Cute Panda

@The Willinator wrote:

All jokes aside their future in the league is in serious jeopardy at the moment.

I assume you are talking about Bohs, Rovers, Linfield, Glentoran, Derry City, Saint Pats, Drogheda, Galway, Newry and Cork City breaking away to form an All-Ireland Super League. I know tis might be bad news for smaller LOI and IL clubs, but for most soccer supporters in this country this is dream cone true. The small clubs would have something major to try and get into. Everyone wins.

Anyways well done Rovers for winning against the incredible biggotry which some elements within Tallaght GAA showed in recent years. Was like something out of “The Ban” years. The morons in Thomas Davis may well have financially ruined their club considering they have t pay costs now. Proper order too.

@CC105 wrote:

[/I][/I]
Will London’s crossrail project be finished before our interconnector -place your bets?:(

Most likely, but more disturbing it has now been confirmed that there will be 5 empty trains each way a day between Claremorris and Athenry before then, and this is without a doubt the greatest scandal regarding the T21 project. Irish Rail managers and engineers are standing in the bogs of Mayo when they should be everywhere else instead. It’s partly political, but also partly cowardice on behalf of IE engineering. That like nice easy gigs. It’s a disgrace.

I spoke to a someone recently and asked why the Interconnector was last on the T21 timetable. I was assuming that part of the reason was waiting for uncle arthur to sell up shop and move. But she said no. It’s down to two things. CIE are completely out of their depth with this project and for this reason the Government is holding off on the chequebook. CIE bit off way more than they could chew pushing the Interconnector alighnment – they simply do not have the experience nor team to build it. They also widly underestimated the cost of building it. 5-8 billion is a number which is being thrown around. The government want to build the Interconnector, but they have no faith in CIE/Irish Rail to pull it off.

I feel it is very unlikely the Interconnector will ever be built and I suspect a east-west metro line will replace it at some point and Irish Rail may have no choice but to use the PPT. I would nearly bet money RPA will take over the Interconenctor concept as soon as Metro North is near completion and the CIE Interconnector ends up are MetroCentral or something. Even though I am a huge fan of Metros, I would be sad to not see the DART Underground go ahead, but it would be better than nothing.

another interesting side note is that a train station is included on the draft development plan for Glasnevin Jct and Croke Park which suggests that CIE are working on the PPT line behind the scenes. Smells of a hidden defeat to me.

Bottom line: The Interconnector as proposed by CIE is looking terminally ill. Claremorris will be “the Grand Central Station of the Irish railway network” and not Stephens Green.

You have to wonder if half of these NIMBYs are GAA plants sent in there to wreck the “other codes” stadium. Look what is happening out in Tallaght with the GAA mullahs trying to destroy Shamrock Rovers by placing endless injunctions on their stadium. It’s like something from the Ban years – absolutely sickening. You cannot put anything beyond some elements within the “broken glass speaders” of the GAA. Huge numbers of that organisation are still in a War of Independence mode.

A building height and land-use master-plan be drawn up for the lands around Dublin Bay in partnership with the communities, general public and users of the Bay

Personally, I think the PD plan is better. Just build a spectacular high rise entrance to the Liffey and move the port to Balbriggan. Easy.

PRESS RELEASE

East-on-Water Steering Committee Demands The Opening of the Eastern Fish Corridor

Decades of Government prejudice against the landlocked regions of this country have finally come to and end with the formation of the East-on-Water Community Campaign which demands that the Killybegs Fishing Fleet be decentralised, and that these landlocked regions be given their fair share of the government investment in the marine fishing industry.

Central to this plan is the construction of the Eastern Fish Corridor – a new waterway connecting the Royal and Grand Canals across the Bog of Allen.

East-on-Water demands that the Midlands gets it fair share of the trawlers, fishing crates, lobster pots and nets which Government policy over several decades has concentrated on developing in Donegal while ignoring the enormous potential for larges catches of Minnows, Frogs and Rats in Mid-Eastern Leinster. The construction of the very viable Eastern Fish Corridor represents a sea change in government fisheries policy. It finally puts an end to the “Donegal Mindset”.

The East on Water steering committee has recently issued an expert working report, which outlines the phased opening of the Eastern Fish Corridor.

