The idea of a magnificent stately home within an ass's roar of the capital passing into State ownership seems to be an attractive one. With one notable exception, all the prominent people involved in politics and heritage issues who were consulted by The Irish Times yesterday felt the Government should buy Farmleigh and its 78 acres, which is expected to sell for over £15 million.
Labour's former arts minister, Michael D. Higgins, suggested it could become Ireland's first music conservatoire, as proposed by the pianist and Royal Irish Academy of Music director, John O'Conor. Alternatively, it could house the Department of Culture, Arts and the Gaeltacht he once headed, and would be a far more appropriate venue than the site now being proposed on the other side of the park in Parkgate Street.
Fine Gael's heritage spokesman, Enda Kenny, recalled that 20 years ago Dublin County Council was offered Luttrellstown Castle, another Guinness mansion in west Dublin, for a sum which was very reasonable at the time, but it could not raise the money. The present owners rent it out for conferences and other functions for around £20,000 a week.
The Labour TD, Liz McManus, an architect, felt the Guinness family should donate Farmleigh to the State as "their contribution to the public good". She suggested it could be put to use as a centre for great Irish houses, a permanent space where that much neglected tradition could be shown and celebrated. It could then become the revenue-generating Dublin base for a tour of out-of-town great Irish houses.
Lord Mount Charles, owner of Slane Castle, agreed that if the purchase and public opening of the mansion was handled properly, it could become "a substantial asset to the State, raising considerable tourist income".
He remembered discussing with Michael D. Higgins, when he was in government, the unlikely possibility of Slane Castle passing into State hands, and how it could then be used to show pictures from the National Gallery and period furniture from the National Museum in the settings for which they were originally intended.
"Visitors to Ireland often say to me how wonderful it is to see pictures and works of art in their traditional settings. Farmleigh, which is effectively in the capital city, would be ideal for this."
The historian and tree expert Thomas Pakenham, owner of Tullynally in Castlepollard, Co Westmeath, felt that Farmleigh would be more suitable as a formal Taoiseach's residence than Chequers is for the British prime minister. The British prime minister's residence is some 30 miles from central London, in Buckinghamshire.
Heritage Council member and conservation architect David Slattery said the State had a good record in purchasing and restoring beautiful buildings for public use, pointing to Government Buildings in Merrion Street and the Irish Embassy in Paris as examples.
There were only two dissenting voices in The Irish Times's straw poll. Mary Bryan of the Irish Georgian Society would prefer the State to make a new bid for Carton House in Kildare, an architecturally far finer building than the late 19th-century pile on the edge of the Phoenix Park. Carton was bought in 1992 by a developer who wanted to turn it into a conference centre-cum-country club, but is still trying to raise the necessary finance.
The former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Sean Donlon, is on record as bemoaning the indignity of Ireland having to put up the emperor of Japan and the king of Spain in the Berkeley Court Hotel, when other small states like Denmark have palaces to use as state guest houses. However, he did not think Farmleigh would fit the bill. It would be too big and too far from the city centre.
He remembers it being very suitable when the then government borrowed it in 1974 to house 12 foreign ministers and their wives during Ireland's first EU presidency. "But that doesn't happen very often. Even in the event of the queen of England coming in the next couple of years, she is unlikely to bring a total party of more than 12-15 people."
He noted that the State had not been able to find uses for other large houses which had passed into its hands, such as Barretstown Castle and Muckross House.
What the State needed to house distinguished foreign guests, he said, was an elegant city-centre residence like the Fitzwilliam Square house recently refurbished for Tony O'Reilly.