Pages 18 & 19

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To sum up, the College had presented a plan drawn up in accordance
with modern requirements and standards, aiming at sufficiency without extravagance, and leaving room for future development. The Com-
missioners went over the whole matter independently. Their broad
conclusion, though they think we have not provided sufficiently for
research and that our tentavie lay-out is too rigid, is that our plan meets
the case. The Report is broadly and solidly based, convinccing in its
arguments, clear and practical in its conclusions; it assuredly marks a
turning-point in the history of Irish higher educaiton. 1

V. TRANSITION AND IMPROVISATION, 1949-59

It would be in many ways ideal if an institution which is to be moved
and rebuilt could remain quietly in its old quarters while its new quarters
were being methodically plannned and erected, and then move in a
single operation. The College will not be able to do this; as soon as
there is a bulding, or part of one, ready at Belfield, it must be occupied;
the remaining departmetns must gain relief by spreading into the space
vacated at Earlsfort Terrace or Merrion Street.

Indeed, the time has long since passed when the College could sit
tight and wait just as it was for new permanent buildings. Expansion,
in the form of rather large-scale temporary expedients, was forced on
us, and it has been going on for ten years. The pace of this expansion
has lately been much increased - and also its cost - to prevent any
breakdown in the Session 1959-60, and, it is hoped, in those of 1960 -1
and 1961-2; by October 1962 some teaching space will have to be
ready at Belfield. In this campaign of enlargement and adaptation we have gained experience which will be valuable when permanent building
begins.

1 Since the publication of the Report, the suggestion has been made at University College need not move out of town, and need not spend so much money on building, if it were joined, in some fashion not precisely defined, with Trinity College. It is certainly possible that an advant-ageous arrangement may at some time be made between the two university institutions in Dublin. But in this many interest would be concerned, and the negotiations must be too lengthy for our urgent space needs to await their conclusion. Anyhow, no arrangment short of a complete fusion could have a bearing on that problem. Further, even it anything so unlikely were to happen the problem would be little altered. The building of T.C.D. are small and old, and they are pretty full of students. Nor would T.C.D.'s vacant space suffice for building on our scale; its whole area, built and unbuilt, is only equal to the area within the ring-road of the Belgrove lay-out, which the Commissioners consider to be too cramped.

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Though no new building could be undertaken on the campus
in advance of a government decision, the neccessary expansion of the
College has already flowed out there to a considerable extent. First,
the President of the College, as an act of faith in the furture, took up
residence in 1952 at the former White Oaks, transformed into University
Lodge. Since then, the old houses, one by one, have been reconditioned
as research departments. In some instances this has enabled us to gain
precious teaching space in our main building by moving out a research
laboratory (thus the moving out of research Biochemistry has given
elbow-room to Physics); in other cases it allowed us to establish
valuable new research units. Already installed and in operation, or in
active preparation, we have Medical and Industrial Microbiology at
Ardmore, Biochemistry and Pharmacology at Merville, Medicine and
Surgery at Woodview, Experimental Psychology, and an Institute for
research into the history of Irish families abroad, at Belgrove.

Valuable preparation for the future use of the campus as a site was
made possible in the winter of 1956-7, when a government relief grant
of L20,000 was used for fencing, tree-planting, draining and levelling,
and the construction of an inner communication road.

Meanwhile, at the present main buildings in Earlsfort Terrace and
Merrion Street, a great deal has been completed or undertaken for the
accommodation of the large teaching departments. At Merrion Street,
an intermediate floor put into the large Chemistry Laboratory during
the long vacation of 1958 double its floor area; in the recent (1959)
long vacation similar work on a smaller scale has been done in the same
building.

At Earlsfort Terrace the old buildings have come to be our greatest
resource. In the earlier days of the College these old buildings,
except the Library block and the Convocation Hall, were not only too
dilapidated but also on too vast a scale to seem worth reconditioning;
further, any rational building scheme for the College seemed to require
their demolition. But when the College grew to the scale of these vast
halls, and when also it was settled that our permanent buildings must be
sited elsewhere, their possibilities as temporary accommodation became
evident.

First, in 1950, the Great Hall, the Aula Maxima of the Royal University,