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By Hayley Farrell. Dublin is the 21st greenest out of thirty leading cities in Europe according to the 2010 Green Cities Index. London is in 11th place and Berlin, with an impressive 40% percent parks cover, is Europe’s eighth greenest city. Scandinavian cities occupy the top three places of the ranking. Dublin has a modest 17% parks cover. Walking around London, you’ll stumble upon countless small pocket parks, squares and green spaces. Some of these resemble a courtyard you might find in an apartment complex or attached to an up-market hotel. The prevalence of parks and squares as places to rest, congregate and take stock is an important aspect of any city experience. Pocket parks work with our climate, providing cosy rest areas to allow shelter from the skittish elements. They also help distinguish one street from the next. Arriving into Dublin from the south you might consider the city to be rich in green spaces, as most of the central parks are located to the south of the city; the added bonus of Trinity College providing a significant open green space. It is only when you cross the river into the north inner city that you are struck by the absence of open space and particularly of green spaces. Chancery Park beside the Four Courts represents the only open green space with a place to sit along the LUAS line before reaching the Phoenix Park from Connolly and the Docklands. This part of the city does admittedly pose some challenging social issues. Despite expectations, the new temporary park at North King Street has been largely devoid of anti-social behaviour. The park has not attracted vandalism or become a haven for substance abuse as predicted. It is therefore  proving a successful landscape-planning trial site. Several derelict sites along the Luas would make ideal locations for small pocket parks or interim parks in the north inner city between Smithfield and the Docklands. These pocket parks need not take up more than the size of an average private city garden to open up a space onto the street, though the larger the park the greater the need for surveillance. Blessington Street Basin, a modest-sized hidden gem close to the Mater Hospital benefits from the presence of parks staff in a depot located in a small cottage on the site. Temporary structures attended by parks maintenance staff, art studios and café kiosks could provide comforting presences within these spaces. In Seattle, through the city’s Land Use Code, they have been actively encouraging the creation of POPS – Private Owned Public Spaces, for several decades. POPS are accompanied by incentives to construct and maintain them on their property. Developers are given additional development rights, often additional permitted building height. The spaces range from rooftop gardens to raised beds with seating similar to the new landscaped promenade in Dún Laoghaire. Some are passive, some active, but all are open to the public with their owners responsible for their maintenance. POPS should not replace parks but can help encourage developers to consider the relationship of office blocks with the streetscape and complement dense development.  Incentives need to be considered for the reinvestment and upkeep of such  spaces lest they risk becoming unattractive and dated spaces. The new North King Street Temporary Park could be incorporated into the architecture of the proposed Grangegorman DIT development as an internal courtyard, or better still be kept as a green frontage where students could congregate. The temporary element to parks and the recent debate about temporary housing solutions offers an opportunity to discuss creative alternative interventions such as ‘Box Park’ in the trendy Shoreditch area of London. Shipping containers were converted into shop units to transform a derelict site into a thriving streetscape. Puma, Starbucks and other leading retail firms have opened outlets in shipping containers converted into creative temporary spaces, around the globe. This notion of transient or interim use is emerging from various design professions from architecture to public art  to landscape architecture to planning, with pop-ups as a form of demonstration. Artists are not strangers to this concept, with the likes of Christo having embraced it since the sixties. In more recent times Marco Casagrande, the award-winning Finnish architect and landscape architect, artist  and environmental activist used landscape as a platform for socio-political comment. Perhaps it was Casagrande’s occupation of a section of road with lawn that inspired ‘Parking Day’ that allows the public to take part in the design of parking spaces