Sir, - I can hardly believe that the Spencer Dock Company has done it again with its full-page advertisement in your paper (February 2nd), featuring two rusting filing cabinets on an overgrown site in the docklands.
Your readers may be interested to know that the "derelict site" pictured is actually owned by CIE. Shame on CIE for allowing its property sink into such an eyesore. Is there an ulterior motive? CIE is firmly linked with the Spencer Dock developers. One of the oldest tricks in the speculator's book is to let a site become so shabby that you appear to be the knight in shining armour if you put any kind of new building on it. We should expect more from CIE.
And isn't it ironic that the dumped items pictured in the ad are not old prams or household fridges, but two office filing cabinets. Now, I wonder where they came from.
Your readers should also note that the Royal Canal has been temporarily drained to facilitate the works at the canal end of Croke Park, just upstream from Spencer Dock. A drained canal is never a pretty sight.
The ad reads: "You wont find many people living on this 51-acre [site]." No. Because it is an active railway marshalling yard at present!
Let it be stressed yet again that the North Wall community is in favour of healthy development. We warmly welcome plant for the National Conference Centre, which enjoys planning permission. But we do not welcome the proposed 24-storey, high-rise wall of buildings that would back onto Sheriff Street. Such high-rise may be acceptable in Hong Kong or Manhattan, where the sun rises high enough to reach down to the surface of the street. But this proposal, almost one-and-a-half times the height of Liberty Hall, would cast a permanent shadow on the long established, vibrant communities of North Wall and East Wall.
The National Conference Centre is being used as a decoy in this deal to distract attention from the mammoth high-rise blocks, in much the same way as the three-card-trick man works at a fair. When are the Spencer Dock developers going to stop these exercises in public misinformation and give fair play to the dockland communities? - Yours, etc.,
John Wall, Parish Priest, Church of St Laurence O'Toole, Sheriff Street, Dublin 1.