Menu
Ireland's political and cultural magazine
Dublin’s Markets Area
k e n m c c u e
O’Connell Street and
Collins Barracks in Dublin City was, in
, christened the HARP (Historic Area
Rejuvenation Plan) area and proposed for reju-
venation by Dublin City Council. Unfortunately
the Council did not set up a development
authority, it gave its plan no proper status in
the planning process, and it spent a fraction of
the amount of the public funds that had been
made available to the much smaller Temple Bar,
immediately beside it across the River Liffey. As
a result, the area finds itself, after the longest
boom in the history of the country, with a built
legacy of little more than thousands of mostly
third-rate private apartments and a com-
munity centre. It is still the least green area
in the State. It still has no pitches, no swim-
ming pool, no major cultural facility. In recent
weeks – and even before the Bord Snip cuts kick
in - once again the community of this Markets’
Area of Dublin has been shortchanged with the
announcement that the final phase of HARP has
been scrapped. Known locally as the ‘Barcelona
Project’ after the Catalan-based group of plan-
ners and architects who created the scheme, the
last piece of the regeneration jigsaw was to fit
out the Markets area between Smithfield and
Capel/Greek Streets with mixed-use social,
sporting, cultural amenities.
While some Dublin City communities now
have state of the art social and sports’ facili-
ties, the North West Inner City is again, to be
overlooked. Ringsend already has a first–
class public facility which includes: full-size
(FIFA approved) artificial turf football pitch,
a full-size grass pitch with tartan running
track, dressing rooms and fully equipped
gym. Across the city, Dublin City Council and
the Ballyfermot community have just opened a
superb complex there with an Olympic stand-
ard m swimming pool.
The area within a mile of Smithfield
produced, over the years, football players
at different international levels, including of
course Johnny Giles. Since this was achieved
without a pitch in sight, it might be argued that
‘talent will out’ and that street football is the best
way to develop basic skills. This may have been
the case in the days of Roy of the Rovers, but
in order to develop the holistic sports person
and sports hobbyist alike, properly designed
infrastructure has to be in place and model
schemes like the Ballyfermot Leisure Complex
will contribute to the elimination of obesity,
build capacity of the local sports clubs and
contribute in no small way to reduction in crime.
Since the demise decades ago of our ‘local’
public swimming pool at Iveagh Baths where
many a Market’s kid learned to swim through
bleach-laced hot water, it seems that the pools
at ‘Ballyer’ and Tara Street – both worlds away
in city terms – are the only options.
The space earmarked by the local commu-
nity for an all-weather football pitch, the site of
the now-razed Fish Market has now been trans-
formed by Dublin City Council into a surface
car park which is, somewhat implausibly, des-
ignated a ‘park and ride’ facility for the Luas.
This is redolent of some of the scorched earth
policies of the old Dublin Corporation that we
hoped had been eliminated.
The unprecedented boom should have been
payback time for this inner city community
starved of investment for the guts of two cen-
turies. Instead central and local government
have together cheated it - by bad planning.
The provision of sports’ facilities is a prior-
ity. It is clear from the recent research as part
of the Sport against Racism Ireland ‘Count Us
In’ cultural and social integration through
sport project revealed that there is considerable
demand in local schools for sports facilities.
The study, carried out by Dr Alberto Dionigi
of Bologna University in Italy and funded by
HARP, proved that there is an increased
and urgent need for sports’ facilities in local
schools. It is recommended that the demand
would incorporate comprehensive multiple
pitches designed for Futsal, Olympic Handball,
Basketball, Volleyball and Boxing. It is interest-
ing to note that the variety of sports and call to
action result from the fact that our local schools’
population has over % coming from diverse
non-Irish ethnic backgrounds, many of whom
come from countries where sports feature
prominently in school programmes. It never
ceases to amaze some of our African students
that some of the sports’ facilities in their devel-
oping countries are superior to what we, “one
of the wealthiest economies in Europe”, have
in the Markets’ Area.
Ken Mc Cue is chairman of the Intercultural Work Group of the
Dublin North West Inner City Network.
’ ’
-
–
Dublin City Council replaced the attractive Fish Markets
with a surface car -park not playing pitches
PHOTO: PHOTOCALL IRELAND
village_oct_09.indd 21 27/10/2009 15:37:57