creatively for one day each year. Granby Park, a pop-up that was installed for one month in Dublin’s north city, is more adequately described as an artistic installation than urban greening. The Art Tunnel in Smithfield was an earlier pop-up installation combining art and planting, which has now been reconstituted on a derelict site on nearby Mary’s Abbey along the LUAS, behind palisade fencing. On the south side, Clarendon Street is now dressed with street trees in moveable containers as a temporary intervention. And nearby Fade Street has been resurfaced and dressed with containerised trees as a trial solution to the domination of a street by cars, affording tangible benefits to local business. People now spill out onto the road in the evening, transforming the streetscape into a vibrant social hub. Critics of interim use claim they may be wasteful, but perhaps in some cases they can provide powerful tools to evoke dialogue, testing solutions against public feedback. A temporary park for local children lasting for two or three years for example can raise their quality of life during formative years of development. Cities such as Vancouver and San Francisco have recently adopted the concept of the mobile pop-up park with components in moveable planters, raised beds, art and street furniture. This approach puts a positive slant on derelict sites as it provides a solution to the waste element of the pop-up. The park can be moved to various locations without disturbing the root systems of the trees that are donated or planted

By Séamus Maye. Just when it seemed that the Ansbacher scandal had receded into the distant past, up pops Gerard Ryan, a respected civil servant with an explosive dossier. Ryan’s revelations and indeed frustrations, go to the very core of what has passed for Irish politics and institutional regulation for several decades now. The suppression of the Ryan dossier further exposes a reprehensible culture of tolerance of white-collar crime and the clubby and corrosive relationship between big business and politics. This rampant culture underpinned Ireland’s socio-economic collapse and inspires the current unprecedented level of dissatisfaction with establishment parties. Ansbacher facilitated the wealthiest in evading tax. In the early years, the Central Bank rumbled Ansbacher and concluded in a 2002 report that the accounts were created to facilitate tax evasion, though subsequently senior Central Bank lackeys changed the wording in its report from tax evasion to tax avoidance. Despite the Central Bank holding talks with Des Traynor in regard to the cessation of the illegal scheme, it was allowed to operate for another two bold decades. In September 1999, the then Tánaiste, Mary Harney, gave the following excuse for not publishing the Ansbacher names.  “If the Government were to break the law and publish the names, everybody on the list would walk free and prosecutions would not be brought”. So, who were the great and privileged? For starters, Ansbacher was run from the offices of Ireland’s largest company, CRH Plc. The CRH Chairman Des Traynor dominated Ansbacher in tandem with acting as Charles J Haughey’s financial advisor. Eight of fifteen CRH Plc directors held Ansbacher accounts. One director, Jim Culliton, was chairman of the RTé Authority and also a director of Allied Irish Bank. Another CRH director, Michael Dargan, was CEO of Aer Lingus. Yet another director, Tony Barry, held a longstanding directorship of Bank of Ireland and was Deputy Governor from 1997-2000. The connection with CRH has never really been expurgated. The Ansbacher inspectors had this to say about CRH’s involvement with Ansbacher: “The Inspectors are struck by the range of activities carried out on CRH premises and making use of the CRH facilities. Mr Traynor’s activities bore all the hallmarks of banking and he carried out these activities in CRH for almost six years. The range and duration of the activities is suggestive, but no more than that, of the idea that CRH was actually aware of Mr Traynor’s conduct”. It proceeded: “The Inspectors are satisfied that CRH did in fact assist Ansbacher in the carrying out of its business in the manner described above. The question arises however as to whether or not CRH may be said to have done so knowingly or unknowingly. The Inspectors have already concluded that there is evidence tending to show that Ansbacher was guilty of the criminal offence of carrying on unlicensed banking business within the State contrary to the Central Bank Act, 1971 and the Central Bank Act, 1989. If the Inspectors conclude that CRH knowingly assisted Ansbacher in the carrying out of its business in Ireland then there would be