Merrion Square park is a "mess" that has become "an incoherent repository for fatuous, opportunistic, politically correct kitsch", according to a leading town planner. Mr Fergal MacCabe, a past president of the Irish Planning Institute, claims Dublin City Council has "destroyed" the original character and design of the park. Paul Cullen reports.
As a result, he says, the square has turned into "a repository for myriad pieces of second-rate sculpture and semi-tombstones commemorating tree-plantings by minor dignitaries".
Officially named Archbishop Ryan Park, the 11-acre terrain in the heart of Georgian Dublin is owned by the Catholic Church but leased to the city. Aside from its flowerbeds and tree-lined walks, it is dotted with numerous statues, the best known being that of Oscar Wilde.
Mr MacCabe is opposed to plans to allow public access to the park in nearby Fitzwilliam Square, on which his offices are located. At present, only local residents and offices have keys to this park and its tennis courts.
The Fitzwilliam Square park, he says, is an attractive, recreational space maintained to the highest standards by local people. "It harmonises with the architecture of Fitzwilliam Square and is a premier tourist destination."
In contrast, Merrion Square had become a "football ground" since it was opened to the public and then filled with "fussy municipal flowerbeds".
Mr MacCabe claims this is "clear testimony to the inability of the city council's parks department to design and manage a significant, historic urban park of this kind".
Mountjoy Square, whose park is also managed by the council, was "just as bad", he said. "In fact, I cannot think of any new garden or park designed by the parks section of Dublin City Council which displays a competent, let alone sophisticated, design approach or which has any aesthetic merit."
Mr MacCabe has "strenuously objected" to the proposed inclusion in the next draft development plan for Dublin of an objective "to seek to provide fully public access to and the management of Fitzwilliam Square Park".
Fitzwilliam Square was likely to be "vandalised" if the council "gets their hands" on the park. The result would be "a deterioration in the character and quality of the last intact Georgian square in the city".
A council spokesman said it was unable to comment until the development plan was finalised next year.