Phase One: 2006 – First Donegal Trawler is decentralised along with it crew to the pond in Stephens Green.

Phase 2: 2007 – The construction begins on the Eastern Fish Corridor through the bog of Allen to Edenderry – this will coincide with large stocks of live cod, herring and haddock being decentralised from the North Atlantic basin and released into the Royal and Grand Canals.

Phase 3: 2008 – Minister Pat “the Cope” Gallagher is beseeched by the East on Water steering committee to complete the project and decentralises the last of the over congested Donegal fishing fleet to the Midlands.

Phase Four: 2009 – The East on Water committee completely loses interest in fishing and leaves the Irish taxpayers to pick up the bill.

Said Independent TD Paranoid McHysterical of the East-on-Water Steering Committee. “The Eastern Fish Corridor finally gives the landlocked regions of this country a fair share of the Marine Fisheries Industry and makes perfect economic sense. Trawlers will be able to fish in the Midlands and deliver their catch while avoiding the Ballyshannon bottleneck. Decades of Government favouritism towards Donegal has meant that the deprived children of the Midlands have never even seen a deep water fishing trawler and we pay our taxes too and deserve our fair share of the fish pie”

ENDS

I honestly don’t know what this obsession is with running the Luas down O’Connell Street if the end product is to integrate with the Maynooth line. Swing a spur off the Red Line near the Four Courts and up Consititution Hill and on towards Liffey Junction. Problem solved, no need to tear up O’Connell Street.

We have to get away from this An Larism. I am a massive fan of Luas and want to see it cover as much of the city and suburbs as possible, but sending it down O’Connell Street to connect with the Maynooth line when the same thing can be achieved by routing though Broadstone or the old canal aligment is just plain silly.

Had a feeling A was already chosen.

I am delighted to see that so far Route B is the favourite in the poll. The potenial of this option leaped off the map pages of the RPA brouchure when I first saw it. The intergration with Pearse has fantastic potential and it penetrates into a region of the city which needs Luas and which has a sizable residential population with huge commerical and tourist traffic.

I am a huge fan of Luas and considering that the system (which is unconnected – cheers Mary O’Rouke and petty shopkeepers) is still carrying a staggering 22 million passengers a year is truly remarkable. Even more considering that the Red Line trams are only 30M long thus far and there is a 20% spare capcity on them which just requires adding 10M sections.

I would like to see Option B with the Green Line 40M trams running via Pearse to Hueston. This will create a secondary surface Intconnector for local rail traffic between the Stephens Green and Hueston with the DART underground Interconnector handling the express rail between these two points below ground.

I really do hope this option gets selected – if not then option A, but man it would be shame not to have it serve Pearse. This would make Pearse a more important station and perhaps take some capacity off the loop line by having Goery/Rosslare trains terminate in Pearse (in the unused bay platform) rather than Connolly and free up space on the Loop Line for more DART.

We really are heading for a fantastic rail based transport system for Dublin if we follow though with Transport21.

In anyevent, the project from start to finish took only about 5 years helped by the modular construction and an on site fabrication plant.

There was a field out the airport road were unused and spare segments of the towers were lying in grass for years. You could really see how they flats really were a big Airfix kit made of concrete. I beleive the original design came from France and there are few Ballymun’s in several Frence cities.

The only problem was that there was no plan at all for what to do with the people when they were out there.

It was just like Tallaght 20 years later. There was an assumption that these people would somehow fend for themselves. It was really weird in many ways – like the Corpo expected some form of Natural Selection to take over.

CP will remember that there was only the one church untill the late 70’s when two more were built and then a third in 83 and that mass was held in the school halls. The swimming pool was only built because of local pressure and also the Library.

Saint Pappins was the first church which was a relic from Famine and people would stand in the rain outside. Then they built the Holy Spirit and then the Virgin one on Shangan Road. Do you recall when the Holy Spirifirst opened. They held the first mass and people from Ballymun were left outside in the rain while Corpo dignataries went inside.

I can recall that Pat Quinn, when nobody else was interested in Ballymun, least of all the government opened a Supermarket there, created loads of jobs. Ironically the greedy capitalists had more interest in Ballymun than the so called liberal and social justice crowd. My life long hatred of that middle class plaything called socialism started with that.