evidence tending to show that CRH was also guilty of the criminal offence of carrying on an unlicensed banking business within the State by virtue of having aided and abetted Ansbacher to do so. One who aids and abets, by virtue of Section 8 of the Accessories and Abettors Act, 1861 and Section 7(1) of the Criminal Law Act, 1997 is to be treated as a principal offender. The Inspectors will consider therefore the evidence suggestive of knowing assistance and the evidence suggestive of unwitting assistance”. In the event, the inspectors found that CRH did not knowingly assist Ansbacher. On any objective perusal, this was an astonishing finding, given all of the circumstances, the effect of which was to let CRH off the hook in relation to criminal charges, which would have had serious implications for its stock exchange status and indeed for its directors and shareholders. CRH has also been the beneficiary of an extraordinary catalogue of failures to act, by a range of State institutions including the ODCE, Moriarty Tribunal, Garda Síochána, Competition Authority and Revenue Commissioners. Over the years this failure to act has turned into outright protection. In February 2000, Mary Harney gave an undertaking that the authorities would carry out a comprehensive investigation into anti-competitive practices at CRH, but this has never happened. Patrick Massey, then head of the Competition Authority, resigned his position that very same month stating:  “it is no longer possible for me to continue as director of competition enforcement due to the failure to provide adequate resources to enable me to do the job properly. My experience has convinced me  that price-fixing cartels represent a serious widespread problem in this country…the resources available are wholly inadequate for carrying out the sort of complex and highly intensive investigations that are required to obtain evidence”. Massey went on to say, “certain complaints made to me in recent months involve matters that would occupy four or five staff full-time for the best part of a year. I simply do not have such staff resources and given the very real concerns expressed to me by the complainants as to the consequences for them if the matter is not pursued properly, I have concluded that it is simply not possible to pursue the matter”. Court challenges have proved gruelling. The ‘Framus’ proceedings began in 1996 and there is still no end in sight. Goode Concrete initiated proceedings in 2010. That’s twenty-two years of aggregated litigation with hardly a blow landed. Both sets of proceedings allege a web of competition law breaches, most of which run parallel to findings made by the EU Commission and subsequently upheld by the EU Court of First Instance and the European Court of Justice. The proceedings continue to founder on a sea of relentless procedural delay and legal costs. At present, both plaintiff parties are locked in procedural combat over allegations of objective bias on the part of retired Judge

By Caroline Hurley Ebola was first identified in 1976 in Sudan in a cotton factory, with bats suspected as the reservoir species. The disease typically occurs in outbreaks in tropical regions of sub-Saharan Africa, though also in Venezuela, Cambodia and Indonesia. The largest outbreak so far is the ongoing epidemic in West Africa, which is centred in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and has occasioned 16,203 reported cases and 7,275 deaths. President Obama has called it “a horrific disease”, “a public health emergency”. The international community has been providing aid, especially after the death of Duncan Thomas in the US in early October. The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs donated €200,000 in November. The paranoia and the stigma associated with Ebola are nothing new – they parallel historic, and some contemporary, reactions to leprosy. Moreover the historic primary incubator for both is poverty While Ebola is a virus, leprosy is a bacterial infection. The incubation period of ebola is two days to three weeks while the incubation period for leprosy is around five years. And while Ebola is highly infectious, 95 per cent of people have natural immunity to leprosy. Unlike the Ebola virus, leprosy itself seldom leads to death. It is a disease of the skin and nerves that, if untreated, often led to a lifetime of severe disfigurement. There was no effective medical treatment until the development of the drug dapsone in the 1940s. But as yet there is no effective treatment for Ebola. With luck and vigilance Ebola will never reach Ireland, but leprosy affected millions of people all over the world, including here. Just 150 years ago, in January 