Georgian Society owes much to Boland's criticism

It was Kevin Boland, then Minister for Local Government, who really made the Irish Georgian Society with his "belted earls" speech in the Dail at the height of the battle for Hume Street in March, 1970, when the street's threatened 18th century houses were occupied by protesters.

Mr Boland railed against "the Guinness aristocracy who pull the strings to which the Georgians dance". Those behind this "open act of piracy . . . (by) a group of pampered students", were "a consortium of belted earls and their ladies and left-wing intellectuals". It was the same Minister who granted planning permission on appeal for a suburban housing estate along the edge of the avenue leading into Castletown, in Celbridge, Co Kildare, which had been personally saved by the Hon Desmond Guinness when he bought the house in 1967.

There can be no doubt that many of Ireland's most important historic buildings would not have survived without his steely determination to save them.

It was not a popular cause in the early years. In 1957, when the Office of Public Works demolished two impressive Georgian houses in Kildare Place, behind the Shelbourne Hotel, one Government minister actually said: "I was glad to see them go. They stood for everything I hate."

This demolition of what was widely seen then as another remnant of the "800 years of oppression" prompted Desmond Guinness and his late wife Mariga to establish the Irish Georgian Society less than a year later, little realising that battles would still have to be fought to this day.

Public appreciation of Ireland's architectural heritage has increased enormously over the past 40 years, and the IGS has played a major role in bringing about this change of heart. The society also has a long list of achievements to its credit in terms of saving individual buildings.

However, in helping to popularise Georgian architecture, it is perhaps also quite unintentionally responsible for the proliferation of Georgian pastiche as the "house style" of so many new buildings - particularly suburban houses with "Georgian" windows and PVC porticos.

The society still has a major role to play, notably in the planning arena, where it has proved to be a vigilant watchdog. Nobody who contemplates demolishing a major historic building today can do so without incurring the wrath of these once-maligned "Georgians".