Like Carsten Höller, the German installation artist, I too look forward to a future in which playground slides become a feature of mainstream architecture, writes Frank McNally
Höller is the man responsible for the giant sliding-tubes in London's Tate Modern: one of them 55 metres long, with a drop of 27 metres, down which museum visitors can hurtle at 30 miles per hour. But the installation is a mere "experiment", he insists, to test public attitudes towards a wider application of the technology.
His long-term ambitions include building slides to connect shopping centres with tube stations, and the offices of British MPs with the House of Commons. Apart from their efficiency as a mode of transport, Höller sees psychological benefits in the exhilaration slides produce. "Going down can be like being under the influence of a drug," he says.
For a potential Irish scenario, one thinks immediately of Liberty Hall. Imagine this: a harassed union official leaves his office on the 14th floor, weighed down with care about workers' rights at the new Ryanair-owned Aer Lingus. Almost absent-mindedly, he slips into the recently built glass-and-steel tube that now winds around the building.
Ten seconds of white-knuckle descent later, he is spat on to the footpath at Eden Quay, startling pigeons and passers-by. He picks up his briefcase, from which he became separated somewhere around the seventh floor, and straightens his tie. Suddenly full of happiness-inducing endorphins, he heads for the airport, ready to face Michael O'Leary.
Höller's slides are attracting large numbers to the Tate. But their popularity with adults should be no surprise. Speaking of the airport: who among us, nervously scanning the safety instruction card before a flight, has not experienced a secret thrill at the sight of that diagram showing passengers sliding down an inflatable chute? The prospect of Höller's ideas being adopted by architects is not as fanciful as it might seem. Already, he has built a giant slide at the headquarters of the fashion company Prada, connecting company boss Miuccia Prada's personal office with her car-park. But as Dublin goes high-rise in the coming years, we have a unique opportunity to get in at the cutting edge of this technology.
Perhaps the Government could lead the way, and in the process steal a march on the House of Commons. How much more fun Irish politics would be if Bertie Ahern arrived for Leader's Questions via a slide from Government Buildings? One can almost hear his boyish laughter, merging with that of his bestest pal Michael (who would be down the tube just after him) as they tumbled into the chamber, fit for anything.
The question of whether the Tate's slide exhibition is art need not concern us here. One long-time critic has urged the museum's director to go the whole hog, get rid of the few genuine cultural exhibits he still has, and turn the place into a theme park. He may well have a point.
But that critic makes a (probably unintentional) second point. Which is that, at a time when actual children's playgrounds are becoming ever-more safe and boring, thanks to a combination of over-protective parents and litigation-fearing local authorities, it is curiously apt that we should be putting slides in museums.
Like many such trends, the compensation-proofing of playgrounds started in the US. We're just getting the backwash of it here. Probably the only thing that has saved Ireland from its worst effects is that we had no proper playgrounds to start with.
I'm not suggesting, for instance, that the OPW should put a 55-metre slide in that little excuse-for-a-playground in St Stephen's Green. For one thing, it wouldn't fit. If they could squeeze it in, children using it would be shot into the nearby duck-pond. But an amnesty on see-saws and rocking horses, which have been disappearing from Irish playgrounds at an alarming rate, would be a start.
Parental and official risk aversion - some schools now even ban running in the yard - are adding to the effects of junk food. God help us if the trend towards childhood obesity coincides with the rise of slides in architecture. We could yet see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-type scenarios in which real-life Augustus Gloops get stuck in the tubes and have to be removed by the Oompa-Loompas. Ouch!
But seriously, there is a movement in the US now to reclaim playgrounds from the lawyers. And the backlash has begun here too. Only last week, the education spokesman for the Democratic Unionist Party - himself a former teacher - demanded action to reverse the "mad" health and safety rules in the North's schools.
It's not every day one has the chance to quote Sammy Wilson as a rock of sense. So it's all the more reassuring to hear him stress the importance of playground "rough and tumble" in a child's formation. "Inevitably children will fall at times and may skin their knees and elbows, but that is part of growing up," he told the Belfast Telegraph.
It's a whole other issue, of course. But all reasonable people will hope that, having themselves enjoyed the benefits of growing up, the DUP and other Northern talks participants can reach agreement over the next few weeks. It would be nice to think that maturity will also prevail when the parties reconvene on the great hill of Stormont. Which, incidentally, would be the perfect place for a slide.