The Prime Minister's plans for Valletta's City Gate and the old Opera House site have not quite generated the intensity of debates of yesteryear on the same subject. Perhaps it is because people are thoroughly disgusted with the physical ugliness of City Gate and the unseemly bazaar it has been turned into, and with the mocking ruins of the former Royal Opera House 60 years after the building was bombed nearly flat.

Perhaps, too, it is because some people are waiting to see what the re-designed Renzo Piano plans will look like. That is not to say that the proposals, which seem to have been worked out by the government on the hoof, are not already controversial enough.

For my own money, relocating Parliament to the building that will be erected on the old Opera House site will constitute a thorough waste of resources. The House as sited in the Palace remains decent enough. Ministers, especially with the Cabinet sensibly downsized by Lawrence Gonzi, have ample space in the Palace, as have the string of Parliamentary Secretaries. It is the members of the opposition and the government's backbench who lack proper facilities.

In this regard, while the Leader of the Opposition should be housed in the Palace, MPs could be given offices within Valletta, a few minutes' walk or drive away from the Palace. The sprawling building of Baviera or possibly Fort St Elmo come immediately to mind.

The House is where sittings are held and opposition and backbench MPs do not have to be placed in the same building. Located in offices only a few minutes away, they can easily be summoned to the House itself, should the need arise, provided the opposition of the day does not play silly games with unnecessary calls to check if there is a quorum present during a sitting. That applies to most of the various committees of the House too.

The proposal to turn part of the old Opera House site into another cultural centre is also of dubious merit. Less than 200 metres away from the site lies St James Cavalier, converted at considerable expense into a magnificent centre reflecting architect Richard England's distinctive flair.

There are various museums in Valletta as well as underutilised old buildings which could serve that purpose. The arguments the Prime Minister used against building a new appropriately designed opera house on the old footprint - that he did not want to saturate the area (with theatres) - easily apply to building a new cultural centre.

Which leaves the question: should a new opera house be built, consonant with Piano's plans for the entrance to Valletta and its environs, that uses the limited footprint more efficiently than the destroyed Barry model?

The best reply given to that question was supplied by our beloved young tenor, already of international fame, Joseph Calleja. Aside from speaking of his "shock" when he learnt that the government was planning to forge ahead with the idea to shift Parliament to the site of the former Royal Opera House, Calleja came up with a practical proposal.

"I do not think it is in the national interest for Malta to be one of the few countries in the world which does not have an opera house," he told The Sunday Times last week, pointing out that even Gozo is equipped with the Astra and Aurora theatres which can stage big productions. He added that the site should be developed into a multipurpose state-of-the-art auditorium suitable for musicals, opera, theatre, ballet and even special conferences to make it more financially feasible.

"Imagine the grand opening of an opera house bombed during the war. It would be an exercise in PR which the island needs since our main source of income is tourism," he told this newspaper. The tenor also pointed out that, although it is a gem, the Manoel Theatre lacks backstage facilities and is not suited to big productions; the Mediterranean Conference Centre also lacks backstage facilities and its acoustics are not suitable for theatrical music; while St James Cavalier is "little more than a hall" (relative to opera).

Calleja's proposal certainly deserves to be discussed in the round. It allows for revenue-earning activities which could top up those of the opera season, thus giving a much-needed commercial dimension to his idea. The proposal could coincide with my own thoughts regarding use of a suitably designed new building on the old Opera House site. It is to do our utmost to promote the site for some EU or international agency or agencies to operate from the building.

However one shapes the argument, the PM's proposal to site the House of Representatives in the building is a non-starter. There is no obvious merit to it. In the past it was suggested that security considerations favoured relocating the House close to the exit from Valletta. I think that is nonsense. Security threats are just as real anywhere in Malta.

The re-involvement of Renzo Piano in the scheme to regenerate the entrance to Valletta, the environs included and with the possible removal of existing buildings which have defaced or totally hidden the walls of Grandmaster de la Valette's dream city, is welcome. The brief given to Piano without any prior domestic debate definitely is not. It could turn a dream into a comparative nightmare.