In the most costly project it has undertaken abroad, the Government is to spend £7 million on saving the Irish College in central Paris. Restoration of the 18th century college, situated on an acre of land behind the Pantheon in the Latin Quarter, will begin in October, the Minister of State at the Department of Finance and the Office of Public Works, Mr Martin Cullen, announced here yesterday.
The new Irish College will host concerts, lectures, exhibitions and social events for the Irish community in Paris and will provide a research centre and database on Ireland. On the upper floors, lodging will be available for 45 Irish students.
The original Irish College was founded 422 years ago by John Lee from Waterford, a refugee from the penal laws. It moved to its present site in the Rue Des Irlandais in 1769. The last surviving pre-Revolution college of the University of Paris, it was designed by a royal architect from the court of Louis XVI.
When the college reopened, Mr Cullen said, it would be "a major cultural and education centre for the benefit of the Irish nation and . . . a flagship building in the heart of Europe, providing a vision of the personality of Ireland". Most EU countries already have active cultural centres in Paris. "This is new territory for the Government," he said. "It represents our ability to do things we would have liked to have done in the past but didn't have the resources to do."
Last night's ceremony was somewhat disappointing. The Taoiseach was unable to attend because of his efforts to save the Belfast Agreement and the highest-ranking French official present was Mr Jean Tiberi, the Mayor of Paris, and France's most infamous political pariah after a spate of corruption scandals. Some 200 guests shivered through the speeches in the damp, cold courtyard. However, Mr Billy Glynn, the college treasurer who lobbied the government for the £7 million, put a brave face on it.
"They'll all be here for the reopening on St Patrick's Day 2002," he said.
Over the past two centuries, Ireland has nearly lost the college on several occasions. When French revolutionaries shut its chapel, priests moved to the upstairs library. Napoleon, who created an Irish legion and sent his brother and stepson to study in the college, created a Franco-Irish trust to administer the property.
In modified form, the same trust owns it today. When the Prussians tried to shell the Pantheon in 1870, they hit the Irish College. At the beginning of the 20th century, the French government attempted to seize it following the 1905 law on the separation of church and state. From 1945 until 1997, the college was inhabited by dozens of Polish priests - originally refugees from Dachau concentration camp. The structure was not maintained and today sections of the roof are in danger of caving in on the library's 10,000 leather-bound, 18th-century volumes. Conservation specialists will treat wet rot in the chapel and restore its flaking 19th-century Renaissance revival decor.
The Government and the Friends of the Irish College, a volunteer group headed by the retired banker, Dr Frank O'Reilly, are subtly vying for credit for bringing the college back under Irish control after a long hiatus.
Mgr Brendan Devlin, the head of the French department at NUI Maynooth, has worked towards that goal for three decades. Although he will retain his post as rector and his position on the board that runs the college, Mgr Devlin said that "younger, more efficient people must come forward. I belong to the old, dying, Gaelic, Catholic world".