1864, notice of the death of a young woman from leprosy appeared in the Limerick Reporter & Tipperary Vindicator. Leper houses in Limerick and Waterford were mentioned. Leprosy predominated as Ireland’s national disease since at least the time of St Patrick who, like St Brigid, healed lepers. Indeed it was widespread until quicker killers such as the plague, tuberculosis and famines claimed more casualties. Although in 1970 there were over ten million cases, the World Health Organisation (WHO) now estimates that globally less than 200,000 people have leprosy, including 400 new cases annually in the US. Aid workers contest the figure and the methodology used to reach it. The WHO definition of cure, bacterial negativity, disregards complex after-effects, and only entitles patients using multi-drug-treatment (MDT) to be registered. Stigma still poses an obstacle to treatment-seeking – and the statistics. Moving into his new office Ireland’s Minister for Health, Leo Varadkar. may have been aware of the reputation Hawkins House has as a sick building, but less enlightened about other facets of its history. For centuries the area hosted a residence for lepers. Until 1815, Townsend Street, which adjoins Hawkins Street, was known as Lazar’s Hill. The so-called “lane leading to the Long Stone”, beside the Viking harbour built in 841 became known as Lazar’s Hill after 1220 when Henry of London, Archbishop of Dublin, established a ‘lazaretto’, a quarantine station for maritime travellers. This particular hospice sheltered leprous pilgrims sailing to Santiago de Compostela for a miracle cure. Immigrants assumed infected were probably quarantined there too. Floods and storms wreaked periodic damage on ‘Lazy Hill’ until 1662 when William Hawkins had a wall built, running from Corn Exchange Place to modern-day Temple Bar. As detailed in Gerard A Lee’s 1968 book, ‘Leprosy and Leper Hospitals in Ireland’, many place names refer to patron saints associated with leprosy, such as Mary Magdalene, Lawrence, Nicholas, Stephen and Lazarus/Bethany (‘beloved of Christ’, a term  often applied to lepers). Place names reflect the Irish word for infirm or leper, lobbar – Knocknalour, Dromalour, Flowerhill. Many townlands recall the old word for hospital and hotel – spital. Several other Dublin hospitals specifically catered for leprosy cases. St Stephen’s Hospital, which gave St Stephen’s Green its name, was situated on Diggis Lane where Mercer’s Hospital was subsequently built. The intended transfer to lands bought at aptly-titled Leopardstown (lepers’ town, Baile An Lobhar) never took place. The Order of Hospitaller Knights of Jerusalem ran leper-houses in Kilmainham, and Chapelizod, meaning ‘leper church’/ Séipéal an Lazar. Leprosy is called The Great Disease in both Sanskrit (maha rog) and Anglo-Saxon (seo mycle ail). The Indo-European word for the condition – leper – means something that peels off. It is liber, for tree bark, in Latin. Sometimes normally-aloof aristocrats were spurred to compassion by the affliction, as necessity dictated. Around 1230, Cashel Leper Hospital was built by Sir David Latimer after his daughter contracted it. King John set up St Stephen’s Leper Hospital in Waterford when he and his family erupted in sores. In history, leprosy became endemic around the river Nile from 3000 B.C, dreaded as the ‘death before death’. Jesus famously cleansed and healed a leper, in the New Testament of the Christian bible. The first-century physician, Aretus, bemoaned callous public attitudes to lepers. By the time of the Crusades, the disease had reached epidemic proportions in Europe, provoking laws requiring exclusion and isolation, in line with seventh-century decrees restricting leper marriage. Banished individuals were obliged to broadcast warnings, wear long cowls, and sound bells or wooden clappers when others approached, after undergoing living funeral ceremonies. Whoever refused to go, to beg and forage for a precarious existence, could be harshly dealt with by statute, even put to death. Mere guesswork passed for most clinical diagnosis. The rise of leper houses in towns across Europe started in earnest when early Church Councils in the sixth century committed to the cause. As early as 869 Arlaf the Dane recorded the destruction of leper houses in Ireland. Some blamed the Irish for an outbreak in Norway after Viking raids here around 1000 A.D. Leprosy rapidly spread from the tenth century and claimed 10-50 victims per thousand at its thirteenth-century peak before retreating. The 273 leper houses in England, rapidly becoming redundant, had mutated into almshouses by the fourteenth century, harbouring hardly any leprosy cases. The suppression