After its on site visit which it carried out in the previous days, the House Business Committee met on Tuesday evening to see a presentation about the new Parliament building.

There will be other meetings in the coming days and the Speaker, Anglu Farrugia, repeated many times the aim of this meeting was to hear the presentation and ask questions relating to the understanding of the presentation and nothing more. But of course, things are never that simple.

The presentation was made by Antonio Belvedere, an architect from the Renzo Piano studio.

The meeting was held in one of the committee rooms of the present Parliament, a room filled with paintings of the 18th Century popes and completely inadequate to the needs of a modern-day Parliament. The amplification system is primitive and requires that anybody who speaks must be sitting and next to a microphone. So when Mr Belvedere rose to go next to the rather small television screen (certainly smaller than that which many people have in their homes) he must have been rather inaudible on the Parliament’s streaming.

Mr Belvedere emphasized that it was the location and the size that dictated the choices that were made. Later on, pressed by the MPs, he explained more.

Originally, the studio was told (by the then government) to build a new Parliament in the Opera House site.

The studio did its studies and concluded that the Opera House site was important historically for Malta, both because of the war and also because of the British connection.

Instead, there was Freedom Square which at that time was a parking space for cars with shops dug out of the bastions.

So the suggestion was made that the new Parliament was to be built in the Freedom Square area, which was restricted even at that point.

A further consideration added to the restriction. The studio could have used up more space and built a bigger Parliament, but it chose to respect the sight lines of the area which dictated the contours of the building. In other words, the studio could have built a bigger mass, but it chose its building lines to be dictated by the lines of the St James Cavalier. Hence the footprint of the office block and of the Chamber had to respect these sight lines and the ground floor was to remain mostly unbuilt.

It was true that Freedom Square has been lost, but instead there is the new space next to the St Catherine church, in front of the original façade of the Auberge d’Italie and of course all the ground floor underneath the two blocks of the Parliament building.

Mr Belvedere explained the functionalities of the various parts of the building. The actual Chamber will be at level 1. It will look like a stone quarry, a self contained unit, not touching the exterior walls. Outside it, accessible only to MPs, there will be a lounge and a lobby.

One level up there will be the press gallery with places for 16 media persons with all facilities.

Another level up will house the Strangers Gallery with space for 130 or 140 persons.

MPs will be able to park in the Central Bank car park and walk down. They will have a special, secure lobby at ground floor level and from there they can access both the Chamber and the Office block.

There is space for 16 ministers or parliamentary secretaries, each with his own secretary, eight on one level and eight on the other. The prime minister will have an ample office with space for a boardroom while his counterpart, the Leader of the Opposition, occupies exactly the same space but a floor up.

As regards the thorny question of committee rooms, questioning elicited the information that there are three committee rooms at present (I think the members forgot a never used committee room down at ground floor level) while there will be three committee rooms in the new Parliament with a possibility of a fourth committee room .

There will be a big lounge room for government members and a similarly big lounge room for the Opposition members. It was felt that such an open plan was better than each member having a cubicle.

The Speaker will have an office and a boardroom on the top level while a room at this same level intended for the Deputy Speaker was instead given to the Clerk with the Deputy Speaker being moved a floor down.

Questioning by the members present elicited a rather hard-gained admission that the Piano office did not work to a brief but added bit by bit to the plan and continued to adjust till the very end.

For instance, as regards the Parliament employees the Piano people and Grand Harbour Regeneration Corporation asked how many people worked in Parliament and were told that around 36 work there at present but it was desirable to increase that to 57. So 57 work stations were planned, mostly down at -1 level, surrounding the sunken garden.

A bone of contention, highlighted by Minister Joe Mizzi towards the end, regarded consultation. Chris Paris for GHRC said there had been an initial showing of Renzo Piano’s proposal at the Museum of Archaeology which went over its expected timeframe and then there was a period of public consultation during the Mepa process. MPs had also been invited to a presentation.

This did not satisfy Mr Mizzi who said that when he was Opposition Whip he had never been consulted. There was no input by the Opposition in the requirements of the project. When he became a minister, he asked for a copy of the brief, but no one could give him one.

In reply to a question by Deputy Prime Minister Louis Grech, Mr Paris admitted there is no space envisaged for a library but the archive will be housed in the former railway tunnel. There is space in the tunnel and the former railway station has additional space which can be used.

The only structure at ground level will be a room which can house cultural events such as exhibitions about the history of the Maltese political history, an attraction to entice the general public to become aware of the workings of the House.

Questions by George Pullicino MP elicited the information that the construction is now ready, the Mechanical and Electrical installations are at the second stage with the raised flooring being fitted in as from next week. If any changes are made at this point, the AC and M&E will have to be modified incurring extra costs.

Mr Paris here warned that if changes are ordered, expenses will spiral and contractors would love that for it enabled them to push expenses up.

The building, Mr Belvedere explained will be almost self-sufficient as to energy. There will be PV panels on the roof and 27 boreholes were dug deep into the ground, even further down than sea level. The result will be that the building will be 100% self-sufficient for heating in winter and 80% self-sufficient for cooling in summer.

David Agius, MP, asked for a copy of the contract signed with Malita and asked if any change would require a change in the contract. He was promised a copy but as to the rest of his question no one felt secure enough to reply.

The House Business Committee will hold its next meeting on this subject on 27 May at 4pm. This will be a continuation of the presentation after which the House will begin to discuss what is to be done with the new building.