Sir, - I remain a long term admirer of Frank McDonald's work and think he makes some fair points in his article (April 21st) about the lagerfication of Temple Bar at the expense of the once vaunted social housing and retail elements - anyone remember the largest Benetton store outside of Italy which was to be based in our would be Left Bank? However, I believe that his residence in the area, allied to his journalistic platform, must cast doubt on the validity of the piece.
Pint quaffing punters of all nationalities or "lager louts" as your correspondent so neatly encapsulates them in his fluent tabloidese are here to stay. One can't help nursing the suspicion that architecturally aware, tastefully clothed chardonnay drinkers typical of your newspaper's key demographic would be the only caste permitted to have a jar within the sacred confines of the area were Frank McDonald to have his way. The fact remains that a number of your reporters have delivered overheated, in hindsight hubristic, advertorials for Temple Bar loft living in the past (pace Uinsionn Mac Dubhghaill and McDonald in particular) and your paper's detachment on this subject is questionable at best.
Frank McDonald is entitled to voice his apprehensions about a drift in the redevelopment of Temple Bar he finds unpalatable, but I regretfully conclude that a reading between the lines of his piece evinces a greater concern for the resale value of his property. - Yours, etc.,
Cathal Brugha Street,
Dublin 1.
Frank McDonald writes: I have never written an "advertorial" in this newspaper on loft living in Temple Bar, or anything else. Neither is it true, as Mr King suggests, that I would prefer if the area was a protected enclave for chardonnay drinkers. If, as he alleges, I was primarily concerned about protecting the value of my home, surely I would have sought to sustain the hype which has enveloped the Temple Bar project? It is hardly in my interest, in that narrow sense, to run down the area in any way. But the truth needed to be told, and that's what I have tried to do.