A €50 million west Cork building restoration project, billed as one of the largest in Irish history, shut its doors to the public yesterday to lie idle indefinitely.
Renovation works at Dunboy Castle near Castletownbere, Co Cork, ground to a halt in 2010 as investment dried up leaving the 18th-century Puxley Mansion 90 per cent complete.
A flurry of visitors took advantage of the final opportunity to catch a glimpse of the unfinished interior yesterday, the last public open day for 2011. The castle refurbishment was intended to be Ireland's first six-star hotel and included a complete renovation of the mansion in the grounds of 15thcentury Dunboy Castle, seat of the O'Sullivan Beara clan.
The mansion was left a skeleton after being burned down by the IRA in 1921. Bought by four local businessmen in 1999, the coastal manor was to be redeveloped in conjunction with a large professional hotel group. They secured a developer, Dublin-based Cap Partners, and sold their interest in the property.
Renovation work on the mansion, due to open in 2009, was almost completed, with the great baronial hall restored to its previous magnificence, but work was suspended in early 2010.
When funding dried up, the magnificent unfinished property, with a glass bridge linking to 72 hotel suits was placed on the market for an undisclosed sum with a US property firm, according to Phillip Donoghue, former project manager.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
Developer fined for destroying bat roost
CO CLARE developer John Declan Flanagan was yesterday ordered in court to pay more than €3,000 between costs and a fine after he was found guilty of destroying a breeding roost for the rare lesser horseshoe bat.
The bat is protected under the EU habitats directive and planning conditions attached to the development of Mr Flanagan's Ballykilty Manor hotel development near Quin involved strict conservation measures for the bat.
The lesser horseshoe bat is one of the world's smallest bats, weighing only 5-9g, with a wingspan of 192-254mm and a body length of 35-45mm.
In a prosecution brought by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Flanagan, Ballyvara House, Doolin, was accused, on dates unknown between June 11th, 2009, and October 14th, 2009, at Ballykilty Manor of damaging or destroying a breeding site or a resting place for the bat.
Mr Flanagan's Atlantis Group had secured permission for a fivestar hotel with 44 bedrooms, leisure facilities, function room, bar and restaurant on a 50-acre site with 14 holiday lodges.
In evidence at a special sitting of Ennis District Court, David Lyons, a conservation ranger with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, told the court that on June 11th, 2009, he counted 34 lesser horseshoe bats in a roost in an outbuilding at the manor.
However, on visiting the property that October 14th, he recorded that in the building containing the maternity roost, works had been carried out that involved the removal of the ceiling and all windows and doors had been opened. Mr Lyons said there were no longer any bats present.
Judge Aeneas McCarthy fined Mr Flanagan €500, ordered him to pay costs of €2,538 and fixed recognisance in the event of an appeal.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
The bat is protected under the EU habitats directive and planning conditions attached to the development of Mr Flanagan's Ballykilty Manor hotel development near Quin involved strict conservation measures for the bat.
The lesser horseshoe bat is one of the world's smallest bats, weighing only 5-9g, with a wingspan of 192-254mm and a body length of 35-45mm.
In a prosecution brought by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Flanagan, Ballyvara House, Doolin, was accused, on dates unknown between June 11th, 2009, and October 14th, 2009, at Ballykilty Manor of damaging or destroying a breeding site or a resting place for the bat.
Mr Flanagan's Atlantis Group had secured permission for a fivestar hotel with 44 bedrooms, leisure facilities, function room, bar and restaurant on a 50-acre site with 14 holiday lodges.
In evidence at a special sitting of Ennis District Court, David Lyons, a conservation ranger with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, told the court that on June 11th, 2009, he counted 34 lesser horseshoe bats in a roost in an outbuilding at the manor.
However, on visiting the property that October 14th, he recorded that in the building containing the maternity roost, works had been carried out that involved the removal of the ceiling and all windows and doors had been opened. Mr Lyons said there were no longer any bats present.
Judge Aeneas McCarthy fined Mr Flanagan €500, ordered him to pay costs of €2,538 and fixed recognisance in the event of an appeal.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Snail blamed for delays to Cork-Kerry road plan
IT WAS most unfair that a Kerry snail was being blamed for holding up a major road into the county from Cork, a council meeting in Tralee has heard.
Because of a judicial review on behalf of the rare geomalacus maculosus in the High Court, the long-awaited Macroom to Ballyvourney relief road, approved by An Bord Pleanála, is proceeding at "a snail's pace".
The rare spotted slug, a red data species found only in south Kerry, west Cork and the northern tip of the Iberian peninsula, is now "looking over the ditch" at the trucks and traffic piled up in traffic jams between Cork and Kerry on its behalf, Councillor Danny Healy-Rae said.
"It is most unfortunate this proposal is held up by environmentalists on behalf of a Kerry snail - as if it was the snail from Kerry's fault," he said.
He was speaking on foot of a council motion from Cllr Michael Gleeson calling on the NRA to "commence construction with all due haste".
Cllr Gleeson said the road which was the main artery between Cork and Kerry, was "deplorable".
"It's not just the surface, but the bends. It is deplorable that people commuting on a daily basis have to travel that monstrosity of a road," Cllr Gleeson said.
However, the council report said the NRA's hands were tied until the result of the judicial review.
Cllr Gleeson said the slug had a red and white underbelly - a reference to the fact it is on the international conservation list of rare species, the red list.
This prompted one senior council official, John Flynn, to quip the road was indeed moving at a snail's pace.
By Anne Lucey, Irish Examiner
www.buckplanning.ie
Because of a judicial review on behalf of the rare geomalacus maculosus in the High Court, the long-awaited Macroom to Ballyvourney relief road, approved by An Bord Pleanála, is proceeding at "a snail's pace".
The rare spotted slug, a red data species found only in south Kerry, west Cork and the northern tip of the Iberian peninsula, is now "looking over the ditch" at the trucks and traffic piled up in traffic jams between Cork and Kerry on its behalf, Councillor Danny Healy-Rae said.
"It is most unfortunate this proposal is held up by environmentalists on behalf of a Kerry snail - as if it was the snail from Kerry's fault," he said.
He was speaking on foot of a council motion from Cllr Michael Gleeson calling on the NRA to "commence construction with all due haste".
Cllr Gleeson said the road which was the main artery between Cork and Kerry, was "deplorable".
"It's not just the surface, but the bends. It is deplorable that people commuting on a daily basis have to travel that monstrosity of a road," Cllr Gleeson said.
However, the council report said the NRA's hands were tied until the result of the judicial review.
Cllr Gleeson said the slug had a red and white underbelly - a reference to the fact it is on the international conservation list of rare species, the red list.
This prompted one senior council official, John Flynn, to quip the road was indeed moving at a snail's pace.
By Anne Lucey, Irish Examiner
www.buckplanning.ie
EC Urges Ireland to Act Swiftly to Improve Protection of Peat Bogs
The European Commission is asking Ireland to take urgent action to improve the implementation of legislation that protects peat bog habitats. The Commission is concerned that peat extraction is ongoing in numerous protected Natura 2000 sites, despite letters sent out by the Irish authorities.
Scientists have warned that up to 35% of certain priority habitats have been destroyed since the legislation was adopted, and that the annual rate of loss is between 1-4%. In addition, the Commission also has concerns over some 170 other protected bogs.
Ireland was sent a letter of formal notice about this matter in January 2011. Although recent progress appears to have been made in relation to 32 sites, this needs to be reflected by changes on the ground.
On the recommendation of Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik, the Commission has decided to send a reasoned opinion. The Commission’s assessment of the progress on the ground will be crucial in determining the next steps in this procedure.
The case concerns systemic breaches of the Habitats Directive (92/43/EC) and the EIA Directive (85/337/EEC) related to peat extraction on protected bogs. While Ireland is clearly acting on the problem – the Minister for the Environment announced an immediate ban on turf cutting in 32 active raised bogs in 2010, and an end to turf cutting in 24 additional active raised bogs by the end of 2011 – the Commission has serious concerns about the effectiveness of the response.
As well as being an endangered form of biodiversity, peat bogs are critical carbon stores and they provide important ecosystem services such as flood prevention. Under the Habitats Directive, Ireland had to submit peatlands for protection in Natura 2000 from 1998. Two types of peat bog – active raised bogs and active blanket bogs, are particularly at risk in Ireland. Developments are permitted in Natura 2000, Europe’s network of protected natural areas, only if they will not adversely affect the integrity of the site concerned, or if there is an overriding public interest and compensatory measures are taken.
European legislation also requires Ireland to make environmentally sensitive peat extraction projects subject to the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive, to evaluate possible impacts on the environment before they begin. This enables planners to minimise negative impacts before they actually happen.
www.buckplanning.ie
Scientists have warned that up to 35% of certain priority habitats have been destroyed since the legislation was adopted, and that the annual rate of loss is between 1-4%. In addition, the Commission also has concerns over some 170 other protected bogs.
Ireland was sent a letter of formal notice about this matter in January 2011. Although recent progress appears to have been made in relation to 32 sites, this needs to be reflected by changes on the ground.
On the recommendation of Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik, the Commission has decided to send a reasoned opinion. The Commission’s assessment of the progress on the ground will be crucial in determining the next steps in this procedure.
The case concerns systemic breaches of the Habitats Directive (92/43/EC) and the EIA Directive (85/337/EEC) related to peat extraction on protected bogs. While Ireland is clearly acting on the problem – the Minister for the Environment announced an immediate ban on turf cutting in 32 active raised bogs in 2010, and an end to turf cutting in 24 additional active raised bogs by the end of 2011 – the Commission has serious concerns about the effectiveness of the response.
As well as being an endangered form of biodiversity, peat bogs are critical carbon stores and they provide important ecosystem services such as flood prevention. Under the Habitats Directive, Ireland had to submit peatlands for protection in Natura 2000 from 1998. Two types of peat bog – active raised bogs and active blanket bogs, are particularly at risk in Ireland. Developments are permitted in Natura 2000, Europe’s network of protected natural areas, only if they will not adversely affect the integrity of the site concerned, or if there is an overriding public interest and compensatory measures are taken.
European legislation also requires Ireland to make environmentally sensitive peat extraction projects subject to the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive, to evaluate possible impacts on the environment before they begin. This enables planners to minimise negative impacts before they actually happen.
www.buckplanning.ie
Anglo-Irish Deal Opens Potential For €1.6 Billion Renewable Energy Export Industry
The Irish Wind Energy Association (IWEA) has welcomed the signing of an historic deal between Ireland and the UK Government that will potentially pave the way for exploiting Ireland’s unique wind energy resources. Both Governments have agreed to co-operate on developing the major wind and marine resource in and around Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.
IWEA chief executive Dr Michael Walsh says the deal may be seen in time as a milestone moment for Ireland in terms of maximizing the potential of the wind sector.
“It’s early days yet and we await the detail of what’s in the deal but it certainly is a major step in the right direction and potentially paves the way for what we believe could be a €1.6 billion annual export industry for Ireland and total new employment in the sector of 28,000 jobs,” he explains. “This deal, perhaps more than anything else that has gone before recognises the huge potential from wind energy on the island of Ireland given that it is a trading partner and not just ourselves that has recognised that the wind resource we have here is unique and largely underutilised. We have long since in the IWEA trumpeted the potential for exporting wind energy from Ireland and this deal will hopefully bring it to fruition, sooner rather than later.”
www.buckplanning.ie
IWEA chief executive Dr Michael Walsh says the deal may be seen in time as a milestone moment for Ireland in terms of maximizing the potential of the wind sector.
“It’s early days yet and we await the detail of what’s in the deal but it certainly is a major step in the right direction and potentially paves the way for what we believe could be a €1.6 billion annual export industry for Ireland and total new employment in the sector of 28,000 jobs,” he explains. “This deal, perhaps more than anything else that has gone before recognises the huge potential from wind energy on the island of Ireland given that it is a trading partner and not just ourselves that has recognised that the wind resource we have here is unique and largely underutilised. We have long since in the IWEA trumpeted the potential for exporting wind energy from Ireland and this deal will hopefully bring it to fruition, sooner rather than later.”
www.buckplanning.ie
Development policies challenged at summer school
THE NEED to challenge “silo thinking” among architects, planners, engineers and sociologists was highlighted yesterday at the opening of a summer school, “Making the Built Environment Work”, at NUI Maynooth.
Prof Mary Corcoran, of the college’s department of sociology, said the fast pace of development during the Celtic Tiger years had produced built landscapes across Ireland that were at odds with people’s desires and expectations.
Concerns included the “scarring” of rural areas by excessive holiday home building, the inappropriate scale of downtown developments and the prospects of a poorer quality of life for those living in unfinished housing estates.
“The abrupt halt to development with the onset of the recession,” she said, “has created a set of very problematic conditions in urgent need of solutions.”
Prof Corcoran said the summer school would provide a unique opportunity to “integrate the insights, processes and practices” of professionals involved in design as well as research. Experts from Europe, Australia and the US will be working with their Irish counterparts to generate solutions to specific problems associated with the property collapse, including ghost estates.
Frank McDonald
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Prof Mary Corcoran, of the college’s department of sociology, said the fast pace of development during the Celtic Tiger years had produced built landscapes across Ireland that were at odds with people’s desires and expectations.
Concerns included the “scarring” of rural areas by excessive holiday home building, the inappropriate scale of downtown developments and the prospects of a poorer quality of life for those living in unfinished housing estates.
“The abrupt halt to development with the onset of the recession,” she said, “has created a set of very problematic conditions in urgent need of solutions.”
Prof Corcoran said the summer school would provide a unique opportunity to “integrate the insights, processes and practices” of professionals involved in design as well as research. Experts from Europe, Australia and the US will be working with their Irish counterparts to generate solutions to specific problems associated with the property collapse, including ghost estates.
Frank McDonald
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Mountjoy Square's fate central to city heritage
Can Mountjoy Square be turned into the jewel of Dublin’s inner northside that it should be?
NOWHERE IS the casual neglect of Dublin’s northside more evident than at Mountjoy Square. With its perfect proportions, it should be one of the jewels of the northside. Instead, the central space is a mess, occupied by (among other things), a parks depot from which the Liffey Boardwalk is serviced.
The depot’s walls are scarred by graffiti, the park railings haven’t been painted for decades and one side of the square is used as a coach park – with official approval. It is impossible to imagine Merrion Square or Fitzwilliam Square being treated in such cavalier fashion. It’s obvious why – they’re on the southside.
But neither of the two southside squares is much inhabited – unlike, say, the squares of Edinburgh’s Georgian New Town. Mountjoy is, however. According to lobby group the Mountjoy Square Society, there are at least 1,000 people living on the square, in original houses or purpose-built flats.
History has not been kind to Mountjoy Square. Like the rest of Dublin’s northside Georgian core, it fell into decline after the Duke of Leinster built a new townhouse in Kildare Street, with its garden front facing what would become Merrion Square. The northside eventually became a set of tenements, suitable for Seán O’Casey’s trilogy.
The Shadow of a Gunman is unsurprisingly set on the square, as O’Casey once lived there. Arthur Guinness died in a house on the square in 1803, according to the Mountjoy Square Society. “Perhaps most notably, Mountjoy Square hosted meetings of the First and Second Dáil in 1919-1921,” it notes proudly.
“Mountjoy Square has an extraordinary history and, when it was built, was considered to be one of the finest residential squares in Europe,” says its secretary, Karin O’Flanagan, a resident since 1978. Dublin City Council needs “to create a space both for visitors and the local community which will breathe new life and pride into the square”.
By the early 1980s, when I first wrote about Mountjoy Square, only 43 of 67 houses built two centuries earlier had survived, despite the valiant efforts of Mariga Guinness, Uinseann MacEoin and others. No 50, the house Mariga bought to preserve, was later pulled down.
Since then, with the aid of urban renewal tax incentives, at least a semblance of the missing houses has been recreated. However, the new Georgian facades are not very convincing, and behind them lie shoebox flats with tall rooms that are evocative of Victorian prison cells, produced by Zoe Developments.
Nonetheless, anyone passing through Mountjoy Square now would at least get the impression that it’s intact. Previously, chunks of the south and west sides lay in ruins. The late Prof FX Martin used to avoid the square when bringing visitors into the city from Dublin airport; he didn’t want them to think it had been bombed. Now, it’s up for designation as an architectural conservation area (ACA). This would be “hugely valuable ”, says Garrett Fennell, the society’s chairman. Dublin City Council, he says, are key stakeholders, “given that they own and (mis)manage the park in the centre of the square. They also control the traffic/parking regime and deal with planning, and in particular enforcement and housing standards issues.
“They are utterly frustrating our efforts to take tangible steps in other areas of improving the square. In a mixture of indifference and inertia, they tolerate the use of the square as a commuter coach park. We were told recently that they have no plans to move the coaches from the square, despite earlier indications that they would be moved.”
It was a joke to think Dublin was being considered as a World Heritage Site for its Georgian core “when the city council allows one of its premier Georgian squares – and its only real residential Georgian square – to be used as a coach park”.
Fennell, a son of late Fine Gael TD Nuala Fennell, says if the council doesn’t start taking its responsibilities for the northside Georgian core seriously, the society will call on Unesco to “disallow the bid” for World Heritage Site designation. “It is a complete joke to think that Dublin is being pushed for [this status] while the city council itself is guilty of wanton neglect of that Georgian heritage.”
The society has said that, unless the council commits itself to improvements, it should cede control of the park to the Office of Public Works, which maintains St Stephen’s Green to a very high standard.
At a meeting with society members last February with 13 council officials, chief planning officer Dick Gleeson said that, despite much investment in the inner city during the boom years, “the north Georgian core had been obdurate in its resistance to a strategic uplift”, according to the minutes.
Heritage officer Charles Duggan saw ACA designation as potentially “an important step in Georgian parts of Dublin achieving World Heritage Site status”, while Charlie Lowe of the Parks Department agreed the location of its depot in the square was “not optimal” – although it would be “difficult to relocate”.
As for removing the coach park, the society was later informed by Tim O’Sullivan, executive manager of the roads and traffic department, that this had been rejected by members of the north inner city area committee in March on the basis that there should be “an examination of options on a citywide basis” for storing private coaches.
The National Transportation Authority had “indicated a willingness to consider funding coach parking facilities”, and there would be a “policy review”. When this was done, “we will be developing specific proposals for new coach parking facilities, which should allow for the removal or reduction of coach parking in the more sensitive areas of Dublin”.
There is some hope. Under Gleeson, an inter-departmental group has been set up to tackle the challenge of “repositioning the north Georgian core . . . in the life of the inner city”. And this is to involve a “strategic top-down and an inventive bottom-up approach”, with an input from residents.
The “down-at-heel” north Georgian core, so much at odds with Dublin’s aspirations to be a “creative, smart knowledge city”, may finally be rescued. But the challenge “is so great that it will require many layers of intervention, requiring the creative collaboration of all stakeholders, city council departments and relevant city institutions”.
Frank McDonald is Environment Editor of the Irish Times
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
NOWHERE IS the casual neglect of Dublin’s northside more evident than at Mountjoy Square. With its perfect proportions, it should be one of the jewels of the northside. Instead, the central space is a mess, occupied by (among other things), a parks depot from which the Liffey Boardwalk is serviced.
