People entering Valletta on foot can now see the start of the process of hanging the louver-like cladding on the side of the new parliament building that faces Floriana.

At long last, it is now possible to actually see something being done on the site – as many people were becoming worried that the project was becoming delayed.

According to a report on di-ve.com on Good Friday, the office block will be covered by the hard stone blocks by the end of this week.

That, and the rest of the report, may still be rather optimistic. One only has to go up the steps of Our Lady of Victory Church, and then the short flight of steps further on to see that work on the theatre’s backstage facilities is in no way completed. On the contrary, excavation has led to the discovery of what may have been the first quarry in Valletta from which the stones for the church may have been taken.

That discovery was not expected, and its excavation has lengthened the timeframes. Di-ve.com also said that the construction of the two flights of steps leading down to City Gate has now begun in earnest, as has the preparation for the huge blocks that will reconstruct the bastion bulk that was bulldozed through in the 1960s to make way for an enlarged City Gate.

But work on the bridge itself, promised for March or April, has yet to begin.

It may be that what is actually keeping Lawrence Gonzi from announcing the date of the election is more substantial progress on the Renzo Piano project, if not its completion, rather than any contrary vote from Franco Debono or anyone else on the backbench.

The work on the entire project is being carried out in relative silence, as those who opposed the project seem to have given up on it – saying that it should have never been approved anyway. There are sounds of concern about the Special Financial Vehicle for the project which is yet to see the light of day. And the Opposition also seems to have given up on the project, with Joseph Muscat saying last week that even if the current government loses the election, he could still invite Dr Gonzi to perform the inauguration.

Yet had anyone looked carefully at what is being hatched, they would have discovered that ‘they’ have done it again – ‘they’ being the ministers. Not content with the €500 a week increase they awarded themselves, they have now gone and hogged the whole project in a way I find distasteful.

I asked to see the floor plans of the parliament office building, and was given access to them. I found out that what someone had whispered to me was true – the ministers are going to have big offices in this building. There will be offices for as many as 16 ministers, plus a big office for the prime minister, another big office (on top of that) for the Leader of the Opposition, a penthouse for the Speaker and an office for the Deputy Speaker.

And for the MPs? You may well ask. Backbench government MPs will have to make do with a large room with workstations on one level, and Opposition MPs will have a bigger room on the next level, bigger because they will not have ministers, so will be more numerous.

MPs will get a hotel lobby-like area at road level, where they can meet constituents, and maybe a couple of areas upstairs. But that is all. I did not look closely at the Chamber itself, but I was told that MPs will find it hugely cramped after the empty spaces of the present Chamber.

Now I do not consider this to be a hanging offence on the part of the ministers. Admittedly, they have crummy rooms in today’s Parliament, in many cases at the end of an uncomfortable flight of steps. But surely they need to be in their parliamentary offices for just a few hours a week and they all have their own offices in their own ministries.

Admittedly, too, the size of the office block is not as big as people may think from gazing at the steel structure they can see today. Space was thus at a premium, but nobody was consulted. The building is being erected on what may be called a turnkey basis and those who will ultimately get to use it will only get a look in once it is being handed over. It serves the Opposition right, because they never wanted to have anything to do with it, but I doubt if the government’s backbench was ever consulted. Anyway, the most rebellious of them will be turfed out, it seems, so there’s little point.

Having said all of which, this is the footprint and this will be Malta’s first ever Parliament in its own house, rather than having the role of an uncomfortable lodger in the Presidential Palace. And it is an improvement on that – but it should have been planned better.

As it is, there is simply no place for the MPs. There is even no space for committee rooms. I looked and there are just two, with one big one that can be divided into two. Our present Parliament currently has more than three committees and some meet concurrently.

Coincidentally, I have – as I said last week – just been to Berlin and on two occasions we visited the Bundestag. There is, of course, no comparison between Germany and Malta. But even there, the Reichstag building, with its Norman Foster glass dome rising from its middle, could not offer its MPs enough space. So they built (luckily they had a huge empty wasteland where the Wall used to be) two huge modern glass buildings, the Paul-Lobe Haus and the Elisabeth-Luders Haus, in which they have the huge committee rooms, offices and spaces where MPs can meet their constituents.

Here in Valletta, the present parliamentary staff will get offices down at the bottom of the site, next to the massive St James Cavalier wall (although they get air from the sunken garden on the other side).

The only solution I have heard is to take over the Palazzo Ferreria across Republic Street and to turn it to an annex with office space for MPs. That is, of course, an added expense but, as I see it, one that is inevitable.

There is another issue. Back in Berlin, I was impressed by the number of youngsters queuing to enter this committee building. Now that is something completely foreign to Malta, where Parliament meets in complete isolation. Even committee meetings, which sometimes can be about very crucial issues, go unreported and unattended.

To put it in a way many can understand, we risk doing with the new Parliament what we did (and do) with Mater Dei Hospital. This state-of-the-art hospital proved to be inadequate for requirements, with a lack of beds, a lack of an emergency department that can cope with all the patients in need (this may also be due to the collapse of the primary care system), a lack of nurses – apart from being a part-time institution, just as Parliament is. Whatever the controversies at its conception, when the new parliament building is finished and handed over, we may find the difficulties are only just beginning.

There may be a reason for the lack of public awareness about the workings of Parliament; I think there is something missing in the curriculum of the higher forms at secondary level, which on the other hand is very present in the German system.

There is also, as far as I can see, a massive disinterest from the House itself in all its aspects to bring it nearer to the citizens. It is not enough to have the sittings broadcast on radio (and shortly on the Internet). There is more, much, much more, to do to make it truly a House of the Public at the entrance to the capital city.

The only irony I can think of as punishment for grabbing ministers is a repeat of what happened to St Paul’s Bay local council, which worked hard to move to new premises and opened them just three days before the local council election, only to lose the majority and see the Labour majority sit in power. Those 16 ministers’ rooms may, in the end, become just punishment if they are taken over by Labour ministers. And the ex-ministers will have a sort of common room and a PC workstation to console them.

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