Irish senators to be housed with ancient fossils

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland's senators will have to share a museum building with the remains of prehistoric woolly mammoths and spotted hyenas during repairs to the Georgian mansion that normally houses parliament's upper chamber.

Much of Leinster House, built in the 1740s and used by Ireland's houses of parliament since the 1920s, will close for urgent repairs and the 60-seat upper chamber is to be housed in the natural history museum next door, Irish media reported.

One senator said he could live with dinosaur jokes stemming from their temporary lodgings but that he was sad he would be working in a place with the makeshift feel of a Portakabin.

"Much of my concern is actually aesthetic," Senator Eoghan Harris told public broadcaster RTE on Friday. "The Senate chamber is an absolutely beautiful chamber, it's historic."

Pat Wallace, director of the museum which opened in 1857, said it was far from the Portakabin described by Harris and that he was terrified of damage to a building with problems of its own. A staircase collapsed there last year, injuring 11 people.

"We are certainly not prepared for this," he said of the logistics involved in welcoming 60 lawmakers as early as June.

Senator Joe O'Toole said the lower house of parliament, which is known as the Dail and also sits in Leinster House, was more in need of a face-lift than the Seanad (senate) chamber.

"It's a Victorian lecture hall, completely inappropriate to a national parliament," he told national radio. "It's more like the Coliseum, it's more like a bear pit."

(Reporting by Andras Gergely)