Save Moore Street group urges Govt not to waste money to stop expansion of monument site
Campaigners have called on the Government not to try to overturn a judge's ruling which expanded the Moore Street national monument site.
The Save Moore Street 2016 group said Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Heather Humphreys should not use more public money to fund a further legal challenge.
"We are specifically asking her not to appeal," a spokeswoman said.
"We think public money would be better off going into Moore Street. We think it could generate a lot of money for the State, just like Kilmainham Gaol.
"Years ago there was a campaign to save the gaol and open it as a museum. It is the same for Moore Street, it should be combined with Kilmainham, between them they can preserve history and bring in employment."
Only the terrace at 14-17 Moore Street had been subject to a preservation order dating back to 2007 which gave developers a green light for a huge commercial project running from the old Carlton cinema site fronting O'Connell Street to part of the old 1916 battlefield site.
But last month's ruling stopped those plans and the initial construction work on the Government's proposals for a 1916 Commemorative Centre at No 16.
A spokeswoman for the minister said the near 400-page judgment was still being analysed.
The new national monument now includes a much larger footprint of a "battlefield site" between Moore Street and the GPO including nearly all of the buildings on the row, lane ways and some surviving walls outside of 14-17.
But despite the complex ruling there is no onus on the minister to issue a preservation order on the wider site.
Demolition and unauthorised works on 13-19 Moore Street are now banned until the minister applies to the court with a plan on how to proceed and seeks to vary that order.
Buildings and land covered by the ruling were due to be developed by Chartered Land.
