Dr Jackson said: “Restoration, in whatever century, city or context, always causes controversy. There simply is no way round it. I say this because the word itself is not a simple term. Nobody is quite sure whether it is reinstatement, replacement or refashioning. Each age brings its own set of values and philosophical presuppositions – as well as its own human preferences. No task is simple and no benefactor is a neutral third party. And therefore no restoration is, or can be, just about fabric. It is about derivation, purpose, statement, quality and beauty. But it is also about intrusion and there is no getting away from that.
“Dublin is a place of two great medieval cathedrals, each of which is ancient to the eye of the beholder but each of them has undergone significant restoration in the nineteenth century. And today both are beautiful, each in its own way; together they make up a rather unique heritage of which we, the people of Dublin and of the Church of Ireland, are custodians in our own time for today and for tomorrow. In that rather excruciating modern phrase: ‘What you see is what you get.’ But the aesthetic and theological archaeologies which always lie within the present are always important for us to remember and to honour.
“So, what of Christ Church Cathedral and what, again, of what today might be called its ‘makeover’ by George Edmund Street? The second half of the nineteenth century is a time during which we ought never to underestimate the thudding impact of a Disestablishment on a Church of Ireland which, despite its triumphant rhetoric, inevitably brought in its train disappointment and insecurity. Each generation of Irish Anglicans needs urgently to think afresh through the responsibilities and the opportunities of Disestablishment, the imperatives to be a sign of distinctiveness in theological and social witness, while at the same time curbing instincts that we might have an automatic place at the head of any table. The body–blows of history make this a difficult and painful exercise. It is the call to contemporary engagement along with the rediscovery – or, if I may use the prickly word: restoration itself – of a national role and identity. This is happening in a world where humility and leadership go together and where people are angry and hurting at any and every show of power makes it worse for them.”