Dublin’s Liberties has everything. Except vision, planning, care and attention

In September, the Dublin city centre taskforce report was sent to Taoiseach Simon Harris. It is now almost 23 weeks since the taskforce was announced on May 9th, when the Government said the entity “will make clear and concrete recommendations on improving the city centre’s public realm, safety and experience within a 12-week time frame”.
Regardless of what it recommends – much of which will inevitably frame the obvious as innovative and repeat calls for more gardaí – the taskforce has to contend with a degree of fairly-warranted cynicism across the capital, given how often talking shops, strategies, taskforces and “plans” for the city centre amount to little. Meanwhile, very simple things that do not need taskforces remain unattended to. Yes, the city lacks vision, but there is also a strange lack of capacity to begin and complete basic tasks. Perhaps nowhere is this more pronounced than in the Liberties in Dublin 8.
For years, locals and campaigners have been attempting to raise concerns about the integrity of the area being threatened by an almost chaotic wave of development. This has indeed come to pass. That’s the big picture – a historic neighbourhood having its character stripped by corporate gentrification. The small picture is how easy it would be to enhance the area for the people who live there.
As a place, the Liberties is really about time. Some of it still, charmingly, feels like the past. The traders and horses, old bakeries and market areas, the few old pubs still hanging on, the churches and laneways all make up a fabric that is impossible to replicate. There is also another form of time ticking here, the intimidating acceleration of luxury student accommodation and hotels. And then there’s a time vacuum, the suspension of pace when it comes to providing amenities, as well as allowing existing ones to fall to time.
Like many city communities, the Liberties needs more public amenities. While in recent years, two small parks have been opened in Dublin 8 – on Cork Street and Bridgefoot Street – the lack of playing pitches is astonishing. There are 8,000 children and young people in the broader area are without a full-size playing pitch. The Liberty Saints rugby club can play only away matches because it does not have a pitch. St Kevin’s, the GAA club, rents a pitch in Crumlin. The soccer club, Usher Celtic, has to cross the Liffey to use a pitch at TUD’s campus in Grangegorman. This is not a new issue. The fact that it has not been addressed speaks to an unforgivable disregard for the wellbeing of young people in the area.
Community and cultural spaces do exist, yet many are closed or derelict. This is almost thematic: across the city there is a lack of appreciation for what we have, how to keep it, enhance it and use it well. There is a 452-seater theatre, the Rupert Guinness Theatre, sitting idle in the Liberties. The first production here was Seán O’Casey’s The Shadow of a Gunman, in 1951.
In May, People Before Profit councillor Hazel De Nortúin, who consistently raises issues around public amenities in the city, put forward a motion to engage with Diageo (the theatre owners) to explore reopening it. Local politicians and Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media Catherine Martin, have been lobbied by Diageo on this matter. The group Art Space Now D8 has also been vocal on reopening the theatre. Diageo is a multibillion-euro company. There is little stopping it from refurbishing the theatre and donating it to the community.
A “cultural space” (in reality, a concrete unit) built as part of the aparthotel development on the site of the demolished Tivoli Theatre on Francis Street has rarely been used since it opened. The Iveagh Markets, one of Dublin’s gems, is still awaiting its long-promised redevelopment.
Even a very simple – but important – space, such as the Donore Community Centre is closed. The closure of this centre has been the subject of numerous local protests and campaigns. Following a fire in June 2021, the frozen-in-time approach to refurbishing and reopening has been perplexing. Last week, the Dublin Inquirer reported that at a September meeting of the council’s south central area committee a councillor asked how it could be that the reopening of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris was happening at a faster pace than this relatively basic building, given that a council presentation in April showed that the community centre wouldn’t be opened until 2026. “This is a highly complex project, unfortunately,” one of the council executives, Bruce Philips, said. I can hear the gargoyles of Ile de la Cité laughing from here.
Zooming out, it’s difficult to imagine any other European city looking at a historic “old town” part of a capital and embarking upon the type of development that has encroached upon and altered the fabric of the Liberties. The opportunity for human-scale architecture that speaks to the integrity, heritage and character of this part of Dublin 8, expanding into the Tenters, was lost, and instead looming, soulless, homogenous buildings abound.
In the marketing of the Liberties to tourists, its historic importance, vibrancy, authenticity and uniqueness is effusive to the point of hyperbole. It would be useful if this outward expression was at some point internalised by those charged with running the city. Ironically, the very kinds of urban communities being promoted post-pandemic – broadly tracing the concepts of Jane Jacobs as interpreted by Carlos Moreno’s 15-minute-city model – is on offer in the Liberties. For now. You can’t stop time. But you don’t have to waste it.