Sir, - A typically knowledgeable and balanced article by Frank McDonald (July 17th) about the new Architectural Heritage Act is somewhat spoilt by errors. These may give rise to unfounded fears among owners of protected properties - and undermine the laudable efforts of Dublin Corporation and other local authorities to implement the Act properly.
The principal problem is that Frank McDonald mixes up "preservation" with "protection" throughout the article. For example he says, "the new regime imposes an obligation on the owner and occupiers of a protected structure to ensure that it is preserved". This is not true. The Act does not provide for preservation in aspic - or preservation at all. It provides for protection which is a very different statutory concept. Protection does not preclude reasonable wide-ranging alterations (or even demolition). It merely requires that planning permission be obtained beforehand. Furthermore neither planning permission nor a declaration is required for reasonable minor works including decoration, provided they do not affect the protected building's character.
Frank also gives a disproportionate amount of space to the contrary and vested misconceptions of the construction sector in the shapes of the Hardwicke Property Company and of Mr Martin Reynolds, an architect who owns property on Dublin's Leeson St and believes the Act uses a steamroller to crack a nut.
An (even more) incisive article might have dwelt on the inadequacies of the new legislation in safeguarding the architectural heritage. For example, the Act does not in fact make it impossible to destroy protected buildings or their settings. So, An Bord Pleanala has just granted permission (against its Inspector's advice) for demolition of Campion's Bar, a rare, original and protected Victorian pub, on North Wall Quay as part of the National Convention Centre scheme. And permission was recently granted by South County Dublin County Council for apartment blocks in the curtilage of W. B. Yeats's Riversdale House in Rathfarnham.
The Act also fails to ensure that all buildings that should be protected are protected. It is likely to be 15 years before completion of the national architectural inventory that will allow this. Even where the Minister recommends protection, a local authority council can reject the recommendation and allow demolition as was the case with the Harper-Campbell Mill in Sligo which was demolished on the somewhat implausible ground advanced by at least one councillor that it was a "relic of slavery".
For these reasons the new Act still leaves us in breach of the Granada Convention which Ireland ratified in 1997. An even better article might have focussed on this. - Yours, etc.,
Michael Smith, Chairman, An Taisce, Tailors Hall, Dublin 8.