Repairs and maintenance were barely adequate and there were long waiting lists.

I can recall central heating pipes which burst in the basement of the flats which would be spewing hot water out for weeks on end.

The public transport system was poor. The 36 36a/b routes operated from Parnell Square and while CP is right about the single deck operation there were plenty of Duoble deckers in the 70’s. When the Bonbardier buses came in all of the routes became single deck. People often walked to Santry or Glasnevin to get a 16 or 19A.

or as far as the Swords Road for the 33 or 42.

CP will remember that there was a track worn out on the ground by people walking from the bus stop at the roundabout to the shopping centre as no-one wanted to sue the underpass and the sixty crazy steps. It was muddy and dangerous. It took 15 years for the corporation to actaully put some tarmack on it and turn it into a proper path. This is a good example of who the corporation took no notice at all of this place which they were the landlords of. CP will also remember that there were rose gardens in the middle of the old roundabout. These were also done away with, why? Ask the landlord.

It was amazing how many years the roses lasted around the edge and in the four circles. There was something very poetic about that.

The real main reason why Ballymun went bad was the building of Poppintree and later the Coultree houses. Most of those houses were taken by people in the flats who moved out en masse. Eventually in 1987 we also did likewise. By then, in a 96 flat block only 17 were occupied. My brother and I counted the number of empty flats on Balcurris on day in 1989. There were 80 occupied flats in the entire road of over 500 flats.

You could go up to the Corpo at the time and just say you were thrown out of you house by your parents and they would give you the keys to a flat. I did that when I came back from a stint in Austria and I got a 3 bedroom flat for myself, my girlfreind and a mate. We had a band at the time and used to practice in an empty flat across the hall with the amps and everything going full blast. We were the only occupants on that floor.

A lot is made of the heroin epedemic. It was real but not worse then in other parts of the city. People strung out on heroin were not the reason why there were so many empty flats.

I would agree with that. And other thing too and I swear this is true – every junkie I knew in Ballymun was not from Ballymun. There were nice respectable middle class boys and girls who ended up there. I can honestly say I never met one skaghead from Ballymun who was from the flats. There were all blow ins from Santry, Artane etc. In fact, i recall one day this well dressed guy knocking on the doors and showing a picture of his daughter and asking if anybody seen here. Turns out I knew her, she was a junkie and her day was a big shot in Aer Rinta.

The reason was that the go-getters who were the people who led the campaigns for the area all moved on elsewhere. The reason is down to the refusal of the landlord to properly maintain the flats. When I was an apprentice Solicitor I had the joy of seeing a former neighbour in Balcurris taking an action against the landlord due to the damp and mould in the flat whcih was affecting her ashmatic son. My old flat had water appearing in the cormers where the prefabs joined up whenever it rained so it want just basic maintenace it was structural.

This was very common and the reason I got out completely inthe end. The condensation of the central heating hitting the cracked joints in the walls destroyed a lot of the flats in the end and made them unlivable for all but the most down and out.

An interesting sub note you might all find interesting. The original tenants all had to pass an interview to be placed in the flats.

Oh yes, I can remember my parents talking about it. At the time they were planning to emigrate to Australia and they were far more pleased to be accepted into Ballymun than be granted visas for Australia.

It really goes to prove that a community does not just happen by itself and it takes a lot of social planning and rolling investment to make it successful.

@murphaph wrote:

The NSS is dead and it was a good idea.

It had to be sacrificed to – it was “a Dublin Mindset”.

Could you imagine if a Dublin poltician went down to Clare and told them that their road deaths are high and the tourists are staying away from your county because of a “rural mindset” – there would be murder and yet people in Dublin watched a budget speech delivered by a Minister of Finance which attacks people in Dublin in a bigoted manner as if was his patriotic duty, while Farmer Bertie sitting there beside this gobshite nodding in agreement.

McCreevy is the rural Finance Minister who for almost 4 years withheld the money needed for the Dublin Metro, Interconnector and Luas extenions treating them as if they were luxury projects, while at the same time he threw cash at the horsey crowd.

You just couldn’t make this stuff up even if you tried.