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There was an interesting tidbit in the Irish Times today saying that planning is being sought for a seven-storey 99-bed hotel on a site at Ormond Quay, Charles St West and Ormond Square.
This derelict site has been a real sore point for the City Council for years as it’s an obvious blackspot, which is all-too visible from the City Manager’s balcony.
Anyway, good to see something is finally happening. It certainly has the space to do something really daring. I can’t see that happening but it’s one of those sites where anything would be better than what’s there.
The developers are Pierse Contracting if anyone did have access to the models/plans.

The unemployment rate was 4.3% last year: Ref: http://www.indexmundi.com/ireland/unemployment_rate.html
There are actually 13,000 heroin addicts in Dublin but on the basis that not all of them are in the city centre (although it often seems like that) I rounded the figure down. Ref: http://www.finegael.ie/fine-gael-news.cfm/NewsID/22150/action/detail/year/2005/month/7/level/page/aid/186/
No exact figures are available for unfilled jobs but 50,000 isn’t even the tip of the iceberg.
I have every sympathy for an unemployed person in the West of Ireland or along the Border where there may not actually be any jobs but there is little excuse for being jobless in Dublin.
“In 2000, it was estimated that there were 60,000 unfilled jobs in the Irish economy and that Ireland needed to attract 270,000 employees into the workforce over the next six years to sustain even modest levels of economic growth.” Ref: http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/inimr-ri.nsf/en/gr107272e.html

I’m not even sure the Boardwalk should extend down the length of Ormond Quay. The less populated each section becomes, the more unsavoury the characters frequenting it.
The amount of anti-social activity they attract is beyond belief.
On two separate occasions in the last fortnight, I have seen people urinating through the railings during the afternoon.
Every bum and junkie congregates on Eden Quay and people skulling cans and bottles of beer are more common than coffee drinkers.
The Ormond Quay extension would become a/ a waiting room for gougers waiting for a court apperance and b/ outdoor smoking areas for the people who spend all night and morning drinking in the early houses along the quays and Chancery Street.

That seems to be part of what’s planned. They are phasing out the on-street parking along the quays, almost all of which is around that Four Courts area. It will leave a space that is the best part of four metres wide when you include the existing pavement. I really don’t see how the balustrade would not be very seriously affected by a boardwalk.
For a start, you would have to remove two chunks and considering it makes a perfect rectangle of two bridges and two quays, it would at the very least damage that continuity.
The balustrade would make a very imperfect barrier between a boardwalk and a pavement as when you looked through it from the street, all you would be seeing is the back of a load of seats and probably a lot of rubbish shoved in under.

T.Scott – if you want to invest in a digital camera and send it back to Dublin. I’ll take pictures of whatever buildings/building sites you want. And also considering your abiding interest in Dublin, I’m sure you’re aware that the planning/building process does not take six months in this country so things haven’t actually moved on since the aforementioned threads and South King Street is as it was.

I don’t believe it’s a religious thing. Like anything, you would find that 95 per cent of litter is caused by 5 per cent of the population. And that five per cent is responsible for most of the major social problems we have in this country.
A bigger issue is the chronic culture of dependency we have allowed to develop in Ireland, where people just assume somebody else should pick up after them be it in terms of social welfare, housing, litter etc.
The City Council spends vast amounts of money on cleaning. When I lived in town, if you were up at seven am – the city started the day off spotless.

Taxing gum is, as far as I’m concerned, a complete no-brainer. There’s absolutely no excuse or reason not to do it.
We have a terrible problem with gum destroying streets, in a way that no other form of rubbish does.
It’s particularly expensive to remove and particularly unsightly … and so the polluter should pay.
Ten cent on each pack won’t stop anybody buying it but it will go a long way to removing it off the streets.
I personally would go further and put a litter surcharge on fast food restaurants and cigarettes.
It’s all well and good McDonalds, Burger King, Wrigleys, Philip Morris, local chipper etc saying it’s not their fault but their products/premises are a blight right around the country.
I have no sympathy for any of them as all are making incredible amounts of money providing products that have no useful purpose and in most cases negative effects.

Just in case you thought I was spoofing:
http://www.greenparty.ie/en/news/news_archive/green_party_urges_government_to_join_the_dots_as_new_luas_red_line_opens
If the Green Party says E100 million, I can only imagine what the Railway Procurement Agency will be saying and there is no question of a contribution from local businesses a la Cherrywood/Citywest extensions.
Another point completely ignored here is whether we want another three years with the city centre looking like a bomb has hit it.

I really don’t see how it would be possible to actually link the two lines unless the St Stephen’s Green line merges with the Tallaght line at Connolly/Point Depot at some point.
It simply doesn’t make any sense to have two tram line running at right angles to another. Would we for instance have one tram from Sandyford to Heuston, then the next from Sandyford to the Point, then one from Tallaght to St Stephen’s Green.
Logistically, I don’t see how the network as it stands could support it when they can hardly get the full complement of trams out on the Tallaght line because of congestion.
I totally agree with Graham about this.
The whole thing has taken on the classic mantle of the “pet project” and in terms of its cost benefit, it just won’t add up.
They’ll build it and then find that people are actually unwilling to pay E1.30 to go from O’Connell Street to St Stephen’s Green.
I reckon the walk between OCS and the Green takes at most twenty minutes.
On a purely practical basis, who will queue for three minutes to buy a ticket, then wait another three minutes for a tram that then takes six or seven minutes to travel between the two places.
None of this, however, will dent support for this project because it’s one of those things politically, which sounds like it makes perfect sense when it makes no sense at all.

Unfortunately, defamation involves proving that your name was lowered in the minds of right-thinking people.
And most right-thinking people believe that the so-called Carrickminders and the English dirtbirds who occupied the trees around the Glen of the Downs are about the lowest form of pondlife in the country.