Significant areas of central Dublin had been destroyed or damaged during the rebellion, particularly around
Sackville Street, and included the loss of notable buildings such as the
Hotel Metropole, Dublin,
Clerys, the
General Post Office, Dublin and the Academy House of the
Royal Hibernian Academy. Under pressure from Dubliners such as
William Martin Murphy, the
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland established the
Property Losses (Ireland) Committee on 15 June 1916 to assess claims for compensation, including applications relating to the nearly 200 damaged or destroyed buildings. The following month, a delegation of Dubliners led by mayor
James Gallagher met the British prime minister,
H. H. Asquith, in London. The group requested financial assistance to the
Dublin Corporation for reconstruction work and for workable town planning regulations to ensure that buildings were restored, at a minimum, in a manner not worse than before and ideally, as Gallagher put it to the Home Secretary, "in consonance with a well devised town planning and street widening scheme". A similar view was expressed by the
Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland and by
Rudolf Maximilian Butler. As the
Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1909 did not apply to Ireland, the corporation sought legislative powers to have some measure of control over the character of the buildings to be erected and to improve streets. The
Dublin Castle administration, however, objected to the idea of British taxpayers funding the rebuilding of a beautified Sackville Street, while the Irish Property Owners' Association resisted attempts to control or increase the expense of rebuilding plans. An
HM Treasury minute stated that the "Dublin Corporation ought not to be encouraged to embark upon grandiose schemes of beautification, which are of the nature of luxuries". ==The act==