Planning and Development Bill 2020: Committee Stage Seanad Éireann — 2020-11-30 ============================================================ Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland We have been talking about the need for public consultation, public meetings and the like. Given that we are in the middle of a Covid-19 pandemic I would like to take this opportunity to draw to the Minister of State’s attention that there is one venue for public meetings in Rathmines Town Hall which, unfortunately, is used for ridiculous other purposes. A tiny group of ad hoc buildings have been built on the ground floor of a hall which is at least the size of this theatre, and bigger, which accommodated up to 1,800 people. I invite the Minister to engage with me on the possibility of having that civic space restored in south Dublin. It is an amazing asset and public meetings such as the ones we are discussing today could easily be accommodated in it if he were to give it some support. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2020-11-30/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:51+00:00 Sitting date: 2020-11-30