The Irish Times

GPO

The General Post Office on O'Connell Street in Dublin will cease to be used by An Post and will be converted into a national monument. Under plans being drafted by the Government, the GPO would become the memorial for the 1916 Easter Rising, along with other aspects of the State's history. Last night, a Progressive Democrats spokesman for the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, said the GPO "would cease to be an office block and post office" in time. The GPO's main hall would become the entrance to the memorial, leading onto a rotunda, he said. Mr McDowell has said that both he and Minister for Finance Brian Cowen believe the GPO should "have a more historic purpose". Mr McDowell's spokesman denied comparisons made in the Sunday Tribune yesterday between the Government's plans and Napoleon's tomb, Les Invalides, in Paris.