appropriate to claim the GPO for everyone.

And what better way could you do it than by locating our national theatre in that famous building?

The Abbey is in desperate need of a new home. Actually, since its founding in 1903, it has already had three homes. The first theatre was damaged by fire and for years the Abbey was located in a temporary premises in the Queen’s Theatre (that was where, as a nipper, I was taken to see my very first production of Synge’s Riders to the Sea).

SINCE the mid-1960s it has been off Abbey Street where brilliant productions of major works are a regular feature.

But it needs a new home badly – it must be almost impossible to bring home the production values that are essential nowadays in a theatre that is past its sell-by date.

And the Government has recognised this because there is a proposal not to rebuild the Abbey, but to move it to George’s Dock, next door to the IFSC.

As a location, that has none of the historic allure and resonance of the GPO, and it’s not nearly as accessible either. Now that the recession is upon us in any event, I’m sure that idea, like everything else, is back on the drawing board.

And if it is, we should all have another look at David Norris’s idea. A grand gesture it may be, but it’s the sort of grand gesture we’ll all be proud of in years to come.

Bringing two great icons of our dramatic and our political history together, and creating a symbol of Ireland that everyone can be truly proud of forever – now wouldn’t that be a great recession-defying gesture?

And if we were to pull it off, I know just the senator to declare the building officially open.