The depot’s walls are scarred by graffiti, the park railings haven’t been painted for decades and one side of the square is used as a coach park – with official approval. It is impossible to imagine Merrion Square or Fitzwilliam Square being treated in such cavalier fashion. It’s obvious why – they’re on the southside.
But neither of the two southside squares is much inhabited – unlike, say, the squares of Edinburgh’s Georgian New Town. Mountjoy is, however. According to lobby group the Mountjoy Square Society, there are at least 1,000 people living on the square, in original houses or purpose-built flats.
History has not been kind to Mountjoy Square. Like the rest of Dublin’s northside Georgian core, it fell into decline after the Duke of Leinster built a new townhouse in Kildare Street, with its garden front facing what would become Merrion Square. The northside eventually became a set of tenements, suitable for Seán O’Casey’s trilogy.
The Shadow of a Gunman is unsurprisingly set on the square, as O’Casey once lived there. Arthur Guinness died in a house on the square in 1803, according to the Mountjoy Square Society. “Perhaps most notably, Mountjoy Square hosted meetings of the First and Second Dáil in 1919-1921,” it notes proudly.
“Mountjoy Square has an extraordinary history and, when it was built, was considered to be one of the finest residential squares in Europe,” says its secretary, Karin O’Flanagan, a resident since 1978. Dublin City Council needs “to create a space both for visitors and the local community which will breathe new life and pride into the square”.
By the early 1980s, when I first wrote about Mountjoy Square, only 43 of 67 houses built two centuries earlier had survived, despite the valiant efforts of Mariga Guinness, Uinseann MacEoin and others. No 50, the house Mariga bought to preserve, was later pulled down.
Since then, with the aid of urban renewal tax incentives, at least a semblance of the missing houses has been recreated. However, the new Georgian facades are not very convincing, and behind them lie shoebox flats with tall rooms that are evocative of Victorian prison cells, produced by Zoe Developments.
Nonetheless, anyone passing through Mountjoy Square now would at least get the impression that it’s intact. Previously, chunks of the south and west sides lay in ruins. The late Prof FX Martin used to avoid the square when bringing visitors into the city from Dublin airport; he didn’t want them to think it had been bombed. Now, it’s up for designation as an architectural conservation area (ACA). This would be “hugely valuable ”, says Garrett Fennell, the society’s chairman. Dublin City Council, he says, are key stakeholders, “given that they own and (mis)manage the park in the centre of the square. They also control the traffic/parking regime and deal with planning, and in particular enforcement and housing standards issues.
“They are utterly frustrating our efforts to take tangible steps in other areas of improving the square. In a mixture of indifference and inertia, they tolerate the use of the square as a commuter coach park. We were told recently that they have no plans to move the coaches from the square, despite earlier indications that they would be moved.”
It was a joke to think Dublin was being considered as a World Heritage Site for its Georgian core “when the city council allows one of its premier Georgian squares – and its only real residential Georgian square – to be used as a coach park”.
Fennell, a son of late Fine Gael TD Nuala Fennell, says if the council doesn’t start taking its responsibilities for the northside Georgian core seriously, the society will call on Unesco to “disallow the bid” for World Heritage Site designation. “It is a complete joke to think that Dublin is being pushed for [this status] while the city council itself is guilty of wanton neglect of that Georgian heritage.”
The society has said that, unless the council commits itself to improvements, it should cede control of the park to the Office of Public Works, which maintains St Stephen’s Green to a very high standard.
At a meeting with society members last February with 13 council officials, chief planning officer Dick Gleeson said that, despite much investment in the inner city during the boom years, “the north Georgian core had been obdurate in its resistance to a strategic uplift”, according to the minutes.
Heritage officer Charles Duggan saw ACA designation as potentially “an important step in Georgian parts of Dublin achieving World Heritage Site status”, while Charlie Lowe of the Parks Department agreed the location of its depot in the square was “not optimal” – although it would be “difficult to relocate”.
As for removing the coach park, the society was later informed by Tim O’Sullivan, executive manager of the roads and traffic department, that this had been rejected by members of the north inner city area committee in March on the basis that there should be “an examination of options on a citywide basis” for storing private coaches.
The National Transportation Authority had “indicated a willingness to consider funding coach parking facilities”, and there would be a “policy review”. When this was done, “we will be developing specific proposals for new coach parking facilities, which should allow for the removal or reduction of coach parking in the more sensitive areas of Dublin”.
There is some hope. Under Gleeson, an inter-departmental group has been set up to tackle the challenge of “repositioning the north Georgian core . . . in the life of the inner city”. And this is to involve a “strategic top-down and an inventive bottom-up approach”, with an input from residents.
The “down-at-heel” north Georgian core, so much at odds with Dublin’s aspirations to be a “creative, smart knowledge city”, may finally be rescued. But the challenge “is so great that it will require many layers of intervention, requiring the creative collaboration of all stakeholders, city council departments and relevant city institutions”.
Frank McDonald is Environment Editor of the Irish Times
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Mountjoy Square's fate central to city heritage
Can Mountjoy Square be turned into the jewel of Dublin’s inner northside that it should be?
NOWHERE IS the casual neglect of Dublin’s northside more evident than at Mountjoy Square. With its perfect proportions, it should be one of the jewels of the northside. Instead, the central space is a mess, occupied by (among other things), a parks depot from which the Liffey Boardwalk is serviced.
The depot’s walls are scarred by graffiti, the park railings haven’t been painted for decades and one side of the square is used as a coach park – with official approval. It is impossible to imagine Merrion Square or Fitzwilliam Square being treated in such cavalier fashion. It’s obvious why – they’re on the southside.
But neither of the two southside squares is much inhabited – unlike, say, the squares of Edinburgh’s Georgian New Town. Mountjoy is, however. According to lobby group the Mountjoy Square Society, there are at least 1,000 people living on the square, in original houses or purpose-built flats.
History has not been kind to Mountjoy Square. Like the rest of Dublin’s northside Georgian core, it fell into decline after the Duke of Leinster built a new townhouse in Kildare Street, with its garden front facing what would become Merrion Square. The northside eventually became a set of tenements, suitable for Seán O’Casey’s trilogy.
The Shadow of a Gunman is unsurprisingly set on the square, as O’Casey once lived there. Arthur Guinness died in a house on the square in 1803, according to the Mountjoy Square Society. “Perhaps most notably, Mountjoy Square hosted meetings of the First and Second Dáil in 1919-1921,” it notes proudly.
“Mountjoy Square has an extraordinary history and, when it was built, was considered to be one of the finest residential squares in Europe,” says its secretary, Karin O’Flanagan, a resident since 1978. Dublin City Council needs “to create a space both for visitors and the local community which will breathe new life and pride into the square”.
By the early 1980s, when I first wrote about Mountjoy Square, only 43 of 67 houses built two centuries earlier had survived, despite the valiant efforts of Mariga Guinness, Uinseann MacEoin and others. No 50, the house Mariga bought to preserve, was later pulled down.
Since then, with the aid of urban renewal tax incentives, at least a semblance of the missing houses has been recreated. However, the new Georgian facades are not very convincing, and behind them lie shoebox flats with tall rooms that are evocative of Victorian prison cells, produced by Zoe Developments.
Nonetheless, anyone passing through Mountjoy Square now would at least get the impression that it’s intact. Previously, chunks of the south and west sides lay in ruins. The late Prof FX Martin used to avoid the square when bringing visitors into the city from Dublin airport; he didn’t want them to think it had been bombed. Now, it’s up for designation as an architectural conservation area (ACA). This would be “hugely valuable ”, says Garrett Fennell, the society’s chairman. Dublin City Council, he says, are key stakeholders, “given that they own and (mis)manage the park in the centre of the square. They also control the traffic/parking regime and deal with planning, and in particular enforcement and housing standards issues.
“They are utterly frustrating our efforts to take tangible steps in other areas of improving the square. In a mixture of indifference and inertia, they tolerate the use of the square as a commuter coach park. We were told recently that they have no plans to move the coaches from the square, despite earlier indications that they would be moved.”
It was a joke to think Dublin was being considered as a World Heritage Site for its Georgian core “when the city council allows one of its premier Georgian squares – and its only real residential Georgian square – to be used as a coach park”.
Fennell, a son of late Fine Gael TD Nuala Fennell, says if the council doesn’t start taking its responsibilities for the northside Georgian core seriously, the society will call on Unesco to “disallow the bid” for World Heritage Site designation. “It is a complete joke to think that Dublin is being pushed for [this status] while the city council itself is guilty of wanton neglect of that Georgian heritage.”
The society has said that, unless the council commits itself to improvements, it should cede control of the park to the Office of Public Works, which maintains St Stephen’s Green to a very high standard.
At a meeting with society members last February with 13 council officials, chief planning officer Dick Gleeson said that, despite much investment in the inner city during the boom years, “the north Georgian core had been obdurate in its resistance to a strategic uplift”, according to the minutes.
Heritage officer Charles Duggan saw ACA designation as potentially “an important step in Georgian parts of Dublin achieving World Heritage Site status”, while Charlie Lowe of the Parks Department agreed the location of its depot in the square was “not optimal” – although it would be “difficult to relocate”.
As for removing the coach park, the society was later informed by Tim O’Sullivan, executive manager of the roads and traffic department, that this had been rejected by members of the north inner city area committee in March on the basis that there should be “an examination of options on a citywide basis” for storing private coaches.
The National Transportation Authority had “indicated a willingness to consider funding coach parking facilities”, and there would be a “policy review”. When this was done, “we will be developing specific proposals for new coach parking facilities, which should allow for the removal or reduction of coach parking in the more sensitive areas of Dublin”.
There is some hope. Under Gleeson, an inter-departmental group has been set up to tackle the challenge of “repositioning the north Georgian core . . . in the life of the inner city”. And this is to involve a “strategic top-down and an inventive bottom-up approach”, with an input from residents.
The “down-at-heel” north Georgian core, so much at odds with Dublin’s aspirations to be a “creative, smart knowledge city”, may finally be rescued. But the challenge “is so great that it will require many layers of intervention, requiring the creative collaboration of all stakeholders, city council departments and relevant city institutions”.
Frank McDonald is Environment Editor of the Irish Times
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
NOWHERE IS the casual neglect of Dublin’s northside more evident than at Mountjoy Square. With its perfect proportions, it should be one of the jewels of the northside. Instead, the central space is a mess, occupied by (among other things), a parks depot from which the Liffey Boardwalk is serviced.
The depot’s walls are scarred by graffiti, the park railings haven’t been painted for decades and one side of the square is used as a coach park – with official approval. It is impossible to imagine Merrion Square or Fitzwilliam Square being treated in such cavalier fashion. It’s obvious why – they’re on the southside.
But neither of the two southside squares is much inhabited – unlike, say, the squares of Edinburgh’s Georgian New Town. Mountjoy is, however. According to lobby group the Mountjoy Square Society, there are at least 1,000 people living on the square, in original houses or purpose-built flats.
History has not been kind to Mountjoy Square. Like the rest of Dublin’s northside Georgian core, it fell into decline after the Duke of Leinster built a new townhouse in Kildare Street, with its garden front facing what would become Merrion Square. The northside eventually became a set of tenements, suitable for Seán O’Casey’s trilogy.
The Shadow of a Gunman is unsurprisingly set on the square, as O’Casey once lived there. Arthur Guinness died in a house on the square in 1803, according to the Mountjoy Square Society. “Perhaps most notably, Mountjoy Square hosted meetings of the First and Second Dáil in 1919-1921,” it notes proudly.
“Mountjoy Square has an extraordinary history and, when it was built, was considered to be one of the finest residential squares in Europe,” says its secretary, Karin O’Flanagan, a resident since 1978. Dublin City Council needs “to create a space both for visitors and the local community which will breathe new life and pride into the square”.
By the early 1980s, when I first wrote about Mountjoy Square, only 43 of 67 houses built two centuries earlier had survived, despite the valiant efforts of Mariga Guinness, Uinseann MacEoin and others. No 50, the house Mariga bought to preserve, was later pulled down.
Since then, with the aid of urban renewal tax incentives, at least a semblance of the missing houses has been recreated. However, the new Georgian facades are not very convincing, and behind them lie shoebox flats with tall rooms that are evocative of Victorian prison cells, produced by Zoe Developments.
Nonetheless, anyone passing through Mountjoy Square now would at least get the impression that it’s intact. Previously, chunks of the south and west sides lay in ruins. The late Prof FX Martin used to avoid the square when bringing visitors into the city from Dublin airport; he didn’t want them to think it had been bombed. Now, it’s up for designation as an architectural conservation area (ACA). This would be “hugely valuable ”, says Garrett Fennell, the society’s chairman. Dublin City Council, he says, are key stakeholders, “given that they own and (mis)manage the park in the centre of the square. They also control the traffic/parking regime and deal with planning, and in particular enforcement and housing standards issues.
“They are utterly frustrating our efforts to take tangible steps in other areas of improving the square. In a mixture of indifference and inertia, they tolerate the use of the square as a commuter coach park. We were told recently that they have no plans to move the coaches from the square, despite earlier indications that they would be moved.”
It was a joke to think Dublin was being considered as a World Heritage Site for its Georgian core “when the city council allows one of its premier Georgian squares – and its only real residential Georgian square – to be used as a coach park”.
Fennell, a son of late Fine Gael TD Nuala Fennell, says if the council doesn’t start taking its responsibilities for the northside Georgian core seriously, the society will call on Unesco to “disallow the bid” for World Heritage Site designation. “It is a complete joke to think that Dublin is being pushed for [this status] while the city council itself is guilty of wanton neglect of that Georgian heritage.”
The society has said that, unless the council commits itself to improvements, it should cede control of the park to the Office of Public Works, which maintains St Stephen’s Green to a very high standard.
At a meeting with society members last February with 13 council officials, chief planning officer Dick Gleeson said that, despite much investment in the inner city during the boom years, “the north Georgian core had been obdurate in its resistance to a strategic uplift”, according to the minutes.
Heritage officer Charles Duggan saw ACA designation as potentially “an important step in Georgian parts of Dublin achieving World Heritage Site status”, while Charlie Lowe of the Parks Department agreed the location of its depot in the square was “not optimal” – although it would be “difficult to relocate”.
As for removing the coach park, the society was later informed by Tim O’Sullivan, executive manager of the roads and traffic department, that this had been rejected by members of the north inner city area committee in March on the basis that there should be “an examination of options on a citywide basis” for storing private coaches.
The National Transportation Authority had “indicated a willingness to consider funding coach parking facilities”, and there would be a “policy review”. When this was done, “we will be developing specific proposals for new coach parking facilities, which should allow for the removal or reduction of coach parking in the more sensitive areas of Dublin”.
There is some hope. Under Gleeson, an inter-departmental group has been set up to tackle the challenge of “repositioning the north Georgian core . . . in the life of the inner city”. And this is to involve a “strategic top-down and an inventive bottom-up approach”, with an input from residents.
The “down-at-heel” north Georgian core, so much at odds with Dublin’s aspirations to be a “creative, smart knowledge city”, may finally be rescued. But the challenge “is so great that it will require many layers of intervention, requiring the creative collaboration of all stakeholders, city council departments and relevant city institutions”.
Frank McDonald is Environment Editor of the Irish Times
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Hogan will not intervene on Poolbeg
Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan will not be intervening to prevent the Poolbeg incinerator going ahead, even though Dublin City Council would face “very substantial” penalties if it failed to provide sufficient municipal waste to fuel it over 25 years.
The confirmation of the council’s exposure to penalties came in a report prepared by John Hennessy SC for Mr Hogan’s predecessor, former Green Party leader John Gormley, which the Minister has now released in a heavily redacted form.
Although he said he was publishing it “in the interests of openness and transparency”, all references to the scale of the financial penalties and other crucial aspects of the contract between the council and its American partners, Covanta, have been deleted.
Mr Hogan said that he “had to redact commercially sensitive aspects, thereby respecting the confidential nature of certain information which was provided to Mr Hennessy to assist him in compiling his report” - including information provided by Covanta itself.
Mr Hennessy had been appointed by the former Minister as an “authorised person” under section 224 of the 2001 Local Government Act 2001, to examine potential financial risks associated with the project within a given set of scenarios.
The report concluded that termination or variation of the Poolbeg contract would “give rise to significant financial cost” for the city council and that trends in waste management and recycling was also likely to make it “very expensive” for the council.
“The scenarios envisaged under the terms of reference for this report tend to suggest that DCC may well be paying, for a considerable period of time, for the processing of significantly more waste than it is able to deliver to the facility”, Mr Hennessy wrote.
Commenting on his 92-page report, Mr Hogan said the senior counsel who compiled it was “required to work within predetermined parameters and scenarios set in the terms of reference given to him” by the former minister, who opposed Poolbeg.
“Having consulted with my Government colleagues, I have concluded that there is no national waste policy justification for the Government to intervene in this matter”, the Minister said. One of them is Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn, who represents Dublin South East.
“The Dublin Regional Waste Management Plan makes provision for the project and decisions in relation to it are a matter for the two parties to the contract, Dublin City Council and Dublin Waste to Energy Ltd” - the company which Covanta now controls.
The Minister said his focus “is firmly fixed on completing, by the end of the year, the review of national waste policy which he has initiated”. This review is widely expected to endorse “waste-to-energy” plants, such as the one planned for Poolbeg.
“Responsibility for waste management plans and their implementation is, and will remain, a matter primarily for local authorities, guided by the internationally recognised waste hierarchy”, Mr Hogan said, adding that this was “transposed into Irish law earlier this year”.
Dublin City Council said the “restricted terms of reference” of the Hennessy report “did not take into account the wider context which is relevant to understanding the Project and why it is necessary”, such as the requirements of EU waste management directives.
It pointed out that the four Dublin local authorities currently “have to issue a new contract every six months and waste facilities all around the country compete to take Dublin’s waste as there is no more landfill space available in the Dublin region”.
The Irish Waste Management Association has said the so-called ‘put or pay’ contract between Dublin City Council and Covanta to build the 600,000 tonne incinerator posed “a massive and unacceptable ongoing debt risk to taxpayers”.
Director of the association Brendan Keanve said it didn’t matter if waste levels dropped to zero.
“Covanta will continue to make a handsome profit since all taxpayers and ratepayers have signed a blank cheque to underwrite the facility.”
Last month, private waste companies said they would create 235 full-time jobs if the capacity of the planned Poolbeg incinerator was halved.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
The confirmation of the council’s exposure to penalties came in a report prepared by John Hennessy SC for Mr Hogan’s predecessor, former Green Party leader John Gormley, which the Minister has now released in a heavily redacted form.
Although he said he was publishing it “in the interests of openness and transparency”, all references to the scale of the financial penalties and other crucial aspects of the contract between the council and its American partners, Covanta, have been deleted.
Mr Hogan said that he “had to redact commercially sensitive aspects, thereby respecting the confidential nature of certain information which was provided to Mr Hennessy to assist him in compiling his report” - including information provided by Covanta itself.
Mr Hennessy had been appointed by the former Minister as an “authorised person” under section 224 of the 2001 Local Government Act 2001, to examine potential financial risks associated with the project within a given set of scenarios.
