Madam, - I have no doubt that all parties concerned wish to see a real improvement in the human environment of the main street of our capital city. However, I regard it as most regrettable that the London Plane trees which were a feature of O'Connell Street for so many years have been arbitrarily removed to such an extent that to attempt to save the remaining clumps at each end of the street would probably make matters worse.
While I applaud the fact that Dublin Corporation at least has decided to make an energetic intervention into O'Connell Street and wish it well in the task, I deplore the destruction of the trees - which may indeed reveal the façades of some fine buildings such as Clerys, the Gresham Hotel and the GPO, but will also expose the jumble of architectural mediocrity which most of O'Connell Street has become.
It strikes me as extraordinary that among the items replacing the trees should be an electric sub-station for the Luas. It is now generally recognised the Luas will have little effect on the traffic situation except giving pleasure to your environmental correspondent, Frank McDonald, and perhaps absorbing the increase in passenger numbers between now and its completion date. The only viable solution for Dublin's traffic is the construction of an underground railway system. I take little pleasure in hearing my former critics on this issue now queuing up to take over this position as if it were their own.
I was interested to hear one of the planners say the intention was to create a more pleasant space for the public in O'Connell Street by removing traffic circulation. That is fine and dandy unless one notices the consequent displacement effect, which is to create traffic jams from 8 o'clock in the morning from one end of North Great Georges Street to the other.
This was the first significant street to be reclaimed for residential use by a group of pioneers some 20 to 30 years ago. It seems bizarre to dislodge traffic from a commercial street only to force it down a residential street. It is certainly, as the late Sean O'Casey might have said, "A peculiar way to reward us".
May I also say that to treat O'Connell Street in isolation will never work. Adjacent streets such as Parnell Street (which is a scab on the face of the city) must be dealt with urgently. It is astonishing that the stretch of Parnell Street from the monument to Gardiner Street, which is bang in the centre of the Taoiseach's own constituency, should be allowed to exist in its present state. Moreover, I would like to know what the judiciary (and the police) are doing about conditions in this area.
Judges these days do not hesitate to criticise politicians but appear to feel themselves to be above criticism. I would like to know the justification for judges rubber-stamping licences for bars in which gun attacks have taken place or in which customers have been knifed, which regularly break the licensing laws, which cause nuisance to the neighbours, which feature lap-dancing etc., or for the licensing by judges and planners of gaming palaces which attract teenagers and drug abusers.
Unless the problems in places like Parnell Street are attacked in a clear and determined fashion I am very much afraid the Corporation will be wasting its energy. - Yours, etc.,
Senator DAVID NORRIS,
Seanad Éireann,
Baile Átha Cliath, 2.