Re: Re: Dublin Street Lighting

It’s simply baffling that over a million euro was spent on the Bus Gate project, with zero improvement – in fact resulting in a net disimprovement – in the aesthetics of the capital’s flagship civic space. No rationalisation whatever of lighting was conducted; not even the car park lighting outside Trinity, as Stephen mentions, being removed. Truly a monument to a lack of joined-up thinking.

The new lamp standard on the median is now the third model of its type in the city, the other two being positioned at Cornmarket and the junction of Harcourt Street and Adelaide Road. As mentioned, these are recycled O’Connell Street median tripartite branches, sprayed crass Celtic Tiger silver, Sony Bravia style, with new lamps affixed atop. The lamps give off good light, but are too flimsy relative to the column bulk for the standard to be correctly proportioned (a problem also generated by the tight clustering of the arms), and to generate the gravitas demanded of a street standard. And of course it is completely random, so either way it jarrs unduly.

Meanwhile, the famous seahorse standards guarding Grattan languish as ever with chipped paint, dirty glass lamps, and cumbersome domestic CFL globes competing with their decorative detailing during the day, and giving off a dull glow by night. Such a shame.

Need it even be reiterated that College Green deserves so much more. Is there no pride in the Lighting Division at all? They don’t even seem to have a legacy of rose-tinted information pamphlets and exhibitions extolling their grand projects, past and present, so beloved of other local authority departments. Indeed, it took Derry O’Connell of An Taisce to write, publish and illustrate the definitive guide to the city’s historic lighting back in the 1980s. Now is the time, more than ever, to be reusing, recycling and showcasing this stock on the city’s streets!