The report concluded that termination or variation of the Poolbeg contract would “give rise to significant financial cost” for the city council and that trends in waste management and recycling was also likely to make it “very expensive” for the council.
“The scenarios envisaged under the terms of reference for this report tend to suggest that DCC may well be paying, for a considerable period of time, for the processing of significantly more waste than it is able to deliver to the facility”, Mr Hennessy wrote.
Commenting on his 92-page report, Mr Hogan said the senior counsel who compiled it was “required to work within predetermined parameters and scenarios set in the terms of reference given to him” by the former minister, who opposed Poolbeg.
“Having consulted with my Government colleagues, I have concluded that there is no national waste policy justification for the Government to intervene in this matter”, the Minister said. One of them is Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn, who represents Dublin South East.
“The Dublin Regional Waste Management Plan makes provision for the project and decisions in relation to it are a matter for the two parties to the contract, Dublin City Council and Dublin Waste to Energy Ltd” - the company which Covanta now controls.
The Minister said his focus “is firmly fixed on completing, by the end of the year, the review of national waste policy which he has initiated”. This review is widely expected to endorse “waste-to-energy” plants, such as the one planned for Poolbeg.
“Responsibility for waste management plans and their implementation is, and will remain, a matter primarily for local authorities, guided by the internationally recognised waste hierarchy”, Mr Hogan said, adding that this was “transposed into Irish law earlier this year”.
Dublin City Council said the “restricted terms of reference” of the Hennessy report “did not take into account the wider context which is relevant to understanding the Project and why it is necessary”, such as the requirements of EU waste management directives.
It pointed out that the four Dublin local authorities currently “have to issue a new contract every six months and waste facilities all around the country compete to take Dublin’s waste as there is no more landfill space available in the Dublin region”.
The Irish Waste Management Association has said the so-called ‘put or pay’ contract between Dublin City Council and Covanta to build the 600,000 tonne incinerator posed “a massive and unacceptable ongoing debt risk to taxpayers”.
Director of the association Brendan Keanve said it didn’t matter if waste levels dropped to zero.
“Covanta will continue to make a handsome profit since all taxpayers and ratepayers have signed a blank cheque to underwrite the facility.”
Last month, private waste companies said they would create 235 full-time jobs if the capacity of the planned Poolbeg incinerator was halved.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Dublin on shortlist to be 'World Design Capital'
DUBLIN IS one of just three cities worldwide to be shortlisted for the title of World Design Capital in 2014, it was announced yesterday. The others are Bilbao, in Spain, and Cape Town in South Africa.
Along with Dublin, they were selected for this coveted title by the Montreal-based International Council of Societies of Industrial Design from bids by 56 cities worldwide, including Beijing.
The council said the three finalists had “distinguished themselves not only by demonstrating their individual approaches towards design in their cities, but also managed to convey the impact of these on the various aspects of social, cultural and economic life”.
It said Dublin, Bilbao and Cape Town had also “provided three very unique visions for how design will continue to reinvent their urban landscape [and] demonstrated that they possessed the expertise, infrastructure and financial capabilities”. They had shown that they could “successfully develop and implement an inspiring year-long programme of international design-related events, promoting design as well as their city on an international stage”, according to the council jury.
According to Martin Darbyshire, a member of the organising committee, the three finalists had all submitted “incredibly well thought-out and altogether remarkable bids”.
The Pivot Dublin bid, which aims to “turn design inside out”, is a collaboration between the city’s four local authorities and includes proposals to improve the quality of life in cities, using Dublin as a test bed, under a series of different themes.
Lord Mayor of Dublin Gerry Breen welcomed the opportunities presented by its selection: “The project will be beneficial in economic, environmental, social and political terms. These are difficult times and this bid will challenge us to adapt, recover and grow.”
Dublin city architect Ali Grehan, who played a leading role in developing the bid, said: “We’re all thrilled. It’s been very tough sitting on this news for a week and not being able to tell anyone. So now we can start celebrating, and preparing for the jury’s visit.”
The jury will spend two full days in Dublin towards the end of July, and Ms Grehan said this would involve showing them the city, “putting together an experience faithful to our bid document and hitting as many right notes as possible in a relaxed, informal way”.
The tentative €14 million budget for Dublin’s bid would also be discussed and how this could be “grown” in the way Helsinki had done for its designation as next year’s World Design Capital – from an initial €15 million to €100 million, with private sponsorship. Ms Grehan said she hoped Dublin’s success in making the shortlist would “encourage central government to believe in what it says about the importance of our creative industries” to economic recovery.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny said he was delighted with the news and Dublin “would be an ideal candidate to host the World Design Capital in 2014”.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Along with Dublin, they were selected for this coveted title by the Montreal-based International Council of Societies of Industrial Design from bids by 56 cities worldwide, including Beijing.
The council said the three finalists had “distinguished themselves not only by demonstrating their individual approaches towards design in their cities, but also managed to convey the impact of these on the various aspects of social, cultural and economic life”.
It said Dublin, Bilbao and Cape Town had also “provided three very unique visions for how design will continue to reinvent their urban landscape [and] demonstrated that they possessed the expertise, infrastructure and financial capabilities”. They had shown that they could “successfully develop and implement an inspiring year-long programme of international design-related events, promoting design as well as their city on an international stage”, according to the council jury.
According to Martin Darbyshire, a member of the organising committee, the three finalists had all submitted “incredibly well thought-out and altogether remarkable bids”.
The Pivot Dublin bid, which aims to “turn design inside out”, is a collaboration between the city’s four local authorities and includes proposals to improve the quality of life in cities, using Dublin as a test bed, under a series of different themes.
Lord Mayor of Dublin Gerry Breen welcomed the opportunities presented by its selection: “The project will be beneficial in economic, environmental, social and political terms. These are difficult times and this bid will challenge us to adapt, recover and grow.”
Dublin city architect Ali Grehan, who played a leading role in developing the bid, said: “We’re all thrilled. It’s been very tough sitting on this news for a week and not being able to tell anyone. So now we can start celebrating, and preparing for the jury’s visit.”
The jury will spend two full days in Dublin towards the end of July, and Ms Grehan said this would involve showing them the city, “putting together an experience faithful to our bid document and hitting as many right notes as possible in a relaxed, informal way”.
The tentative €14 million budget for Dublin’s bid would also be discussed and how this could be “grown” in the way Helsinki had done for its designation as next year’s World Design Capital – from an initial €15 million to €100 million, with private sponsorship. Ms Grehan said she hoped Dublin’s success in making the shortlist would “encourage central government to believe in what it says about the importance of our creative industries” to economic recovery.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny said he was delighted with the news and Dublin “would be an ideal candidate to host the World Design Capital in 2014”.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Street life
Frank McDonald writes in the Irish Times:
LOCAL HISTORY: Rathmines is historically where most country people get their first taste of life in the capital, and it is a diverse, intricate model of how a city area should be developed, writes FRANK McDONALD. Four residents give their views.
HERE ISN’T ANYWHERE else in Ireland quite like Rathmines. It has everything a mixed urban area needs – students living in flats, older people, families, immigrants, social housing, private housing, a wide range of shops, cafés and pubs, and great landmarks, such as the dome of the Catholic church and the clocktower of the old Town Hall.
Rathmines has a real main street, with its own shopping centre and cinema complex, a fine post office and public library, schools for all ages and a college of further education. And now it has a wonderful leisure centre – perhaps the last major public project of the boom years – built on the site of a decrepit 1970s swimming pool.
Once synonymous with “flatland”, a transition zone for lowly-paid public servants and third-level students coming to Dublin, Rathmines in more recent years saw many Victorian houses that were carved up for grotty bedsits revert to family use as the area became gentrified – although not as overwhelmingly as Ranelagh.
Together with Ranelagh, Rathgar and Harold’s Cross, it formed the Borough of Rathmines, which remained a unionist-controlled council even after independence; hence Seán O’Casey had the “Lady from Rathmines” with the posh accent getting lost in the city centre during the Easter Rising in The Plough and the Stars.
The independence of Rathmines, granted by an Act of Parliament in 1847, was extinguished in 1930 when it was taken over by Dublin Corporation – along with the adjoining (equally unionist) borough of Pembroke. The rationale was that this would make for a much more efficient city administration, untainted by petty corruption.
Perhaps inevitably, a long period of decline followed absorption into the city. More and more houses were turned into bedsits, single-storey shops were shovelled into the front gardens of grand 19th-century terraced houses on Lower Rathmines Road, and the trams that had fostered the area’s growth were replaced by buses.
The old Town Hall, designed by Sir Thomas Drew and completed in 1899, suffered the indignity of having its galleried main hall cruelly subdivided to provide classrooms for the College of Commerce; the elaborate red sandstone facade and four-faced clock made in Dublin by Chancellor and Sons are resonant relics of its glory days.
The main street became a traffic-choked artery populated by transients. There was no one to speak up for it, apart from the late Deirdre Kelly, who extolled its faded elegance in her book, Four Roads to Dublin (O’Brien); local residents’ associations were too preoccupied with their own areas to care about what was happening to it.
Not until 1998 did concerned citizens who had a “strong sense that the core of Rathmines was in decline on many fronts” get together to do something about it. They set up the Rathmines Initiative and went about publishing their own plan, with help from architect Gerry Cahill, UCD School of Architecture and Dublin City Council.
The idea of rebuilding the swimming pool – a flat-roofed, single-storey box clad in grey concrete brick sitting in a tarmac carpark – was first suggested by their study. The plan put forward by Cahill and his students was that this should be done in the context of creating an elongated plaza in the heart of Rathmines.
Donnelly Turpin Architects, who are based in the area, won a competition for the €36 million project – a joint venture by the city council and John Paul Construction. It was more than just a swimming pool; effectively, the “air rights” above were sold to John Paul so that 46 apartments could be stacked on top of the leisure centre.
“It was a New York thing,” says Charlie Donnelly. And what made it even more so was the architects’ determination that passers-by would be able to see through the generously-scaled reception area (soon to be provided with a café), the 25-metre swimming pool and a heavily-worked gymnasium at the rear, facing a Victorian terrace.
They also envisaged that the café would spill out on to the plaza in front, adding more life to the street. Even at the back there is activity, because the multi-level underground carpark is roofed by an undulating grassed landscape drawn straight from the Tellytubbies; it’s fun to watch toddlers making their own of this unusual free space.
The shell-and-core of a three-storey creche stands on the north side of it, ready and waiting to be fitted out, and the council is “actively working to get tenants for it”, according to Donnelly. More eye-catching are the three-metre projecting balconies (“big enough to have a party”, he says) above the gym and multi-purpose sports hall.
Apartments are arranged in a U-shaped block that faces south, with panoramic views of the mountains from the upper levels. Apart from six randomly located social-housing units, they were all intended to be sold. But the property bubble had already burst by the time construction was completed, so now they’re being rented out.
A saw-toothed roof draws light into the swimming pool, which is so much brighter and more cheerful than its squalid predecessor. It has a a hydraulic floor to vary water depths, a spectator gallery, wet and dry changing rooms and translucent murals by Clare Langan. The only complaint from users is that the temperature is too hot.
Operated by Swan Leisure, an operating company at arm’s length from the city council, it has been a huge success. “They were targeting 1,000 members in the first year, but got 2,000 in six months,” Mark Turpin says. “People have given up membership of Richview because this is like an old-fashioned bath house where you meet friends.”
Of course, the location could barely be equalled, with several schools in the immediate vicinity. St Mary’s College is just down the road and St Louis infants and primary schools are right behind the leisure centre. Its multi-purpose sports hall, above the gymnasium, can also be used for community events and even, perhaps, for music recitals.
Sadly, the recession put paid to plans to extend the plaza southwards towards the former College of Commerce. A pair of houses that look as if they’d be more comfortable elsewhere were to have been demolished to make way for a smaller block of apartments, but estate agent Herman White has decided to wait for signs of an upturn.
Meanwhile, the Rathmines Initiative has been lobbying for valuable playing fields in Cathal Brugha (formerly Portobello) Barracks to be transferred from the Department of Defence to Dublin City Council, so that they can be managed for public use in conjunction with Rathmines Square – as the new leisure centre is officially known.
It also supports proposals that the former Town Hall building would become the council’s south-east area offices, with its main hall restored to its original use as a performance space. Indeed, with a reputed capacity of up to 2,000 after the subdivisions were removed, it could be one of Dublin’s most impressive concert venues.
Whether or not this happens, Rathmines will never die. It thrives on “constant churning”, as Turpin says. And for those who have “done time” there during their student years, however substandard their accommodation was, it will always hold a special place for giving them their first real taste of city life.
Paul Kane
I’m from the flats. I suppose I straddle the old and new Rathmines in that I rent the large basement flat of a friend’s Regency house in a small cul-de-sac. As it is my friend’s house I get to enjoy his beautiful back garden, a major attraction of living here. Our garden is surrounded by other back gardens on all sides. As a result, traffic noise doesn’t impinge; you could be in the country. It’s difficult to believe that you are only three minutes away from a 24-hour Centra, which services the old image of Rathmines.
My gallery is located on Merrion Square, so just a short 12-minute cycle to work each morning along the canal and a 15-minute cycle home every evening – it’s uphill to lofty Rathmines. I can also cycle into town, or to any number of my friends’ houses to socialise. A bit of exercise and a fortune saved on taxis.
Rathmines is seen as the poor relation of neighbouring Ranelagh and Rathgar, but to my taste, having lived for eight years in Hackney in London, I prefer this less rarefied air, with its multi-class/multi-cultural dimension. I always feel a bit more alive in these environs.
We still have some great old shops such as Cleggs, the cobblers on Rathmines Road, and can shop to suit our budget from Aldi and Lidl, through Dunnes and Tesco, to Upper Rathmines Road, which has Lawlor’s butchers and Fothergills.
The area has had a new dimension added by the completion of the new swimming pool and gym – we can all get fit – and the cinema in the Swan Centre, which replaces the now defunct, much loved landmark, the Stella.
Everything I need and 15 minutes from town; I love it.
The Paul Kane Gallery is at 6 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, thepaulkanegallery.com
Michael Kelly
Last weekend saw the inauguration by the Rathmines Initiative of the Rathmines Garden Trail, which involves several residents opening their gardens to visitors. Each garden was visited by around 100 members of the public and donations were collected for the Rathmines Women’s Refuge. The quintessential community spirit in Rathmines is alive and well. I say quintessential because Rathmines has its own version of community. It is not a close-knit, homogenous community. Yet many of its residents enjoy the special type of human encounter which Rathmines offers: random conversations between strangers at charity shops or cafes, human connections crossing traditional lines of age, class, wealth or ethnicity. Walk into Slattery’s pub any night and you will find a considerable mix of people, cheek-by-jowl.
When the Rathmines Initiative invited all candidates in the last general election to address the local community in the former Town Hall building, it was not surprising that almost all candidates turned up and that the hall was packed to capacity. Attendance was also high at the Rathmines Discourses , a series of Monday-night lectures given by eminent scholars on topics of broad national interest, which were followed by discussion and debate. There is a real sense of a community seeking to engage directly in political debate.
I am not suggesting that these experiences are shared by most residents. But at least in Rathmines no individual is out of place. It has many of the attributes of a traditional town mixed with the cosmopolitanism of the city. Because so much is within easy reach, many people walk or cycle when going about their daily business and this inevitably leads to a stronger sense of community.
There are many clubs and societies in Rathmines, including a musical society, a writers’ group, a local history group and many others. There are vibrant, active retirement groups and a Rathmines Older People’s Network. The Rathmines Pembroke Community Partnership offers a range of services to the less-advantaged in the community, and there are a number of active community groups including the Gateway Mental Health Project.
The Rathmines Initiative is a community group which seeks to improve the quality of life of the diverse community by working with statutory, voluntary and commercial bodies and public representatives. It was founded in 1998 in response to a strong sense that the core of Rathmines was in decline on many fronts. The initiative published a plan for the Lower and Upper Rathmines Roads and adjacent side-streets, which was subsequently adopted in the Dublin City Council Development Plan. The idea of redeveloping the swimming pool with a public square at the heart of Rathmines was first described in this plan. As well as commissioning the Dublin Civic Trust to prepare an architectural inventory of Rathmines, the initiative actively monitors planning developments in the area. Traffic, air quality, tree planting and signage have yet to be tackled.
I get the sense our work has only just begun.
Michael Kelly is chairperson of the Rathmines Initiative
Niall MacMonagle
Long before Ireland called itself multi-cultural, Rathmines could. And it still can. Our next-door neighbours are from Australia; I know Brazilians, Algerians; I hear Russian, Polish, Spanish, French, Egyptian . . . every day. For me, this dynamic pocket of Dublin proves it’s a real city.
I’ve lived here since 1986, in a house built in the 1850s, and I love it. Every summer, without fail, loyal, smiling Japanese fans come and look at and photograph our house, where Lafcadio Hearn lived as a little boy. Walter Osborne, Grace Gifford and Conor Cruise O’Brien were born in Rathmines. Con Markiewicz and James Joyce lived in Rathmines. Yeats lectured in the Town Hall. Aine Lawlor gets up here at an unearthly hour, and a poised, unflappable Anne Doyle high-heels her way in the afternoons to the taxi that carries her to the RTÉ newsroom.
It’s still flatland, but since the 1980s more houses have been family-owned. And yet through that boom, it never lost the run of itself. Abercrombie & Fitch have no business here.
Ranelagh and Rathgar are posher, but I prefer grittier, grottier Rathmines. And we have a library, book shops, a leisure centre, a clock tower, a copper dome, a bike shop, Dunnes, Tesco, Lidl and Aldi, but real shops too, such as The Hopsack and Alan Hanna’s; a bakery, cinemas where they screen Live from the Met, bus stops with digitised timetables, a Garda station. From here, we can lift up our eyes to the hills and, best of all, there are five charity shops. Every service you need is within walking distance. The Abbey is 25 minutes away and I can cycle into town in 10.
But better still, we have great neighbours, and out back the ash tree my three-year-old daughter and I planted is now as high as the house. We have a potato patch, a lawn full of weeds, and a single but thriving rhubarb plant. Rus in urbis.
Niall MacMonagle teaches English in Wesley College, Dublin
Sarah Harte
I’ve lived on Leinster Road for 17 years. Given the rise and fall of our country’s fortunes during that time, life in our neighbourhood hasn’t changed all that much. Rathmines was one of the last out-posts of Dublin 6 to hold out against gentrification – no Morton’s deli or farmers’ markets offering organic rocket for us; no, we have Dunnes, Aldi and Lidl. The Blackberry Market flea market is gone, but Slattery’s pub is still there, like some GAA stronghold of a boozer in the heart of a country town. And, as my husband says, there are so many chippers per square mile that if you take a stroll of an evening, instead of the scent of roses, it’s the aroma of the deep fat fryer that hangs heavily on the air.
