Madam, – The proposal by the Government to “repossess” the Bank of Ireland, College Green, as reported in your edition of May 14th, is a reminder of my early years there in the 1950s as a junior clerk.
Untypically it was in the House of Lords that I sat at my first desk overlooked by an impressive statue of George III. However notwithstanding such impressive surroundings my career path was no better than average for the time.
In the 1891 publication The Handbook of the Irish Parliament Houses by H Goldsmith Whitton, a contribution by Percy French in the form of a parody alludes in amused or ironic fashion to the change from a parliament building to a bank: “But evil days, rebellion, factions / Rose on fair Hibernia’s Isle, / Bribery controlled their actions / Honesty gave way to guile;/ All the grandeur and the glory / Where the members used to sit/ Were – you all may read the story, / Swallowed by the Pitt.
“And tourists now who care to dally / Through the half-glass portals see/Pale clerks who count continually / Piles of £.s.d./ And like a stream that may not cease, there / Glides an endless rank/ Of men who draw on or increase their / Balance at – The Bank.”
Pitt was of course English prime minister at the time of the Act of Union. The old House of Commons is the present day “cash office”. – Yours, etc,