Sir, – Frank McNally’s piece on the Civil Service Dining Club (An Irishman’s Diary, May 13th) brought back memories. He was unsure if the clientele were all civil servants. I can assure him that they definitely were not.
With others, I first patronised the CSDC in the mid-1960s when I was a student in UCD, Earlsfort Terrace. Even then it seemed a relic of a bygone age.
Our student garb contrasted with the jackets and ties of the civil servants. At lunchtime, one sometimes had to queue for a table. We students particularly stuck out then, yet nobody suggested that we should leave.
Lunchtime visits were rare; we would get a high tea back in our student digs later on in the evening. The CSDC also offered evening meals, something I availed of in the years after graduation and becoming a teacher and before marriage.
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It was much quieter in the evening and the standard offering of bacon, egg and chips, tea, bread and butter was a welcome preface to a night out. Like Frank McNally, my last meal there was in 1985, when I was briefly seconded to the then Curriculum and Examinations Board in nearby Adelaide Road.
A few years afterwards, being in the area, I decided to have an evening tea there. I was peremptorily stopped at the gate and was told that the CSDC had closed “for security reasons”. – Yours, etc,
TERRY DOLAN,
Castleknock,
Dublin 15.