On a sunny summer’s day, if you walk down Leinster Road you will see old devils – still living in bedsits – sitting on the steps out the front, listening to radios. You might come across the woman who wears a tea cosy on her head; she likes to stop strangers and chat. Then there are the two junkies who seem to be carrying on the most beautiful, if tragic, love affair. Of course, young professional families moved in during the boom, so many of the bedsits were converted back into family homes. Yet the melting pot that is Rathmines has largely held out against the phenomenon of electric gates, and when it disgorges its population, St Louis national school is like the United Nations. In this way Rathmines reminds me of London’s Archway, just as Ranelagh, with its “bon chic bon gens” set – conjures up images of Hampstead.
Rathmines is a love it or hate it kind of place. I have family who think it grim, and who hoped that it was a staging post for us, but I love the hurdy gurdy sense of it, the colourful saris juxtaposed with the shiny O’Neill shorts and grimy, slightly seedy streets. I think it has a weird gentility, too, an acceptance of people in all their forms. As a mother raising a son, I like the idea of him growing up in a democratic sort of place rather than some rich ghetto, even if I have been roundly mocked for this affectation. In short, I love Rathmines.
Sarah Harte’s book, The Better Half, is published by Penguin Ireland.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
LOCAL HISTORY: Rathmines is historically where most country people get their first taste of life in the capital, and it is a diverse, intricate model of how a city area should be developed, writes FRANK McDONALD. Four residents give their views.
HERE ISN’T ANYWHERE else in Ireland quite like Rathmines. It has everything a mixed urban area needs – students living in flats, older people, families, immigrants, social housing, private housing, a wide range of shops, cafés and pubs, and great landmarks, such as the dome of the Catholic church and the clocktower of the old Town Hall.
Rathmines has a real main street, with its own shopping centre and cinema complex, a fine post office and public library, schools for all ages and a college of further education. And now it has a wonderful leisure centre – perhaps the last major public project of the boom years – built on the site of a decrepit 1970s swimming pool.
Once synonymous with “flatland”, a transition zone for lowly-paid public servants and third-level students coming to Dublin, Rathmines in more recent years saw many Victorian houses that were carved up for grotty bedsits revert to family use as the area became gentrified – although not as overwhelmingly as Ranelagh.
Together with Ranelagh, Rathgar and Harold’s Cross, it formed the Borough of Rathmines, which remained a unionist-controlled council even after independence; hence Seán O’Casey had the “Lady from Rathmines” with the posh accent getting lost in the city centre during the Easter Rising in The Plough and the Stars.
The independence of Rathmines, granted by an Act of Parliament in 1847, was extinguished in 1930 when it was taken over by Dublin Corporation – along with the adjoining (equally unionist) borough of Pembroke. The rationale was that this would make for a much more efficient city administration, untainted by petty corruption.
Perhaps inevitably, a long period of decline followed absorption into the city. More and more houses were turned into bedsits, single-storey shops were shovelled into the front gardens of grand 19th-century terraced houses on Lower Rathmines Road, and the trams that had fostered the area’s growth were replaced by buses.
The old Town Hall, designed by Sir Thomas Drew and completed in 1899, suffered the indignity of having its galleried main hall cruelly subdivided to provide classrooms for the College of Commerce; the elaborate red sandstone facade and four-faced clock made in Dublin by Chancellor and Sons are resonant relics of its glory days.
The main street became a traffic-choked artery populated by transients. There was no one to speak up for it, apart from the late Deirdre Kelly, who extolled its faded elegance in her book, Four Roads to Dublin (O’Brien); local residents’ associations were too preoccupied with their own areas to care about what was happening to it.
Not until 1998 did concerned citizens who had a “strong sense that the core of Rathmines was in decline on many fronts” get together to do something about it. They set up the Rathmines Initiative and went about publishing their own plan, with help from architect Gerry Cahill, UCD School of Architecture and Dublin City Council.
The idea of rebuilding the swimming pool – a flat-roofed, single-storey box clad in grey concrete brick sitting in a tarmac carpark – was first suggested by their study. The plan put forward by Cahill and his students was that this should be done in the context of creating an elongated plaza in the heart of Rathmines.
Donnelly Turpin Architects, who are based in the area, won a competition for the €36 million project – a joint venture by the city council and John Paul Construction. It was more than just a swimming pool; effectively, the “air rights” above were sold to John Paul so that 46 apartments could be stacked on top of the leisure centre.
“It was a New York thing,” says Charlie Donnelly. And what made it even more so was the architects’ determination that passers-by would be able to see through the generously-scaled reception area (soon to be provided with a café), the 25-metre swimming pool and a heavily-worked gymnasium at the rear, facing a Victorian terrace.
They also envisaged that the café would spill out on to the plaza in front, adding more life to the street. Even at the back there is activity, because the multi-level underground carpark is roofed by an undulating grassed landscape drawn straight from the Tellytubbies; it’s fun to watch toddlers making their own of this unusual free space.
The shell-and-core of a three-storey creche stands on the north side of it, ready and waiting to be fitted out, and the council is “actively working to get tenants for it”, according to Donnelly. More eye-catching are the three-metre projecting balconies (“big enough to have a party”, he says) above the gym and multi-purpose sports hall.
Apartments are arranged in a U-shaped block that faces south, with panoramic views of the mountains from the upper levels. Apart from six randomly located social-housing units, they were all intended to be sold. But the property bubble had already burst by the time construction was completed, so now they’re being rented out.
A saw-toothed roof draws light into the swimming pool, which is so much brighter and more cheerful than its squalid predecessor. It has a a hydraulic floor to vary water depths, a spectator gallery, wet and dry changing rooms and translucent murals by Clare Langan. The only complaint from users is that the temperature is too hot.
Operated by Swan Leisure, an operating company at arm’s length from the city council, it has been a huge success. “They were targeting 1,000 members in the first year, but got 2,000 in six months,” Mark Turpin says. “People have given up membership of Richview because this is like an old-fashioned bath house where you meet friends.”
Of course, the location could barely be equalled, with several schools in the immediate vicinity. St Mary’s College is just down the road and St Louis infants and primary schools are right behind the leisure centre. Its multi-purpose sports hall, above the gymnasium, can also be used for community events and even, perhaps, for music recitals.
Sadly, the recession put paid to plans to extend the plaza southwards towards the former College of Commerce. A pair of houses that look as if they’d be more comfortable elsewhere were to have been demolished to make way for a smaller block of apartments, but estate agent Herman White has decided to wait for signs of an upturn.
Meanwhile, the Rathmines Initiative has been lobbying for valuable playing fields in Cathal Brugha (formerly Portobello) Barracks to be transferred from the Department of Defence to Dublin City Council, so that they can be managed for public use in conjunction with Rathmines Square – as the new leisure centre is officially known.
It also supports proposals that the former Town Hall building would become the council’s south-east area offices, with its main hall restored to its original use as a performance space. Indeed, with a reputed capacity of up to 2,000 after the subdivisions were removed, it could be one of Dublin’s most impressive concert venues.
Whether or not this happens, Rathmines will never die. It thrives on “constant churning”, as Turpin says. And for those who have “done time” there during their student years, however substandard their accommodation was, it will always hold a special place for giving them their first real taste of city life.
Paul Kane
I’m from the flats. I suppose I straddle the old and new Rathmines in that I rent the large basement flat of a friend’s Regency house in a small cul-de-sac. As it is my friend’s house I get to enjoy his beautiful back garden, a major attraction of living here. Our garden is surrounded by other back gardens on all sides. As a result, traffic noise doesn’t impinge; you could be in the country. It’s difficult to believe that you are only three minutes away from a 24-hour Centra, which services the old image of Rathmines.
My gallery is located on Merrion Square, so just a short 12-minute cycle to work each morning along the canal and a 15-minute cycle home every evening – it’s uphill to lofty Rathmines. I can also cycle into town, or to any number of my friends’ houses to socialise. A bit of exercise and a fortune saved on taxis.
Rathmines is seen as the poor relation of neighbouring Ranelagh and Rathgar, but to my taste, having lived for eight years in Hackney in London, I prefer this less rarefied air, with its multi-class/multi-cultural dimension. I always feel a bit more alive in these environs.
We still have some great old shops such as Cleggs, the cobblers on Rathmines Road, and can shop to suit our budget from Aldi and Lidl, through Dunnes and Tesco, to Upper Rathmines Road, which has Lawlor’s butchers and Fothergills.
The area has had a new dimension added by the completion of the new swimming pool and gym – we can all get fit – and the cinema in the Swan Centre, which replaces the now defunct, much loved landmark, the Stella.
Everything I need and 15 minutes from town; I love it.
The Paul Kane Gallery is at 6 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, thepaulkanegallery.com
Michael Kelly
Last weekend saw the inauguration by the Rathmines Initiative of the Rathmines Garden Trail, which involves several residents opening their gardens to visitors. Each garden was visited by around 100 members of the public and donations were collected for the Rathmines Women’s Refuge. The quintessential community spirit in Rathmines is alive and well. I say quintessential because Rathmines has its own version of community. It is not a close-knit, homogenous community. Yet many of its residents enjoy the special type of human encounter which Rathmines offers: random conversations between strangers at charity shops or cafes, human connections crossing traditional lines of age, class, wealth or ethnicity. Walk into Slattery’s pub any night and you will find a considerable mix of people, cheek-by-jowl.
When the Rathmines Initiative invited all candidates in the last general election to address the local community in the former Town Hall building, it was not surprising that almost all candidates turned up and that the hall was packed to capacity. Attendance was also high at the Rathmines Discourses , a series of Monday-night lectures given by eminent scholars on topics of broad national interest, which were followed by discussion and debate. There is a real sense of a community seeking to engage directly in political debate.
I am not suggesting that these experiences are shared by most residents. But at least in Rathmines no individual is out of place. It has many of the attributes of a traditional town mixed with the cosmopolitanism of the city. Because so much is within easy reach, many people walk or cycle when going about their daily business and this inevitably leads to a stronger sense of community.
There are many clubs and societies in Rathmines, including a musical society, a writers’ group, a local history group and many others. There are vibrant, active retirement groups and a Rathmines Older People’s Network. The Rathmines Pembroke Community Partnership offers a range of services to the less-advantaged in the community, and there are a number of active community groups including the Gateway Mental Health Project.
The Rathmines Initiative is a community group which seeks to improve the quality of life of the diverse community by working with statutory, voluntary and commercial bodies and public representatives. It was founded in 1998 in response to a strong sense that the core of Rathmines was in decline on many fronts. The initiative published a plan for the Lower and Upper Rathmines Roads and adjacent side-streets, which was subsequently adopted in the Dublin City Council Development Plan. The idea of redeveloping the swimming pool with a public square at the heart of Rathmines was first described in this plan. As well as commissioning the Dublin Civic Trust to prepare an architectural inventory of Rathmines, the initiative actively monitors planning developments in the area. Traffic, air quality, tree planting and signage have yet to be tackled.
I get the sense our work has only just begun.
Michael Kelly is chairperson of the Rathmines Initiative
Niall MacMonagle
Long before Ireland called itself multi-cultural, Rathmines could. And it still can. Our next-door neighbours are from Australia; I know Brazilians, Algerians; I hear Russian, Polish, Spanish, French, Egyptian . . . every day. For me, this dynamic pocket of Dublin proves it’s a real city.
I’ve lived here since 1986, in a house built in the 1850s, and I love it. Every summer, without fail, loyal, smiling Japanese fans come and look at and photograph our house, where Lafcadio Hearn lived as a little boy. Walter Osborne, Grace Gifford and Conor Cruise O’Brien were born in Rathmines. Con Markiewicz and James Joyce lived in Rathmines. Yeats lectured in the Town Hall. Aine Lawlor gets up here at an unearthly hour, and a poised, unflappable Anne Doyle high-heels her way in the afternoons to the taxi that carries her to the RTÉ newsroom.
It’s still flatland, but since the 1980s more houses have been family-owned. And yet through that boom, it never lost the run of itself. Abercrombie & Fitch have no business here.
Ranelagh and Rathgar are posher, but I prefer grittier, grottier Rathmines. And we have a library, book shops, a leisure centre, a clock tower, a copper dome, a bike shop, Dunnes, Tesco, Lidl and Aldi, but real shops too, such as The Hopsack and Alan Hanna’s; a bakery, cinemas where they screen Live from the Met, bus stops with digitised timetables, a Garda station. From here, we can lift up our eyes to the hills and, best of all, there are five charity shops. Every service you need is within walking distance. The Abbey is 25 minutes away and I can cycle into town in 10.
But better still, we have great neighbours, and out back the ash tree my three-year-old daughter and I planted is now as high as the house. We have a potato patch, a lawn full of weeds, and a single but thriving rhubarb plant. Rus in urbis.
Niall MacMonagle teaches English in Wesley College, Dublin
Sarah Harte
I’ve lived on Leinster Road for 17 years. Given the rise and fall of our country’s fortunes during that time, life in our neighbourhood hasn’t changed all that much. Rathmines was one of the last out-posts of Dublin 6 to hold out against gentrification – no Morton’s deli or farmers’ markets offering organic rocket for us; no, we have Dunnes, Aldi and Lidl. The Blackberry Market flea market is gone, but Slattery’s pub is still there, like some GAA stronghold of a boozer in the heart of a country town. And, as my husband says, there are so many chippers per square mile that if you take a stroll of an evening, instead of the scent of roses, it’s the aroma of the deep fat fryer that hangs heavily on the air.
On a sunny summer’s day, if you walk down Leinster Road you will see old devils – still living in bedsits – sitting on the steps out the front, listening to radios. You might come across the woman who wears a tea cosy on her head; she likes to stop strangers and chat. Then there are the two junkies who seem to be carrying on the most beautiful, if tragic, love affair. Of course, young professional families moved in during the boom, so many of the bedsits were converted back into family homes. Yet the melting pot that is Rathmines has largely held out against the phenomenon of electric gates, and when it disgorges its population, St Louis national school is like the United Nations. In this way Rathmines reminds me of London’s Archway, just as Ranelagh, with its “bon chic bon gens” set – conjures up images of Hampstead.
Rathmines is a love it or hate it kind of place. I have family who think it grim, and who hoped that it was a staging post for us, but I love the hurdy gurdy sense of it, the colourful saris juxtaposed with the shiny O’Neill shorts and grimy, slightly seedy streets. I think it has a weird gentility, too, an acceptance of people in all their forms. As a mother raising a son, I like the idea of him growing up in a democratic sort of place rather than some rich ghetto, even if I have been roundly mocked for this affectation. In short, I love Rathmines.
Sarah Harte’s book, The Better Half, is published by Penguin Ireland.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Street life
Frank McDonald writes in the Irish Times:
LOCAL HISTORY: Rathmines is historically where most country people get their first taste of life in the capital, and it is a diverse, intricate model of how a city area should be developed, writes FRANK McDONALD. Four residents give their views.
HERE ISN’T ANYWHERE else in Ireland quite like Rathmines. It has everything a mixed urban area needs – students living in flats, older people, families, immigrants, social housing, private housing, a wide range of shops, cafés and pubs, and great landmarks, such as the dome of the Catholic church and the clocktower of the old Town Hall.
Rathmines has a real main street, with its own shopping centre and cinema complex, a fine post office and public library, schools for all ages and a college of further education. And now it has a wonderful leisure centre – perhaps the last major public project of the boom years – built on the site of a decrepit 1970s swimming pool.
Once synonymous with “flatland”, a transition zone for lowly-paid public servants and third-level students coming to Dublin, Rathmines in more recent years saw many Victorian houses that were carved up for grotty bedsits revert to family use as the area became gentrified – although not as overwhelmingly as Ranelagh.
Together with Ranelagh, Rathgar and Harold’s Cross, it formed the Borough of Rathmines, which remained a unionist-controlled council even after independence; hence Seán O’Casey had the “Lady from Rathmines” with the posh accent getting lost in the city centre during the Easter Rising in The Plough and the Stars.
The independence of Rathmines, granted by an Act of Parliament in 1847, was extinguished in 1930 when it was taken over by Dublin Corporation – along with the adjoining (equally unionist) borough of Pembroke. The rationale was that this would make for a much more efficient city administration, untainted by petty corruption.
Perhaps inevitably, a long period of decline followed absorption into the city. More and more houses were turned into bedsits, single-storey shops were shovelled into the front gardens of grand 19th-century terraced houses on Lower Rathmines Road, and the trams that had fostered the area’s growth were replaced by buses.
The old Town Hall, designed by Sir Thomas Drew and completed in 1899, suffered the indignity of having its galleried main hall cruelly subdivided to provide classrooms for the College of Commerce; the elaborate red sandstone facade and four-faced clock made in Dublin by Chancellor and Sons are resonant relics of its glory days.
The main street became a traffic-choked artery populated by transients. There was no one to speak up for it, apart from the late Deirdre Kelly, who extolled its faded elegance in her book, Four Roads to Dublin (O’Brien); local residents’ associations were too preoccupied with their own areas to care about what was happening to it.
Not until 1998 did concerned citizens who had a “strong sense that the core of Rathmines was in decline on many fronts” get together to do something about it. They set up the Rathmines Initiative and went about publishing their own plan, with help from architect Gerry Cahill, UCD School of Architecture and Dublin City Council.
The idea of rebuilding the swimming pool – a flat-roofed, single-storey box clad in grey concrete brick sitting in a tarmac carpark – was first suggested by their study. The plan put forward by Cahill and his students was that this should be done in the context of creating an elongated plaza in the heart of Rathmines.
Donnelly Turpin Architects, who are based in the area, won a competition for the €36 million project – a joint venture by the city council and John Paul Construction. It was more than just a swimming pool; effectively, the “air rights” above were sold to John Paul so that 46 apartments could be stacked on top of the leisure centre.
“It was a New York thing,” says Charlie Donnelly. And what made it even more so was the architects’ determination that passers-by would be able to see through the generously-scaled reception area (soon to be provided with a café), the 25-metre swimming pool and a heavily-worked gymnasium at the rear, facing a Victorian terrace.
They also envisaged that the café would spill out on to the plaza in front, adding more life to the street. Even at the back there is activity, because the multi-level underground carpark is roofed by an undulating grassed landscape drawn straight from the Tellytubbies; it’s fun to watch toddlers making their own of this unusual free space.
The shell-and-core of a three-storey creche stands on the north side of it, ready and waiting to be fitted out, and the council is “actively working to get tenants for it”, according to Donnelly. More eye-catching are the three-metre projecting balconies (“big enough to have a party”, he says) above the gym and multi-purpose sports hall.
Apartments are arranged in a U-shaped block that faces south, with panoramic views of the mountains from the upper levels. Apart from six randomly located social-housing units, they were all intended to be sold. But the property bubble had already burst by the time construction was completed, so now they’re being rented out.
A saw-toothed roof draws light into the swimming pool, which is so much brighter and more cheerful than its squalid predecessor. It has a a hydraulic floor to vary water depths, a spectator gallery, wet and dry changing rooms and translucent murals by Clare Langan. The only complaint from users is that the temperature is too hot.
Operated by Swan Leisure, an operating company at arm’s length from the city council, it has been a huge success. “They were targeting 1,000 members in the first year, but got 2,000 in six months,” Mark Turpin says. “People have given up membership of Richview because this is like an old-fashioned bath house where you meet friends.”
