Letters: Abbey’s false move

I’m neither a luvvie nor an auld Dubliner but “viewed dispassionately”, as he suggests, it’s obvious that after five years of impotent manoeuvrings by our arts minister, a site on George’s Dock has been chosen on the basis that the government is getting it for next to nothing. At three-quarters of an acre, it is not appreciably larger than the Abbey’s current site.

Fay states that “no amount of money spent on the existing premises would have provided . . . the improved facilities” he feels George’s Dock would offer. This is an overly simplistic interpretation. Buildings adjacent to the Abbey could have been acquired by the state. The minister rejected the idea of refurbishing the Abbey in situ due to an estimated cost of €50m. When one considers the sums squandered on various white elephants by his cabinet colleagues — such as the Bertie Bowl and e-voting — this sum seems positively miniscule. Why Fay and others feel that the short-sighted, cosmetic exercise of moving the theatre from its place of foundation offers a panacea for the problems escapes me. It seems just another example of the current thinking, whereby “moving on” and “progressing” blindly, without any recourse to our past, has left us with a culturally bereft society.