Of course, the location could barely be equalled, with several schools in the immediate vicinity. St Mary’s College is just down the road and St Louis infants and primary schools are right behind the leisure centre. Its multi-purpose sports hall, above the gymnasium, can also be used for community events and even, perhaps, for music recitals.
Sadly, the recession put paid to plans to extend the plaza southwards towards the former College of Commerce. A pair of houses that look as if they’d be more comfortable elsewhere were to have been demolished to make way for a smaller block of apartments, but estate agent Herman White has decided to wait for signs of an upturn.
Meanwhile, the Rathmines Initiative has been lobbying for valuable playing fields in Cathal Brugha (formerly Portobello) Barracks to be transferred from the Department of Defence to Dublin City Council, so that they can be managed for public use in conjunction with Rathmines Square – as the new leisure centre is officially known.
It also supports proposals that the former Town Hall building would become the council’s south-east area offices, with its main hall restored to its original use as a performance space. Indeed, with a reputed capacity of up to 2,000 after the subdivisions were removed, it could be one of Dublin’s most impressive concert venues.
Whether or not this happens, Rathmines will never die. It thrives on “constant churning”, as Turpin says. And for those who have “done time” there during their student years, however substandard their accommodation was, it will always hold a special place for giving them their first real taste of city life.
Paul Kane
I’m from the flats. I suppose I straddle the old and new Rathmines in that I rent the large basement flat of a friend’s Regency house in a small cul-de-sac. As it is my friend’s house I get to enjoy his beautiful back garden, a major attraction of living here. Our garden is surrounded by other back gardens on all sides. As a result, traffic noise doesn’t impinge; you could be in the country. It’s difficult to believe that you are only three minutes away from a 24-hour Centra, which services the old image of Rathmines.
My gallery is located on Merrion Square, so just a short 12-minute cycle to work each morning along the canal and a 15-minute cycle home every evening – it’s uphill to lofty Rathmines. I can also cycle into town, or to any number of my friends’ houses to socialise. A bit of exercise and a fortune saved on taxis.
Rathmines is seen as the poor relation of neighbouring Ranelagh and Rathgar, but to my taste, having lived for eight years in Hackney in London, I prefer this less rarefied air, with its multi-class/multi-cultural dimension. I always feel a bit more alive in these environs.
We still have some great old shops such as Cleggs, the cobblers on Rathmines Road, and can shop to suit our budget from Aldi and Lidl, through Dunnes and Tesco, to Upper Rathmines Road, which has Lawlor’s butchers and Fothergills.
The area has had a new dimension added by the completion of the new swimming pool and gym – we can all get fit – and the cinema in the Swan Centre, which replaces the now defunct, much loved landmark, the Stella.
Everything I need and 15 minutes from town; I love it.
The Paul Kane Gallery is at 6 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, thepaulkanegallery.com
Michael Kelly
Last weekend saw the inauguration by the Rathmines Initiative of the Rathmines Garden Trail, which involves several residents opening their gardens to visitors. Each garden was visited by around 100 members of the public and donations were collected for the Rathmines Women’s Refuge. The quintessential community spirit in Rathmines is alive and well. I say quintessential because Rathmines has its own version of community. It is not a close-knit, homogenous community. Yet many of its residents enjoy the special type of human encounter which Rathmines offers: random conversations between strangers at charity shops or cafes, human connections crossing traditional lines of age, class, wealth or ethnicity. Walk into Slattery’s pub any night and you will find a considerable mix of people, cheek-by-jowl.
When the Rathmines Initiative invited all candidates in the last general election to address the local community in the former Town Hall building, it was not surprising that almost all candidates turned up and that the hall was packed to capacity. Attendance was also high at the Rathmines Discourses , a series of Monday-night lectures given by eminent scholars on topics of broad national interest, which were followed by discussion and debate. There is a real sense of a community seeking to engage directly in political debate.
I am not suggesting that these experiences are shared by most residents. But at least in Rathmines no individual is out of place. It has many of the attributes of a traditional town mixed with the cosmopolitanism of the city. Because so much is within easy reach, many people walk or cycle when going about their daily business and this inevitably leads to a stronger sense of community.
There are many clubs and societies in Rathmines, including a musical society, a writers’ group, a local history group and many others. There are vibrant, active retirement groups and a Rathmines Older People’s Network. The Rathmines Pembroke Community Partnership offers a range of services to the less-advantaged in the community, and there are a number of active community groups including the Gateway Mental Health Project.
The Rathmines Initiative is a community group which seeks to improve the quality of life of the diverse community by working with statutory, voluntary and commercial bodies and public representatives. It was founded in 1998 in response to a strong sense that the core of Rathmines was in decline on many fronts. The initiative published a plan for the Lower and Upper Rathmines Roads and adjacent side-streets, which was subsequently adopted in the Dublin City Council Development Plan. The idea of redeveloping the swimming pool with a public square at the heart of Rathmines was first described in this plan. As well as commissioning the Dublin Civic Trust to prepare an architectural inventory of Rathmines, the initiative actively monitors planning developments in the area. Traffic, air quality, tree planting and signage have yet to be tackled.
I get the sense our work has only just begun.
Michael Kelly is chairperson of the Rathmines Initiative
Niall MacMonagle
Long before Ireland called itself multi-cultural, Rathmines could. And it still can. Our next-door neighbours are from Australia; I know Brazilians, Algerians; I hear Russian, Polish, Spanish, French, Egyptian . . . every day. For me, this dynamic pocket of Dublin proves it’s a real city.
I’ve lived here since 1986, in a house built in the 1850s, and I love it. Every summer, without fail, loyal, smiling Japanese fans come and look at and photograph our house, where Lafcadio Hearn lived as a little boy. Walter Osborne, Grace Gifford and Conor Cruise O’Brien were born in Rathmines. Con Markiewicz and James Joyce lived in Rathmines. Yeats lectured in the Town Hall. Aine Lawlor gets up here at an unearthly hour, and a poised, unflappable Anne Doyle high-heels her way in the afternoons to the taxi that carries her to the RTÉ newsroom.
It’s still flatland, but since the 1980s more houses have been family-owned. And yet through that boom, it never lost the run of itself. Abercrombie & Fitch have no business here.
Ranelagh and Rathgar are posher, but I prefer grittier, grottier Rathmines. And we have a library, book shops, a leisure centre, a clock tower, a copper dome, a bike shop, Dunnes, Tesco, Lidl and Aldi, but real shops too, such as The Hopsack and Alan Hanna’s; a bakery, cinemas where they screen Live from the Met, bus stops with digitised timetables, a Garda station. From here, we can lift up our eyes to the hills and, best of all, there are five charity shops. Every service you need is within walking distance. The Abbey is 25 minutes away and I can cycle into town in 10.
But better still, we have great neighbours, and out back the ash tree my three-year-old daughter and I planted is now as high as the house. We have a potato patch, a lawn full of weeds, and a single but thriving rhubarb plant. Rus in urbis.
Niall MacMonagle teaches English in Wesley College, Dublin
Sarah Harte
I’ve lived on Leinster Road for 17 years. Given the rise and fall of our country’s fortunes during that time, life in our neighbourhood hasn’t changed all that much. Rathmines was one of the last out-posts of Dublin 6 to hold out against gentrification – no Morton’s deli or farmers’ markets offering organic rocket for us; no, we have Dunnes, Aldi and Lidl. The Blackberry Market flea market is gone, but Slattery’s pub is still there, like some GAA stronghold of a boozer in the heart of a country town. And, as my husband says, there are so many chippers per square mile that if you take a stroll of an evening, instead of the scent of roses, it’s the aroma of the deep fat fryer that hangs heavily on the air.
On a sunny summer’s day, if you walk down Leinster Road you will see old devils – still living in bedsits – sitting on the steps out the front, listening to radios. You might come across the woman who wears a tea cosy on her head; she likes to stop strangers and chat. Then there are the two junkies who seem to be carrying on the most beautiful, if tragic, love affair. Of course, young professional families moved in during the boom, so many of the bedsits were converted back into family homes. Yet the melting pot that is Rathmines has largely held out against the phenomenon of electric gates, and when it disgorges its population, St Louis national school is like the United Nations. In this way Rathmines reminds me of London’s Archway, just as Ranelagh, with its “bon chic bon gens” set – conjures up images of Hampstead.
Rathmines is a love it or hate it kind of place. I have family who think it grim, and who hoped that it was a staging post for us, but I love the hurdy gurdy sense of it, the colourful saris juxtaposed with the shiny O’Neill shorts and grimy, slightly seedy streets. I think it has a weird gentility, too, an acceptance of people in all their forms. As a mother raising a son, I like the idea of him growing up in a democratic sort of place rather than some rich ghetto, even if I have been roundly mocked for this affectation. In short, I love Rathmines.
Sarah Harte’s book, The Better Half, is published by Penguin Ireland.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
LOCAL HISTORY: Rathmines is historically where most country people get their first taste of life in the capital, and it is a diverse, intricate model of how a city area should be developed, writes FRANK McDONALD. Four residents give their views.
HERE ISN’T ANYWHERE else in Ireland quite like Rathmines. It has everything a mixed urban area needs – students living in flats, older people, families, immigrants, social housing, private housing, a wide range of shops, cafés and pubs, and great landmarks, such as the dome of the Catholic church and the clocktower of the old Town Hall.
Rathmines has a real main street, with its own shopping centre and cinema complex, a fine post office and public library, schools for all ages and a college of further education. And now it has a wonderful leisure centre – perhaps the last major public project of the boom years – built on the site of a decrepit 1970s swimming pool.
Once synonymous with “flatland”, a transition zone for lowly-paid public servants and third-level students coming to Dublin, Rathmines in more recent years saw many Victorian houses that were carved up for grotty bedsits revert to family use as the area became gentrified – although not as overwhelmingly as Ranelagh.
Together with Ranelagh, Rathgar and Harold’s Cross, it formed the Borough of Rathmines, which remained a unionist-controlled council even after independence; hence Seán O’Casey had the “Lady from Rathmines” with the posh accent getting lost in the city centre during the Easter Rising in The Plough and the Stars.
The independence of Rathmines, granted by an Act of Parliament in 1847, was extinguished in 1930 when it was taken over by Dublin Corporation – along with the adjoining (equally unionist) borough of Pembroke. The rationale was that this would make for a much more efficient city administration, untainted by petty corruption.
Perhaps inevitably, a long period of decline followed absorption into the city. More and more houses were turned into bedsits, single-storey shops were shovelled into the front gardens of grand 19th-century terraced houses on Lower Rathmines Road, and the trams that had fostered the area’s growth were replaced by buses.
The old Town Hall, designed by Sir Thomas Drew and completed in 1899, suffered the indignity of having its galleried main hall cruelly subdivided to provide classrooms for the College of Commerce; the elaborate red sandstone facade and four-faced clock made in Dublin by Chancellor and Sons are resonant relics of its glory days.
The main street became a traffic-choked artery populated by transients. There was no one to speak up for it, apart from the late Deirdre Kelly, who extolled its faded elegance in her book, Four Roads to Dublin (O’Brien); local residents’ associations were too preoccupied with their own areas to care about what was happening to it.
Not until 1998 did concerned citizens who had a “strong sense that the core of Rathmines was in decline on many fronts” get together to do something about it. They set up the Rathmines Initiative and went about publishing their own plan, with help from architect Gerry Cahill, UCD School of Architecture and Dublin City Council.
The idea of rebuilding the swimming pool – a flat-roofed, single-storey box clad in grey concrete brick sitting in a tarmac carpark – was first suggested by their study. The plan put forward by Cahill and his students was that this should be done in the context of creating an elongated plaza in the heart of Rathmines.
Donnelly Turpin Architects, who are based in the area, won a competition for the €36 million project – a joint venture by the city council and John Paul Construction. It was more than just a swimming pool; effectively, the “air rights” above were sold to John Paul so that 46 apartments could be stacked on top of the leisure centre.
“It was a New York thing,” says Charlie Donnelly. And what made it even more so was the architects’ determination that passers-by would be able to see through the generously-scaled reception area (soon to be provided with a café), the 25-metre swimming pool and a heavily-worked gymnasium at the rear, facing a Victorian terrace.
They also envisaged that the café would spill out on to the plaza in front, adding more life to the street. Even at the back there is activity, because the multi-level underground carpark is roofed by an undulating grassed landscape drawn straight from the Tellytubbies; it’s fun to watch toddlers making their own of this unusual free space.
The shell-and-core of a three-storey creche stands on the north side of it, ready and waiting to be fitted out, and the council is “actively working to get tenants for it”, according to Donnelly. More eye-catching are the three-metre projecting balconies (“big enough to have a party”, he says) above the gym and multi-purpose sports hall.
Apartments are arranged in a U-shaped block that faces south, with panoramic views of the mountains from the upper levels. Apart from six randomly located social-housing units, they were all intended to be sold. But the property bubble had already burst by the time construction was completed, so now they’re being rented out.
A saw-toothed roof draws light into the swimming pool, which is so much brighter and more cheerful than its squalid predecessor. It has a a hydraulic floor to vary water depths, a spectator gallery, wet and dry changing rooms and translucent murals by Clare Langan. The only complaint from users is that the temperature is too hot.
Operated by Swan Leisure, an operating company at arm’s length from the city council, it has been a huge success. “They were targeting 1,000 members in the first year, but got 2,000 in six months,” Mark Turpin says. “People have given up membership of Richview because this is like an old-fashioned bath house where you meet friends.”
Of course, the location could barely be equalled, with several schools in the immediate vicinity. St Mary’s College is just down the road and St Louis infants and primary schools are right behind the leisure centre. Its multi-purpose sports hall, above the gymnasium, can also be used for community events and even, perhaps, for music recitals.
Sadly, the recession put paid to plans to extend the plaza southwards towards the former College of Commerce. A pair of houses that look as if they’d be more comfortable elsewhere were to have been demolished to make way for a smaller block of apartments, but estate agent Herman White has decided to wait for signs of an upturn.
Meanwhile, the Rathmines Initiative has been lobbying for valuable playing fields in Cathal Brugha (formerly Portobello) Barracks to be transferred from the Department of Defence to Dublin City Council, so that they can be managed for public use in conjunction with Rathmines Square – as the new leisure centre is officially known.
It also supports proposals that the former Town Hall building would become the council’s south-east area offices, with its main hall restored to its original use as a performance space. Indeed, with a reputed capacity of up to 2,000 after the subdivisions were removed, it could be one of Dublin’s most impressive concert venues.
Whether or not this happens, Rathmines will never die. It thrives on “constant churning”, as Turpin says. And for those who have “done time” there during their student years, however substandard their accommodation was, it will always hold a special place for giving them their first real taste of city life.
Paul Kane
I’m from the flats. I suppose I straddle the old and new Rathmines in that I rent the large basement flat of a friend’s Regency house in a small cul-de-sac. As it is my friend’s house I get to enjoy his beautiful back garden, a major attraction of living here. Our garden is surrounded by other back gardens on all sides. As a result, traffic noise doesn’t impinge; you could be in the country. It’s difficult to believe that you are only three minutes away from a 24-hour Centra, which services the old image of Rathmines.
My gallery is located on Merrion Square, so just a short 12-minute cycle to work each morning along the canal and a 15-minute cycle home every evening – it’s uphill to lofty Rathmines. I can also cycle into town, or to any number of my friends’ houses to socialise. A bit of exercise and a fortune saved on taxis.
Rathmines is seen as the poor relation of neighbouring Ranelagh and Rathgar, but to my taste, having lived for eight years in Hackney in London, I prefer this less rarefied air, with its multi-class/multi-cultural dimension. I always feel a bit more alive in these environs.
We still have some great old shops such as Cleggs, the cobblers on Rathmines Road, and can shop to suit our budget from Aldi and Lidl, through Dunnes and Tesco, to Upper Rathmines Road, which has Lawlor’s butchers and Fothergills.
The area has had a new dimension added by the completion of the new swimming pool and gym – we can all get fit – and the cinema in the Swan Centre, which replaces the now defunct, much loved landmark, the Stella.
Everything I need and 15 minutes from town; I love it.
The Paul Kane Gallery is at 6 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, thepaulkanegallery.com
Michael Kelly
Last weekend saw the inauguration by the Rathmines Initiative of the Rathmines Garden Trail, which involves several residents opening their gardens to visitors. Each garden was visited by around 100 members of the public and donations were collected for the Rathmines Women’s Refuge. The quintessential community spirit in Rathmines is alive and well. I say quintessential because Rathmines has its own version of community. It is not a close-knit, homogenous community. Yet many of its residents enjoy the special type of human encounter which Rathmines offers: random conversations between strangers at charity shops or cafes, human connections crossing traditional lines of age, class, wealth or ethnicity. Walk into Slattery’s pub any night and you will find a considerable mix of people, cheek-by-jowl.
When the Rathmines Initiative invited all candidates in the last general election to address the local community in the former Town Hall building, it was not surprising that almost all candidates turned up and that the hall was packed to capacity. Attendance was also high at the Rathmines Discourses , a series of Monday-night lectures given by eminent scholars on topics of broad national interest, which were followed by discussion and debate. There is a real sense of a community seeking to engage directly in political debate.
I am not suggesting that these experiences are shared by most residents. But at least in Rathmines no individual is out of place. It has many of the attributes of a traditional town mixed with the cosmopolitanism of the city. Because so much is within easy reach, many people walk or cycle when going about their daily business and this inevitably leads to a stronger sense of community.
There are many clubs and societies in Rathmines, including a musical society, a writers’ group, a local history group and many others. There are vibrant, active retirement groups and a Rathmines Older People’s Network. The Rathmines Pembroke Community Partnership offers a range of services to the less-advantaged in the community, and there are a number of active community groups including the Gateway Mental Health Project.
The Rathmines Initiative is a community group which seeks to improve the quality of life of the diverse community by working with statutory, voluntary and commercial bodies and public representatives. It was founded in 1998 in response to a strong sense that the core of Rathmines was in decline on many fronts. The initiative published a plan for the Lower and Upper Rathmines Roads and adjacent side-streets, which was subsequently adopted in the Dublin City Council Development Plan. The idea of redeveloping the swimming pool with a public square at the heart of Rathmines was first described in this plan. As well as commissioning the Dublin Civic Trust to prepare an architectural inventory of Rathmines, the initiative actively monitors planning developments in the area. Traffic, air quality, tree planting and signage have yet to be tackled.
I get the sense our work has only just begun.
Michael Kelly is chairperson of the Rathmines Initiative
Niall MacMonagle
Long before Ireland called itself multi-cultural, Rathmines could. And it still can. Our next-door neighbours are from Australia; I know Brazilians, Algerians; I hear Russian, Polish, Spanish, French, Egyptian . . . every day. For me, this dynamic pocket of Dublin proves it’s a real city.
I’ve lived here since 1986, in a house built in the 1850s, and I love it. Every summer, without fail, loyal, smiling Japanese fans come and look at and photograph our house, where Lafcadio Hearn lived as a little boy. Walter Osborne, Grace Gifford and Conor Cruise O’Brien were born in Rathmines. Con Markiewicz and James Joyce lived in Rathmines. Yeats lectured in the Town Hall. Aine Lawlor gets up here at an unearthly hour, and a poised, unflappable Anne Doyle high-heels her way in the afternoons to the taxi that carries her to the RTÉ newsroom.
It’s still flatland, but since the 1980s more houses have been family-owned. And yet through that boom, it never lost the run of itself. Abercrombie & Fitch have no business here.
Ranelagh and Rathgar are posher, but I prefer grittier, grottier Rathmines. And we have a library, book shops, a leisure centre, a clock tower, a copper dome, a bike shop, Dunnes, Tesco, Lidl and Aldi, but real shops too, such as The Hopsack and Alan Hanna’s; a bakery, cinemas where they screen Live from the Met, bus stops with digitised timetables, a Garda station. From here, we can lift up our eyes to the hills and, best of all, there are five charity shops. Every service you need is within walking distance. The Abbey is 25 minutes away and I can cycle into town in 10.
But better still, we have great neighbours, and out back the ash tree my three-year-old daughter and I planted is now as high as the house. We have a potato patch, a lawn full of weeds, and a single but thriving rhubarb plant. Rus in urbis.
Niall MacMonagle teaches English in Wesley College, Dublin
Sarah Harte
I’ve lived on Leinster Road for 17 years. Given the rise and fall of our country’s fortunes during that time, life in our neighbourhood hasn’t changed all that much. Rathmines was one of the last out-posts of Dublin 6 to hold out against gentrification – no Morton’s deli or farmers’ markets offering organic rocket for us; no, we have Dunnes, Aldi and Lidl. The Blackberry Market flea market is gone, but Slattery’s pub is still there, like some GAA stronghold of a boozer in the heart of a country town. And, as my husband says, there are so many chippers per square mile that if you take a stroll of an evening, instead of the scent of roses, it’s the aroma of the deep fat fryer that hangs heavily on the air.
On a sunny summer’s day, if you walk down Leinster Road you will see old devils – still living in bedsits – sitting on the steps out the front, listening to radios. You might come across the woman who wears a tea cosy on her head; she likes to stop strangers and chat. Then there are the two junkies who seem to be carrying on the most beautiful, if tragic, love affair. Of course, young professional families moved in during the boom, so many of the bedsits were converted back into family homes. Yet the melting pot that is Rathmines has largely held out against the phenomenon of electric gates, and when it disgorges its population, St Louis national school is like the United Nations. In this way Rathmines reminds me of London’s Archway, just as Ranelagh, with its “bon chic bon gens” set – conjures up images of Hampstead.
Rathmines is a love it or hate it kind of place. I have family who think it grim, and who hoped that it was a staging post for us, but I love the hurdy gurdy sense of it, the colourful saris juxtaposed with the shiny O’Neill shorts and grimy, slightly seedy streets. I think it has a weird gentility, too, an acceptance of people in all their forms. As a mother raising a son, I like the idea of him growing up in a democratic sort of place rather than some rich ghetto, even if I have been roundly mocked for this affectation. In short, I love Rathmines.
Sarah Harte’s book, The Better Half, is published by Penguin Ireland.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Why being on trend is a fashion faux pas for Kildare Village
Kildare Village has been told not to sell new-season clothes at reduced prices. But are discount outlet centres necessarily a threat to high-street retailers?
WHEN YOU CONSIDER that Kildare Village operates in an industry where being on trend is de rigueur, it’s ironic that the outlet centre has been prohibited from being fashion-forward. In a recent decision, An Bord Pleanála determined that the sale of hot-off-the-catwalk clothes is in breach of the centre’s planning permission.
When The Irish Times dropped in to the bargain-hunters’ Mecca earlier this week for a spot of investigative window-shopping, in-season styles were conspicuous by their absence. Not a hint of colour-blocking or a stitch of tangerine in sight. The Karen Millen store had none of the new-season dresses on sale at the brand’s outlet in nearby Whitewater Shopping Centre, in Newbridge. Though its rails contained a number of items currently available through the retailer’s website, the discount was the same in most cases, with several dresses cut from €199 to €95.
Reiss had a selection of coats that we spotted in its Grafton Street store last winter, while the shorts, skirts and tops on offer at Jack Wills, the UK’s answer to Abercrombie and Fitch, were leftovers from last summer and autumn. Pretty much the only bikini in Jack Wills was a pink-and-navy number that this writer bought last summer, which is now discounted by a third. All of the sales assistants we spoke to were quick to stress that their stock is at least a season behind.
So why did local retailer David Jones complain to the planning authorities about the sale of new-season stock by the outlet’s tenants? Was it much ado about nothing or a symptom of a deeper disagreement between small town-centre retailers and multinational out-of-town discount outlets?
In June last year Jones, who operates the Tommy Hilfiger and Best Menswear stores in Whitewater, raised the issue with Kildare County Council. The council requested more information to back up Jones’s claim that Kildare Village was competing with high-street outlets by selling new-season stock and that, in doing so, it was in breach of its planning permission. He submitted a list of items that he said were on sale in Karen Millen outlets (a brand selected “purely as an example”, he claimed) in both Kildare Village and Whitewater on October 4th, 2010. The items, which he described as “mid-season”, included a black jersey dress, lace black “boot shoes” and a black dress with studded sleeves.
Furthermore, claims an industry expert, one retailer in Kildare Village had gone as far as having the same window display as its high-street counterparts. (Different outlets for the same brands are sometimes owned by different franchises, so they can be competitors.)
“It’s fundamentally contrary to proper planning ,” the industry expert says. “It’s not sustainable for any town to have to compete with that.”
There is also an anecdote that because Clarks, the shoe shop, does not offer a measuring service in its Kildare Village outlet, parents were getting their children’s feet measured at Clarks in Whitewater, then driving 10 minutes up the road to buy similar shoes at Kildare Village. Also, the Pepe store in Whitewater has closed down while the outlet in Kildare Village is still trading, although no doubt many factors contributed to this closure.
Value Retail, which operates Kildare Village and nine outlet shopping villages in Europe, is said to have written to a number of its Kildare Village tenants last year, telling them they could not sell current-season stock.
A spokeswoman for Kildare Village, which has about 60 shops, told us that it “would take seriously any suggestion that there have been any breaches by brands of their contracts, and would take appropriate action”. Unlike factory outlets in the US, where retailers sometimes sell cheaper lines manufactured for those shops, the business model of Value Retail is based on enabling brands to sell end-of-season or surplus stock at discounts of at least 33 per cent. Kildare Village says its contracts oblige the brands operating there to sell only out-of-season merchandise, and that it checks stock regularly.
In any event, Kildare County Council decided that the sale of new products and in-season merchandise was allowed under the terms of Kildare Village’s planning permission. The council “felt then there was no issue” and was “satisfied everything was in order”, according to a spokeswoman.
In December Jones appealed this decision to An Bord Pleanála. An inspector’s report provided by the board reveals arguments, counterarguments and general hair-splitting by agents representing both Jones and the owners of Kildare Village. Ultimately, the planning authority found that the sale of new products or in-season merchandise in competition with products being sold on the high street at the same time would constitute a “material change of use” and would represent a breach of planning permission.
Despite repeated attempts to discuss the case with him and to hear his views on Kildare Village and discount outlets, Jones refused to comment for this article. Kildare County Council, which has responsibility for enforcing planning rules, told us it is considering An Bord Pleanála’s decision. A spokeswoman for the council says its planners are “not experts in fashion” and may need external assistance.
In any case, there may not now be a need for enforcement, given that the brands operating in Kildare Village seem to be toeing the line. But what about the broader question of the impact of discount outlet centres on nearby towns? Has Kildare Village helped the local economy or is it taking business from the area’s retailers? According to Breda McHale, of Newbridge Chamber of Commerce, Kildare Village has had a positive effect for local retailers.
“A rising tide raises all boats,” she says, adding that there is a good “crossover” of shoppers between the outlet centre and Newbridge. Shoppers often take in the two destinations in one day, McHale says.
A retail expert says Kildare Village is a “great asset” for the area, just as long as it’s not competing directly with town-centre stores.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
WHEN YOU CONSIDER that Kildare Village operates in an industry where being on trend is de rigueur, it’s ironic that the outlet centre has been prohibited from being fashion-forward. In a recent decision, An Bord Pleanála determined that the sale of hot-off-the-catwalk clothes is in breach of the centre’s planning permission.
When The Irish Times dropped in to the bargain-hunters’ Mecca earlier this week for a spot of investigative window-shopping, in-season styles were conspicuous by their absence. Not a hint of colour-blocking or a stitch of tangerine in sight. The Karen Millen store had none of the new-season dresses on sale at the brand’s outlet in nearby Whitewater Shopping Centre, in Newbridge. Though its rails contained a number of items currently available through the retailer’s website, the discount was the same in most cases, with several dresses cut from €199 to €95.
Reiss had a selection of coats that we spotted in its Grafton Street store last winter, while the shorts, skirts and tops on offer at Jack Wills, the UK’s answer to Abercrombie and Fitch, were leftovers from last summer and autumn. Pretty much the only bikini in Jack Wills was a pink-and-navy number that this writer bought last summer, which is now discounted by a third. All of the sales assistants we spoke to were quick to stress that their stock is at least a season behind.
So why did local retailer David Jones complain to the planning authorities about the sale of new-season stock by the outlet’s tenants? Was it much ado about nothing or a symptom of a deeper disagreement between small town-centre retailers and multinational out-of-town discount outlets?
In June last year Jones, who operates the Tommy Hilfiger and Best Menswear stores in Whitewater, raised the issue with Kildare County Council. The council requested more information to back up Jones’s claim that Kildare Village was competing with high-street outlets by selling new-season stock and that, in doing so, it was in breach of its planning permission. He submitted a list of items that he said were on sale in Karen Millen outlets (a brand selected “purely as an example”, he claimed) in both Kildare Village and Whitewater on October 4th, 2010. The items, which he described as “mid-season”, included a black jersey dress, lace black “boot shoes” and a black dress with studded sleeves.
Furthermore, claims an industry expert, one retailer in Kildare Village had gone as far as having the same window display as its high-street counterparts. (Different outlets for the same brands are sometimes owned by different franchises, so they can be competitors.)
“It’s fundamentally contrary to proper planning ,” the industry expert says. “It’s not sustainable for any town to have to compete with that.”
There is also an anecdote that because Clarks, the shoe shop, does not offer a measuring service in its Kildare Village outlet, parents were getting their children’s feet measured at Clarks in Whitewater, then driving 10 minutes up the road to buy similar shoes at Kildare Village. Also, the Pepe store in Whitewater has closed down while the outlet in Kildare Village is still trading, although no doubt many factors contributed to this closure.
Value Retail, which operates Kildare Village and nine outlet shopping villages in Europe, is said to have written to a number of its Kildare Village tenants last year, telling them they could not sell current-season stock.
A spokeswoman for Kildare Village, which has about 60 shops, told us that it “would take seriously any suggestion that there have been any breaches by brands of their contracts, and would take appropriate action”. Unlike factory outlets in the US, where retailers sometimes sell cheaper lines manufactured for those shops, the business model of Value Retail is based on enabling brands to sell end-of-season or surplus stock at discounts of at least 33 per cent. Kildare Village says its contracts oblige the brands operating there to sell only out-of-season merchandise, and that it checks stock regularly.
In any event, Kildare County Council decided that the sale of new products and in-season merchandise was allowed under the terms of Kildare Village’s planning permission. The council “felt then there was no issue” and was “satisfied everything was in order”, according to a spokeswoman.
In December Jones appealed this decision to An Bord Pleanála. An inspector’s report provided by the board reveals arguments, counterarguments and general hair-splitting by agents representing both Jones and the owners of Kildare Village. Ultimately, the planning authority found that the sale of new products or in-season merchandise in competition with products being sold on the high street at the same time would constitute a “material change of use” and would represent a breach of planning permission.
Despite repeated attempts to discuss the case with him and to hear his views on Kildare Village and discount outlets, Jones refused to comment for this article. Kildare County Council, which has responsibility for enforcing planning rules, told us it is considering An Bord Pleanála’s decision. A spokeswoman for the council says its planners are “not experts in fashion” and may need external assistance.
In any case, there may not now be a need for enforcement, given that the brands operating in Kildare Village seem to be toeing the line. But what about the broader question of the impact of discount outlet centres on nearby towns? Has Kildare Village helped the local economy or is it taking business from the area’s retailers? According to Breda McHale, of Newbridge Chamber of Commerce, Kildare Village has had a positive effect for local retailers.
“A rising tide raises all boats,” she says, adding that there is a good “crossover” of shoppers between the outlet centre and Newbridge. Shoppers often take in the two destinations in one day, McHale says.
A retail expert says Kildare Village is a “great asset” for the area, just as long as it’s not competing directly with town-centre stores.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Slane bypass ruling later
AN BORD Pleanála has deferred a decision on Meath County Council's controversial plan for a 3.5km bypass of Slane village.
The N2 Slane Bypass would take traffic off the existing Dublin-Derry road via a new dual carriageway to the east of the village crossing the Boyne over a new 216m concrete bridge.
The planning board had been due to make a decision on the project this week.
However, a board representative has confirmed that the matter has been put back and is now due to be decided by August 30th.
Earlier this year an 18-day oral hearing on the impact of the project heard evidence from more than 30 witnesses, including world heritage expert Dr Douglas Comer.
The council and local residents say the bypass is needed to improve safety in Slane
Twenty-two people have died in road crashes there over the years.
Opponents of the bypass claim the project, especially the concrete bridge, would spoil views into and out of the Brú na Bóinne site which includes Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth.
The objectors also claim the bypass could endanger the area's status as a world heritage site.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
The N2 Slane Bypass would take traffic off the existing Dublin-Derry road via a new dual carriageway to the east of the village crossing the Boyne over a new 216m concrete bridge.
The planning board had been due to make a decision on the project this week.
However, a board representative has confirmed that the matter has been put back and is now due to be decided by August 30th.
Earlier this year an 18-day oral hearing on the impact of the project heard evidence from more than 30 witnesses, including world heritage expert Dr Douglas Comer.
The council and local residents say the bypass is needed to improve safety in Slane
Twenty-two people have died in road crashes there over the years.
Opponents of the bypass claim the project, especially the concrete bridge, would spoil views into and out of the Brú na Bóinne site which includes Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth.
The objectors also claim the bypass could endanger the area's status as a world heritage site.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Outlet centre may only sell out-of-season clothes
THE KILDARE Village outlet centre has been told that selling up-to-the minute fashions is in breach of its planning permission, planning sources have confirmed.
The determination from An Bord Pleanála was sought by rival retailer David Jones, who operates a number of shops at the Whitewater Shopping Centre in Newbridge, Co Kildare.
The board’s decision, taken at a meeting at the end of May, effectively ruled that Kildare Village centre had only planning permission to sell out-of-season clothes at discount rates and that sales of new products and in-season merchandise in the centre “would constitute a change of use”.
The board said the original permission for the outlet centre had been contingent on it not introducing new products which would be in competition with high street locations.
This was in the interest of protecting existing retail cores in towns and villages, in compliance with traffic management and retail planning guidelines.
Kildare Village is home to some of the best-known fashion brands and regularly offers discounts in the order of 60 per cent. Brands include Polo Ralph Lauren, Furla and DKNY, while internationally renowned Irish fashion designer Louise Kennedy has also opened a unit there.
The village is one of a collection of nine such operations across Europe, operated by Value Retail. Founded in 1992, Value Retail has about 900 outlet boutiques featuring leading fashion and lifestyle brands, located close to some of Europe’s capital cities and intended to be destinations in their own right.
The Whitewater Shopping Centre is Ireland’s largest regional shopping centre and is in the centre of Newbridge.
It incorporates more than 70 top stores including Debenhams, Marks Spencer, Zara and HM, as well as well-known high street brands such as Karen Millen, Coast, Tommy Hilfiger and Pepe.
According to planning sources, the determination from the board is not the first time out-of-town shopping centres have been corrected for breaching conditions on the type of goods offered.
However, the sources said enforcement could be problematic, requiring as it would a specialised knowledge of fashion and retail.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
The determination from An Bord Pleanála was sought by rival retailer David Jones, who operates a number of shops at the Whitewater Shopping Centre in Newbridge, Co Kildare.
The board’s decision, taken at a meeting at the end of May, effectively ruled that Kildare Village centre had only planning permission to sell out-of-season clothes at discount rates and that sales of new products and in-season merchandise in the centre “would constitute a change of use”.
The board said the original permission for the outlet centre had been contingent on it not introducing new products which would be in competition with high street locations.
This was in the interest of protecting existing retail cores in towns and villages, in compliance with traffic management and retail planning guidelines.
Kildare Village is home to some of the best-known fashion brands and regularly offers discounts in the order of 60 per cent. Brands include Polo Ralph Lauren, Furla and DKNY, while internationally renowned Irish fashion designer Louise Kennedy has also opened a unit there.
The village is one of a collection of nine such operations across Europe, operated by Value Retail. Founded in 1992, Value Retail has about 900 outlet boutiques featuring leading fashion and lifestyle brands, located close to some of Europe’s capital cities and intended to be destinations in their own right.
The Whitewater Shopping Centre is Ireland’s largest regional shopping centre and is in the centre of Newbridge.
It incorporates more than 70 top stores including Debenhams, Marks Spencer, Zara and HM, as well as well-known high street brands such as Karen Millen, Coast, Tommy Hilfiger and Pepe.
According to planning sources, the determination from the board is not the first time out-of-town shopping centres have been corrected for breaching conditions on the type of goods offered.
However, the sources said enforcement could be problematic, requiring as it would a specialised knowledge of fashion and retail.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Las Vegas comes to Co Tipperary
A casino, a racecourse, a hotel, a heliport, golf, greyhounds – all, it seems, are on their way to Two Mile Borris. So what do the residents of this tiny Tipperary village think of the prospect?
EVERYTHING ABOUT Two Mile Borris, even its name, is modest. It is a tiny community of one street that until this week was best known for winning the All-Ireland senior hurling championship in 1900, a fact commemorated by a curved stone wall in the middle of the Co Tipperary village.
On Monday the biggest news associated with Two Mile Borris in 111 years was announced: that planning permission for a €460-million, 325-hectare development nearby had been granted. The project, headed by the Thurles-born businessman Richard Quirke, will feature a casino, a 500-bedroom hotel, an all-weather racecourse and a replica of the White House. Permission was not granted for an entertainment venue with a retractable roof and a capacity of 15,000.
You can walk the length of Two Mile Borris – or Borris, as the locals call it – in less than a minute. It has a supermarket, two pubs (one with a small grocery attached), a working water pump, a church and a graveyard.
Martina and Martin Heffernan have run the village’s Gala supermarket for six years. When Martina speaks about the development she cannot stop grinning. “The excitement is fantastic. We’ve already had people in here inquiring about jobs,” she says. “If there are hundreds of people who’ll be working on the construction site, they’ll need to eat.” The Gala sells takeaway hot and cold food. “So many people are out of jobs. I had one woman saying to me that if she got a job at the casino she’d be able to go into town again and have her hair done.”
It’s estimated 1,000 jobs will be created during the construction of the complex; 2,000 jobs will be involved in the running of what’s formally known as the Tipperary Venue. “I have no worries about its success at all. I’m sure Mr Quirke has done his research,” Martina says. “And even if the high rollers don’t come, nobody will lose money on it, only Mr Quirke.”
Across the road at Corcoran’s pub, the only negative comment any of the bar’s customers has about the development is that permission was not granted for the entertainment venue.
Nobody there has ever been to a casino. “It’s lots of one-armed bandits, isn’t it?” asks a man who offers only his first name, Phil. “But the casino is only part of it, and I don’t know why the media keep going on about it. Nobody round here is interested in that. What we’re interested in is the racetrack and the equestrian centre. The casino is aimed at foreigners and sheikhs. What I want to know is: will we get in on race day for a tenner, like we do in Thurles?”
THE DEVELOPMENT PLANS also include a greyhound track, an 18-hole golf course, 20 shops, a four-pad heliport and parking for almost 6,000 vehicles. The eight-storey hotel will have a spa, a swimming pool, a cafe, two ballrooms, six shops, four restaurants and two bars. Along with the replica White House – to be known as the Hoban Memorial, after the Washington landmark’s Irish architect, James Hoban – with its banqueting halls, there will be a New England-style wooden chapel, where it is planned that weddings will be held.
An Bord Pleanála’s 77-page inspector’s report, published in April of this year, said of the Hoban Memorial: “It is very difficult not to consider the proposal as being comparable to the landmark features provided in other resorts elsewhere in the world where, to a large extent, they are seen somewhat as gimmicks to attract attention and provide distinctiveness.”
“The White House replica, that’s really about Quirke leaving his own mark on the place,” says Billy Lanigan, who owns Bannon’s bar. Lanigan says that, all in all, he welcomes the news that the development has been approved. His primary focus is on employment prospects, especially in the week that Tipperary discovered it was to lose another 133 jobs with the closure of the Johnson Johnson factory in Cashel.
“It might bring some people back to the area who’ve emigrated,” he says. “But I don’t know where all these people are going to come out of to visit that casino. It’s not for locals. You’d be bound to be wary about the scale of it, but these guys have done their research, and they obviously think it’s going to work.”
“I don’t think Irish people understand what a casino is,” says Paul Breen, one of Lanigan’s customers, who is home from Sydney, where he has lived for several years. Breen regularly goes to casinos in Australia. “A casino is not a gambling house. You go there for a range of entertainment: a show, drinks, dinner, then a game of blackjack or roulette. There’s a private upstairs gaming room for the high rollers, and everyone else is downstairs. But because of where this casino will be, it’s an overnight experience. In my opinion, 500 rooms is not nearly enough. Five thousand rooms would be more like it for a resort casino.”
The Bord Pleanála report summarised Richard Quirke’s justification of his proposal with the following lines: “All the best enterprises, tourist and employment generating schemes are speculative in nature. In a time where the economic outlook is bleak it is considered that the planning system should encourage and endeavour to facilitate all forms of development which are shown to have positive social-economic impacts.”
Nobody The Irish Times spoke to expressed any fear about the casino leading to gambling addiction in the area. Their view almost overwhelmingly was that they’d never been to a casino themselves and that Quirke’s ambitious development was clearly aiming to attract foreigners.
THE SITE OF THE development, less than two kilometres from Two Mile Borris, is a flat green area with a few houses scattered across it, and lines of poplar trees, not far from the new Dublin-Cork motorway. The car park is due to be in the facing field. An Bord Pleanála’s summary of the design concept says that “the board may consider that the scheme would not detract from, but rather improve and add to, the overall visual amenity of what is now a relatively flat, featureless, unpopulated rural landscape”.
Thurles, seven kilometres away, is the closest town to Two Mile Borris; it will be hoping to benefit from the development. “The first thing I have to say is how excited I am about it,” says Liam Campion, a butcher who owns a store in the town’s shopping centre. “It could put Thurles on the map. It could put the whole region on the map. And it means jobs. The only thing is that nobody knows if it’ll be a success or not. What we do know is that it’s not geared towards local people. At the moment, most Irish people can’t even afford to go to the pub.”
“I’m very pleased that the brainchild of our local TD, Michael Lowry, is going to be happening,” says Marion Ryan, who is sitting on a bench outside Dunnes Stores. “A lot of local people are celebrating. Progress has to be welcomed. It’s great for employment, and it’s something different. It’ll be very handy for people in Europe who want to go to Las Vegas. They won’t have to travel to America at all. They can come to Two Mile Borris instead.”
The man betting on Borris
ABOUT THREE YEARS ago, the Independent TD Michael Lowry and the Thurles-born millionaire businessman Richard Quirke met for the first time, in a farmhouse on land owned by Dick O’Connell, near Two Mile Borris. Sitting around the kitchen table over mugs of tea, Quirke outlined his big business idea to Lowry.
He wanted to build a €460-million leisure resort with a casino for high rollers, a golf course, a five-star hotel, dog and horseracing tracks, an indoor concert hall and a replica of the White House.
“My initial reaction was to be sceptical of it,” Lowry recalls. “I was taken aback by the enormity and scale of it all. But what impressed me most was the team Quirke had built around him of very high-reputation companies and individuals. I could see he meant business.”
Nothing much moves in north Tipp without Lowry’s support, and Quirke rightly calculated that he needed the influential TD on board if he was to win over the locals and negotiate the planning process. Lowry was also a useful media frontman for the hugely ambitious – some would say barking-mad – project, which this week cleared a major hurdle by securing a green light from An Bord Pleanála.
Quirke is painfully shy when it comes to the media. He hasn’t given a single meaningful interview to the fourth estate about the so-called Tipperary Venue since details of it first emerged, in 2008. All he has offered are some soundbites to RTÉ and TV3. Several public-information and planning meetings have been held in the well-known Horse Jockey hotel, but Quirke has tended to sit at the side of the stage and let others do his bidding.
Quirke is invariably described by those who have dealt with him as a quiet, reserved man.Lowry describes him as businesslike, very ambitious and innovative.
Quirke gave a rare insight into his early days in business in a 1992 interview with the journalist Ursula Halligan for the Sunday Tribune, explaining why a substantial proportion of the profits from Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium would go to fund a transcendental-meditation centre at the former Richmond Hospital in central Dublin.
“Prior to 1982” – when he took up transcendental meditation – “I was probably 80 per cent dishonest in my dealings with other people. I mean, if I did a deal with you, and it was on a 50-50 basis, I wouldn’t be happy unless I got the lion’s share of 80-20 in my favour. I had no conscience. It didn’t bother me in the slightest.
“I would be at Mass on Sunday and I would stand up and sit down, stand up and sit down, as need be. But I would be plotting and scheming as to how I could rip off people during the rest of the week.”
Quirke declined to elaborate on those quotes when they were put to his public-relations adviser, Valerie O’Reilly, earlier this week.
Quirke was born in Thurles in November 1946 to Dan and Theresa Quirke. He has three sisters, Olive, Mary and Geralyn. His father was caretaker at the local greyhound track. Life was tough in Thurles in those days; the family grew up in “hard times”, says one local.
Quirke went to school at Thurles CBS, then became a garda. It was while he was on the beat in Dublin that he is said to have gained an insight into gaming and amusement arcades. In 1976 he set up a company called Dublin Pool and Juke Box Ltd, a holding entity for all his arcade activities, with an address in Bray, Co Wicklow.
Although he is best known today for Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium, on O’Connell Street, Quirke is said by those who know him to have operated arcade and slot machines “everywhere from Donegal to Kerry” over the past 35 years.
Dr Quirkey’s has proved to be a money-making machine, although the latest accounts show it has not been immune to the recession. Abridged accounts, which provide only partial financial information, show that Dublin Pool and Juke Box Ltd made a profit of €1.5 million in the 12 months to the end of June 2010. This was roughly a third of the profit of the previous year. The company had accumulated profits of €16.7 million at the year end.
Dublin Pool and Juke Box is also being used to buy land for the casino complex. The accounts show that it spent €6.7 million on “tangible fixed assets”.
Just how much Quirke is worth is a mystery. He is wealthy, but you will never see him feature in any rich list. He and his wife, Anne, were paid a generous €994,003 as directors of Dublin Pool and Juke Box last year, and €1.1 million in 2009.
It has been widely reported that he made more than €30 million some years ago from selling properties at the Carlton cinema site on O’Connell Street to the property developer Joe O’Reilly. Quirke originally pitched the Carlton site in a tendering process in the 1990s for a national convention centre. The competition was scrapped after a change of government in 1997.
Quirke subsequently became embroiled in a legal dispute with Dublin City Council over the Carlton site. The local authority wanted it developed as part of O’Connell Street’s regeneration and slapped a compulsory purchase order on the land. Quirke sold the site to O’Reilly, whose plan to build a retail complex was credit-crunched.
One former senior official at the council described Quirke as “not easy to deal with” and “single-minded”.
In addition to the arcades, Quirke has an extensive property portfolio. These include a number of sites in Dublin, the former Erin Foods factory in Co Tipperary and the old NEC Semiconductors plant in Co Meath, which he put on the market for €5.5 million.
He has access to a €3 million Sikorsky helicopter, held through a company he jointly owns, called Heli Med Ltd. And he is reported to have paid €5 million for his family home in Cabinteely, Co Dublin, shared with his wife and four children. One son, Wesley, is dating the former Miss World Rosanna Davison; the other, Andy, has made a name for himself posting videos on YouTube.
Quirke is estimated to have spent about €3.5 million on planning fees and charges to North Tipperary County Council, and about €30 million in total on land acquisition and other costs.
Michael Lowry has said that Quirke is committed to shelling out another €28 million of his own money on the next phase of the Tipperary Venue project, which will involve servicing the land.
Locals say Quirke has told them that no bank debt will be associated with the casino project. International investors are expected to back the project, possibly including a large international casino operator. All of this detail has been kept under wraps, and many people question the viability of the project.
This week’s planning approval was a major step forward for Quirke. But his huge punt will ultimately require a change in gambling legislation. Quirke has rolled the dice, but it could be a couple of years before he discovers if his expensive bet has paid off. Ciarán Hancock
Slot machines, poker, roulette, blackjack A morning at Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium
Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium, the amusement arcade on O’Connell Street in Dublin, is Richard Quirke’s best-known business.
By 11am one morning this week, an hour after it had opened, upwards of 100 people were inside. At the front of the emporium were slot machines and cranes that dispensed coins, stuffed toys and trinkets to winners. Farther back were hundreds of fruit machines and other amusements, featuring video games, poker, roulette and blackjack, among other games.
The deeper you went, the dimmer the place became. The lighting was red and blue neon, and the carpet had an old-fashioned pattern. Upstairs were ranks of pool tables.
Boys in school uniform played poker, women with babies in buggies operated two slot machines simultaneously, and a group of Asian men huddled over roulette tables. Everyone was intensely focused and silent.
The emporium has been associated with some notorious customers, including the victim in the “Scissor Sisters” murder of 2005, the Kenyan man Farah Swaleh Noor, who was beheaded.
The Chinese man Yu Jie, who was found guilty of murdering two Chinese women, in 2001, and burning their bodies, frequently played blackjack at the emporium. The court heard from his former employer that Jie had told her on one occasion that he had lost €1,000 in a single session.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
EVERYTHING ABOUT Two Mile Borris, even its name, is modest. It is a tiny community of one street that until this week was best known for winning the All-Ireland senior hurling championship in 1900, a fact commemorated by a curved stone wall in the middle of the Co Tipperary village.
On Monday the biggest news associated with Two Mile Borris in 111 years was announced: that planning permission for a €460-million, 325-hectare development nearby had been granted. The project, headed by the Thurles-born businessman Richard Quirke, will feature a casino, a 500-bedroom hotel, an all-weather racecourse and a replica of the White House. Permission was not granted for an entertainment venue with a retractable roof and a capacity of 15,000.
You can walk the length of Two Mile Borris – or Borris, as the locals call it – in less than a minute. It has a supermarket, two pubs (one with a small grocery attached), a working water pump, a church and a graveyard.
Martina and Martin Heffernan have run the village’s Gala supermarket for six years. When Martina speaks about the development she cannot stop grinning. “The excitement is fantastic. We’ve already had people in here inquiring about jobs,” she says. “If there are hundreds of people who’ll be working on the construction site, they’ll need to eat.” The Gala sells takeaway hot and cold food. “So many people are out of jobs. I had one woman saying to me that if she got a job at the casino she’d be able to go into town again and have her hair done.”
It’s estimated 1,000 jobs will be created during the construction of the complex; 2,000 jobs will be involved in the running of what’s formally known as the Tipperary Venue. “I have no worries about its success at all. I’m sure Mr Quirke has done his research,” Martina says. “And even if the high rollers don’t come, nobody will lose money on it, only Mr Quirke.”
Across the road at Corcoran’s pub, the only negative comment any of the bar’s customers has about the development is that permission was not granted for the entertainment venue.
Nobody there has ever been to a casino. “It’s lots of one-armed bandits, isn’t it?” asks a man who offers only his first name, Phil. “But the casino is only part of it, and I don’t know why the media keep going on about it. Nobody round here is interested in that. What we’re interested in is the racetrack and the equestrian centre. The casino is aimed at foreigners and sheikhs. What I want to know is: will we get in on race day for a tenner, like we do in Thurles?”
THE DEVELOPMENT PLANS also include a greyhound track, an 18-hole golf course, 20 shops, a four-pad heliport and parking for almost 6,000 vehicles. The eight-storey hotel will have a spa, a swimming pool, a cafe, two ballrooms, six shops, four restaurants and two bars. Along with the replica White House – to be known as the Hoban Memorial, after the Washington landmark’s Irish architect, James Hoban – with its banqueting halls, there will be a New England-style wooden chapel, where it is planned that weddings will be held.
An Bord Pleanála’s 77-page inspector’s report, published in April of this year, said of the Hoban Memorial: “It is very difficult not to consider the proposal as being comparable to the landmark features provided in other resorts elsewhere in the world where, to a large extent, they are seen somewhat as gimmicks to attract attention and provide distinctiveness.”
“The White House replica, that’s really about Quirke leaving his own mark on the place,” says Billy Lanigan, who owns Bannon’s bar. Lanigan says that, all in all, he welcomes the news that the development has been approved. His primary focus is on employment prospects, especially in the week that Tipperary discovered it was to lose another 133 jobs with the closure of the Johnson Johnson factory in Cashel.
“It might bring some people back to the area who’ve emigrated,” he says. “But I don’t know where all these people are going to come out of to visit that casino. It’s not for locals. You’d be bound to be wary about the scale of it, but these guys have done their research, and they obviously think it’s going to work.”
“I don’t think Irish people understand what a casino is,” says Paul Breen, one of Lanigan’s customers, who is home from Sydney, where he has lived for several years. Breen regularly goes to casinos in Australia. “A casino is not a gambling house. You go there for a range of entertainment: a show, drinks, dinner, then a game of blackjack or roulette. There’s a private upstairs gaming room for the high rollers, and everyone else is downstairs. But because of where this casino will be, it’s an overnight experience. In my opinion, 500 rooms is not nearly enough. Five thousand rooms would be more like it for a resort casino.”
The Bord Pleanála report summarised Richard Quirke’s justification of his proposal with the following lines: “All the best enterprises, tourist and employment generating schemes are speculative in nature. In a time where the economic outlook is bleak it is considered that the planning system should encourage and endeavour to facilitate all forms of development which are shown to have positive social-economic impacts.”
Nobody The Irish Times spoke to expressed any fear about the casino leading to gambling addiction in the area. Their view almost overwhelmingly was that they’d never been to a casino themselves and that Quirke’s ambitious development was clearly aiming to attract foreigners.
THE SITE OF THE development, less than two kilometres from Two Mile Borris, is a flat green area with a few houses scattered across it, and lines of poplar trees, not far from the new Dublin-Cork motorway. The car park is due to be in the facing field. An Bord Pleanála’s summary of the design concept says that “the board may consider that the scheme would not detract from, but rather improve and add to, the overall visual amenity of what is now a relatively flat, featureless, unpopulated rural landscape”.
Thurles, seven kilometres away, is the closest town to Two Mile Borris; it will be hoping to benefit from the development. “The first thing I have to say is how excited I am about it,” says Liam Campion, a butcher who owns a store in the town’s shopping centre. “It could put Thurles on the map. It could put the whole region on the map. And it means jobs. The only thing is that nobody knows if it’ll be a success or not. What we do know is that it’s not geared towards local people. At the moment, most Irish people can’t even afford to go to the pub.”
“I’m very pleased that the brainchild of our local TD, Michael Lowry, is going to be happening,” says Marion Ryan, who is sitting on a bench outside Dunnes Stores. “A lot of local people are celebrating. Progress has to be welcomed. It’s great for employment, and it’s something different. It’ll be very handy for people in Europe who want to go to Las Vegas. They won’t have to travel to America at all. They can come to Two Mile Borris instead.”
The man betting on Borris
ABOUT THREE YEARS ago, the Independent TD Michael Lowry and the Thurles-born millionaire businessman Richard Quirke met for the first time, in a farmhouse on land owned by Dick O’Connell, near Two Mile Borris. Sitting around the kitchen table over mugs of tea, Quirke outlined his big business idea to Lowry.
He wanted to build a €460-million leisure resort with a casino for high rollers, a golf course, a five-star hotel, dog and horseracing tracks, an indoor concert hall and a replica of the White House.
“My initial reaction was to be sceptical of it,” Lowry recalls. “I was taken aback by the enormity and scale of it all. But what impressed me most was the team Quirke had built around him of very high-reputation companies and individuals. I could see he meant business.”
Nothing much moves in north Tipp without Lowry’s support, and Quirke rightly calculated that he needed the influential TD on board if he was to win over the locals and negotiate the planning process. Lowry was also a useful media frontman for the hugely ambitious – some would say barking-mad – project, which this week cleared a major hurdle by securing a green light from An Bord Pleanála.
Quirke is painfully shy when it comes to the media. He hasn’t given a single meaningful interview to the fourth estate about the so-called Tipperary Venue since details of it first emerged, in 2008. All he has offered are some soundbites to RTÉ and TV3. Several public-information and planning meetings have been held in the well-known Horse Jockey hotel, but Quirke has tended to sit at the side of the stage and let others do his bidding.
Quirke is invariably described by those who have dealt with him as a quiet, reserved man.Lowry describes him as businesslike, very ambitious and innovative.
Quirke gave a rare insight into his early days in business in a 1992 interview with the journalist Ursula Halligan for the Sunday Tribune, explaining why a substantial proportion of the profits from Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium would go to fund a transcendental-meditation centre at the former Richmond Hospital in central Dublin.
“Prior to 1982” – when he took up transcendental meditation – “I was probably 80 per cent dishonest in my dealings with other people. I mean, if I did a deal with you, and it was on a 50-50 basis, I wouldn’t be happy unless I got the lion’s share of 80-20 in my favour. I had no conscience. It didn’t bother me in the slightest.
“I would be at Mass on Sunday and I would stand up and sit down, stand up and sit down, as need be. But I would be plotting and scheming as to how I could rip off people during the rest of the week.”
Quirke declined to elaborate on those quotes when they were put to his public-relations adviser, Valerie O’Reilly, earlier this week.
Quirke was born in Thurles in November 1946 to Dan and Theresa Quirke. He has three sisters, Olive, Mary and Geralyn. His father was caretaker at the local greyhound track. Life was tough in Thurles in those days; the family grew up in “hard times”, says one local.
Quirke went to school at Thurles CBS, then became a garda. It was while he was on the beat in Dublin that he is said to have gained an insight into gaming and amusement arcades. In 1976 he set up a company called Dublin Pool and Juke Box Ltd, a holding entity for all his arcade activities, with an address in Bray, Co Wicklow.
Although he is best known today for Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium, on O’Connell Street, Quirke is said by those who know him to have operated arcade and slot machines “everywhere from Donegal to Kerry” over the past 35 years.
Dr Quirkey’s has proved to be a money-making machine, although the latest accounts show it has not been immune to the recession. Abridged accounts, which provide only partial financial information, show that Dublin Pool and Juke Box Ltd made a profit of €1.5 million in the 12 months to the end of June 2010. This was roughly a third of the profit of the previous year. The company had accumulated profits of €16.7 million at the year end.
Dublin Pool and Juke Box is also being used to buy land for the casino complex. The accounts show that it spent €6.7 million on “tangible fixed assets”.
Just how much Quirke is worth is a mystery. He is wealthy, but you will never see him feature in any rich list. He and his wife, Anne, were paid a generous €994,003 as directors of Dublin Pool and Juke Box last year, and €1.1 million in 2009.
It has been widely reported that he made more than €30 million some years ago from selling properties at the Carlton cinema site on O’Connell Street to the property developer Joe O’Reilly. Quirke originally pitched the Carlton site in a tendering process in the 1990s for a national convention centre. The competition was scrapped after a change of government in 1997.
Quirke subsequently became embroiled in a legal dispute with Dublin City Council over the Carlton site. The local authority wanted it developed as part of O’Connell Street’s regeneration and slapped a compulsory purchase order on the land. Quirke sold the site to O’Reilly, whose plan to build a retail complex was credit-crunched.
One former senior official at the council described Quirke as “not easy to deal with” and “single-minded”.
In addition to the arcades, Quirke has an extensive property portfolio. These include a number of sites in Dublin, the former Erin Foods factory in Co Tipperary and the old NEC Semiconductors plant in Co Meath, which he put on the market for €5.5 million.
He has access to a €3 million Sikorsky helicopter, held through a company he jointly owns, called Heli Med Ltd. And he is reported to have paid €5 million for his family home in Cabinteely, Co Dublin, shared with his wife and four children. One son, Wesley, is dating the former Miss World Rosanna Davison; the other, Andy, has made a name for himself posting videos on YouTube.
Quirke is estimated to have spent about €3.5 million on planning fees and charges to North Tipperary County Council, and about €30 million in total on land acquisition and other costs.
Michael Lowry has said that Quirke is committed to shelling out another €28 million of his own money on the next phase of the Tipperary Venue project, which will involve servicing the land.
Locals say Quirke has told them that no bank debt will be associated with the casino project. International investors are expected to back the project, possibly including a large international casino operator. All of this detail has been kept under wraps, and many people question the viability of the project.
This week’s planning approval was a major step forward for Quirke. But his huge punt will ultimately require a change in gambling legislation. Quirke has rolled the dice, but it could be a couple of years before he discovers if his expensive bet has paid off. Ciarán Hancock
Slot machines, poker, roulette, blackjack A morning at Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium
Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium, the amusement arcade on O’Connell Street in Dublin, is Richard Quirke’s best-known business.
By 11am one morning this week, an hour after it had opened, upwards of 100 people were inside. At the front of the emporium were slot machines and cranes that dispensed coins, stuffed toys and trinkets to winners. Farther back were hundreds of fruit machines and other amusements, featuring video games, poker, roulette and blackjack, among other games.
The deeper you went, the dimmer the place became. The lighting was red and blue neon, and the carpet had an old-fashioned pattern. Upstairs were ranks of pool tables.
Boys in school uniform played poker, women with babies in buggies operated two slot machines simultaneously, and a group of Asian men huddled over roulette tables. Everyone was intensely focused and silent.
The emporium has been associated with some notorious customers, including the victim in the “Scissor Sisters” murder of 2005, the Kenyan man Farah Swaleh Noor, who was beheaded.
The Chinese man Yu Jie, who was found guilty of murdering two Chinese women, in 2001, and burning their bodies, frequently played blackjack at the emporium. The court heard from his former employer that Jie had told her on one occasion that he had lost €1,000 in a single session.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
A bad bet by Bord Pleanála
JUST ONE month ago, former chairman of An Bord Pleanála John O’Connor publicly expressed his regret that the appeals board did not take a stronger stand against poorly designed and remotely located schemes during the boom years.
In a valedictory address, he also drew attention to the board’s record of protecting new motorways against “piggyback” local development and said the choice of location for major public or private sector projects should have a much stronger planning input, with planners involved from the outset and not merely “brought in to make the planning application afterwards”. Indeed, he found it “extraordinary” that developers and banks made significant decisions about land purchase and development without any apparent input by planners.
Now, in granting permission for most elements of the proposed Tipperary Venue outside Two-Mile-Borris, An Bord Pleanála has made a mockery of its former chairman’s views. It also made its decision in the face of an explicit recommendation from one of its own planning inspectors that permission should be refused for this outlandish proposal. Instead, the board went along with the views of Independent TD Michael Lowry and other backers of the project – with a Las Vegas-style “resort casino” as its financial engine and a full-scale replica of the White House in Washington DC as its eccentric emblem – that it would bring much-needed investment and employment to the area. Only a proposed 15,000-seat live music venue was rejected.
Promoter Richard Quirke, chiefly known as the operator of Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium on Dublin’s O’Connell Street, must have been overjoyed by An Bord Pleanála’s approval for the casino, in particular, even though the Gaming and Lotteries Act would need to be amended to permit it to be licensed. All the Department of Justice has done so far was to publish a discussion document last December entitled Options for Regulating Gambling, one of which was to permit at least one “resort casino” of the type being planned for Two-Mile-Borris. The Gaming and Leisure Association of Ireland, which represents the operators of private gaming clubs, has expressed doubt about whether a resort-style casino in Ireland would be able to sustain itself. After all, this is not Macau or, indeed, Las Vegas.
As planning inspector Pauline Fitzpatrick noted in her report on the Tipperary Venue, “good planning is based on ordered decision-making”. North Tipperary County Council had no qualms about approving the project, no doubt bearing in mind its value as a major generator of revenue from commercial rates. But An Bord Pleanála had a duty to uphold the principles of sustainable development and consistency with national and regional planning policies, and it singularly failed to do so. If Ireland needs a project of the type being proposed – and that is highly debatable – surely it should be located in, or at least adjoining, one of the gateway or hub towns identified by the National Spatial Strategy in 2002? A rural area outside Two-Mile-Borris, close to the M8 motorway, is emphatically not in this category.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
In a valedictory address, he also drew attention to the board’s record of protecting new motorways against “piggyback” local development and said the choice of location for major public or private sector projects should have a much stronger planning input, with planners involved from the outset and not merely “brought in to make the planning application afterwards”. Indeed, he found it “extraordinary” that developers and banks made significant decisions about land purchase and development without any apparent input by planners.
Now, in granting permission for most elements of the proposed Tipperary Venue outside Two-Mile-Borris, An Bord Pleanála has made a mockery of its former chairman’s views. It also made its decision in the face of an explicit recommendation from one of its own planning inspectors that permission should be refused for this outlandish proposal. Instead, the board went along with the views of Independent TD Michael Lowry and other backers of the project – with a Las Vegas-style “resort casino” as its financial engine and a full-scale replica of the White House in Washington DC as its eccentric emblem – that it would bring much-needed investment and employment to the area. Only a proposed 15,000-seat live music venue was rejected.
Promoter Richard Quirke, chiefly known as the operator of Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium on Dublin’s O’Connell Street, must have been overjoyed by An Bord Pleanála’s approval for the casino, in particular, even though the Gaming and Lotteries Act would need to be amended to permit it to be licensed. All the Department of Justice has done so far was to publish a discussion document last December entitled Options for Regulating Gambling, one of which was to permit at least one “resort casino” of the type being planned for Two-Mile-Borris. The Gaming and Leisure Association of Ireland, which represents the operators of private gaming clubs, has expressed doubt about whether a resort-style casino in Ireland would be able to sustain itself. After all, this is not Macau or, indeed, Las Vegas.
As planning inspector Pauline Fitzpatrick noted in her report on the Tipperary Venue, “good planning is based on ordered decision-making”. North Tipperary County Council had no qualms about approving the project, no doubt bearing in mind its value as a major generator of revenue from commercial rates. But An Bord Pleanála had a duty to uphold the principles of sustainable development and consistency with national and regional planning policies, and it singularly failed to do so. If Ireland needs a project of the type being proposed – and that is highly debatable – surely it should be located in, or at least adjoining, one of the gateway or hub towns identified by the National Spatial Strategy in 2002? A rural area outside Two-Mile-Borris, close to the M8 motorway, is emphatically not in this category.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Green light for €460m 'Las Vegas' complex
AN BORD Pleanála has given the go-ahead for the construction of a €460 million “Las Vegas-style” sports and leisure complex in Co Tipperary.
The 800-acre Tipperary Venue, close to the village of Two-Mile-Borris, will include a 500-bedroom five-star hotel; a 6,000sq m casino; an all-weather racecourse; a greyhound track and a golf course.
The site, which is located off the M8 Dublin-Cork motorway, will also feature a full-size replica of the White House in Washington which will be used as “a banqueting facility” and to host wedding receptions.
Planning permission for a 15,000-capacity underground entertainment centre was refused by An Bord Pleanála as it was deemed “inappropriate” given the location.
North Tipperary County Council granted planning permission for the project last year but the case was appealed by some local residents and An Taisce.
Concerns included the level of traffic which would be generated by the venue, along with noise, carbon emissions, helicopter use, its distance from public transport and the sustainability of such a large-scale development.
An estimated 1,000 jobs will be created during the construction phase of the facility which is expected to take three years. Between 1,350 and 2,000 additional full-time positions are expected once the complex is completed.
The Tipperary Venue is the brainchild of developer Richard Quirke, a former garda from Thurles who is best known for running Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium gaming arcade on Dublin’s O’Connell Street.
Mr Quirke issued a short statement: “I welcome this decision by An Bord Pleanála to grant permission for the Tipperary Venue project which advances the implementation of my vision and ambition for this site,” he said.
“I have instructed my design team and management to proceed to the next appropriate stages of the development.”
The venture has received support from the Coolmore Stud, Horse Sport Ireland, Bord na gCon, Shannon Development and Thurles Chamber of Commerce.
Planning permission is granted subject to 32 conditions which include an archaeological appraisal, details of noise monitoring and mitigation measures, and the carrying out of road safety procedures.
The developer is also required to make a financial contribution towards public infrastructure and facilities associated with the project.
The project is also still dependent on the Oireachtas passing proposed new legislation to enable the opening of casinos.
A consultation paper on legislative options for the gambling sector was published last December by then minister for justice Dermot Ahern.
The paper outlined a framework for licensing and regulating small-scale casinos which operate as members’ clubs and included a proposal to allow a “resort” casino similar to that proposed by the Tipperary Venue developers.
The report indicated support for a casino with multiple gaming tables with between 1,000 and 1,500 slot machines. It added it would not be desirable to allow more than one such large-scale resort.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
The 800-acre Tipperary Venue, close to the village of Two-Mile-Borris, will include a 500-bedroom five-star hotel; a 6,000sq m casino; an all-weather racecourse; a greyhound track and a golf course.
The site, which is located off the M8 Dublin-Cork motorway, will also feature a full-size replica of the White House in Washington which will be used as “a banqueting facility” and to host wedding receptions.
Planning permission for a 15,000-capacity underground entertainment centre was refused by An Bord Pleanála as it was deemed “inappropriate” given the location.
North Tipperary County Council granted planning permission for the project last year but the case was appealed by some local residents and An Taisce.
Concerns included the level of traffic which would be generated by the venue, along with noise, carbon emissions, helicopter use, its distance from public transport and the sustainability of such a large-scale development.
An estimated 1,000 jobs will be created during the construction phase of the facility which is expected to take three years. Between 1,350 and 2,000 additional full-time positions are expected once the complex is completed.
The Tipperary Venue is the brainchild of developer Richard Quirke, a former garda from Thurles who is best known for running Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium gaming arcade on Dublin’s O’Connell Street.
Mr Quirke issued a short statement: “I welcome this decision by An Bord Pleanála to grant permission for the Tipperary Venue project which advances the implementation of my vision and ambition for this site,” he said.
“I have instructed my design team and management to proceed to the next appropriate stages of the development.”
The venture has received support from the Coolmore Stud, Horse Sport Ireland, Bord na gCon, Shannon Development and Thurles Chamber of Commerce.
Planning permission is granted subject to 32 conditions which include an archaeological appraisal, details of noise monitoring and mitigation measures, and the carrying out of road safety procedures.
The developer is also required to make a financial contribution towards public infrastructure and facilities associated with the project.
The project is also still dependent on the Oireachtas passing proposed new legislation to enable the opening of casinos.
A consultation paper on legislative options for the gambling sector was published last December by then minister for justice Dermot Ahern.
The paper outlined a framework for licensing and regulating small-scale casinos which operate as members’ clubs and included a proposal to allow a “resort” casino similar to that proposed by the Tipperary Venue developers.
The report indicated support for a casino with multiple gaming tables with between 1,000 and 1,500 slot machines. It added it would not be desirable to allow more than one such large-scale resort.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Lowry welcomes 'fantastic' boost for region
PROJECT LAUNCH ATTRACTED SUPPORT FROM HORSE RACING SECTOR: THE €460 million casino and leisure development proposed for Two-Mile-Borris will provide a huge economic fillip to Tipperary and the wider region, Independent TD Michael Lowry said yesterday.
“It’s fantastic news,” he said of An Bord Pleanála’s decision to grant permission to the Tipperary Venue, albeit without the 15,000-capacity indoor entertainment venue and against the recommendation of the board’s inspector.
He predicted that work on the basic infrastructure of the site – water, sewerage, roads, drainage, telecommunications – will start “by the end of the year” and that the entire scheme will take three years to complete.
Mr Lowry said the first time he met Richard Quirke was when the Tipperary-born businessman and former garda approached him about three years ago to inform him of his plans for the 800-acre site and to ask him for guidance through the planning process.
The refusal of permission for the indoor entertainment venue was not a setback, Mr Lowry maintained. “It was never the central element of the plan and there’s a lot of competition in that sector.”
Mr Lowry said he hoped the Minister for Justice would shortly bring forward legislation allowing venue operators to apply for a casino licence, based on the report of the Department of Justice’s Review Commission on Gaming.
An Taisce, which led opposition to the Tipperary Venue, said that the “split decision” of the board in granting permission to some elements of the project contravened the National Spatial Strategy policy of locating new development in existing designated regional centres, and national climate and transport policy in curtailing car-based development.
An Taisce chairman Charles Stanley-Smith said the country has over-capacity of 15,000 hotel bedrooms. “The decision exacerbates the spectre of ghost developments. Once more this is evidence of short-term expediency and developer-led planning overriding national spatial plan and regional planning guidelines,” he said.
Thurles Chamber of Commerce president Austin Broderick said the news was “unbelievable for the town”. Completion of the Tipperary Venue would be “as good as getting three factories” in the area, he said. “This is what we’re waiting for for the last couple of years. We have nothing in Thurles and nothing in the surrounding areas regarding jobs.”
Fine Gael TD for Tipperary North Noel Coonan said he welcomed any development which would create jobs for the area.
“I’d be disappointed that the concert venue has been knocked on the head because that would have suited the younger people around the area,” he said.
“Overall I welcome it and we’ll be hoping it will be built as soon as possible.”
Mr Coonan said he had “no problem” working with his Independent constituency colleague Mr Lowry to help advance the project.
“We’ve assured Deputy Lowry that he might have brought forward the plans, but we’ll [Fine Gael] be building it and we’ll open it.”
The Gaming and Leisure Association in Ireland said that resort-casinos of the type envisaged by Mr Quirke are “simply inappropriate” in Ireland.
“The size of the market does not support these huge developments and they often run counter to sustainable development,” said the body which represents private members gaming clubs who provide casino-like services.
Association director David Hickson said there was now an opportunity to “grow the wider gaming and gambling sector”, as part of the department’s review of the industry. “All our members are city or town centre based and therefore in line with sustainable development.”
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
“It’s fantastic news,” he said of An Bord Pleanála’s decision to grant permission to the Tipperary Venue, albeit without the 15,000-capacity indoor entertainment venue and against the recommendation of the board’s inspector.
He predicted that work on the basic infrastructure of the site – water, sewerage, roads, drainage, telecommunications – will start “by the end of the year” and that the entire scheme will take three years to complete.
Mr Lowry said the first time he met Richard Quirke was when the Tipperary-born businessman and former garda approached him about three years ago to inform him of his plans for the 800-acre site and to ask him for guidance through the planning process.
The refusal of permission for the indoor entertainment venue was not a setback, Mr Lowry maintained. “It was never the central element of the plan and there’s a lot of competition in that sector.”
Mr Lowry said he hoped the Minister for Justice would shortly bring forward legislation allowing venue operators to apply for a casino licence, based on the report of the Department of Justice’s Review Commission on Gaming.
An Taisce, which led opposition to the Tipperary Venue, said that the “split decision” of the board in granting permission to some elements of the project contravened the National Spatial Strategy policy of locating new development in existing designated regional centres, and national climate and transport policy in curtailing car-based development.
An Taisce chairman Charles Stanley-Smith said the country has over-capacity of 15,000 hotel bedrooms. “The decision exacerbates the spectre of ghost developments. Once more this is evidence of short-term expediency and developer-led planning overriding national spatial plan and regional planning guidelines,” he said.
Thurles Chamber of Commerce president Austin Broderick said the news was “unbelievable for the town”. Completion of the Tipperary Venue would be “as good as getting three factories” in the area, he said. “This is what we’re waiting for for the last couple of years. We have nothing in Thurles and nothing in the surrounding areas regarding jobs.”
Fine Gael TD for Tipperary North Noel Coonan said he welcomed any development which would create jobs for the area.
“I’d be disappointed that the concert venue has been knocked on the head because that would have suited the younger people around the area,” he said.
“Overall I welcome it and we’ll be hoping it will be built as soon as possible.”
Mr Coonan said he had “no problem” working with his Independent constituency colleague Mr Lowry to help advance the project.
“We’ve assured Deputy Lowry that he might have brought forward the plans, but we’ll [Fine Gael] be building it and we’ll open it.”
The Gaming and Leisure Association in Ireland said that resort-casinos of the type envisaged by Mr Quirke are “simply inappropriate” in Ireland.
“The size of the market does not support these huge developments and they often run counter to sustainable development,” said the body which represents private members gaming clubs who provide casino-like services.
Association director David Hickson said there was now an opportunity to “grow the wider gaming and gambling sector”, as part of the department’s review of the industry. “All our members are city or town centre based and therefore in line with sustainable development.”
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
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