Our capital is changing – we don’t need any more offices

IF YOU drive around Dublin city you will notice thousands of offices being built, up to last February. This was a fantastic idea but since Covid the parameters have totally changed and the last thing Dublin will need is more offices. The whole culture of Dublin is going to change as people are going to work from home, and even if we do get a cure for Covid, it’s not going change this new idea of working.

I’m sure people will work in offices one or maybe two days a week but that’s about it, and some will go back to their country of origin to work. A huge amount of my own customers are part of this change; one in particular called in a few weeks ago to say goodbye.

I said to him: are you going back to Greece? No, he said, I’m going on a world tour. I said to him: what about your work? I can work from anywhere once I have my laptop and WiFi, he said.

When these developers are finished building these office blocks, and then – surprise, surprise – find out they can’t sell or rent them, they will go to the Government with their begging bowl and ask for money to convert them into apartments and, of course, get them rezoned. And once again we will be made fools of.

It’s not all bad news. Unfortunately it’s going to take a few years but Dublin will thrive again and become a residential city similar to Milan where a huge percentage live in the city centre. DAVID HENNESSY, Sun Bear Gelato, Dawson Street,

Dublin 2.

Hume not the only hero

NO ONE can deny John Hume that legendary status that decrees him to be more than just the ordinary person.

His life as a second-class citizen, since his early teenage years growing up in the divided city of Derry, was spent like most others trying to stay above the breadline in terms of survival. Aside from that, he began highlighting the wrongs of enforced occupation and an artificially created majority that enforced one righteous religious belief over the other to maintain a divisive line in a map.

However, those who propagate the myth that we would have got to where we are today in regards to the peace process through jawjawing rather than confronting the bully with force spent too much time in the company of ‘castle Catholics’.

Had the IRA not confronted the might of the British army with guerrilla warfare in the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising, Micheál Martin would be quite comfortable singing ‘our glorious queen’ at the opening of the Dawl as it would be called in a D4 accent.

No country in the world that has been forcefully occupied by ‘Johnny foreigner’ has ever got their independence back by pleading or begging on their knees; rather, they got this independence back by standing up and fighting fire with fire.

There would have been no peace process in the war in the six counties had the IRA not sent their highly trained engineering teams to London to deliver a close-up ultimatum to the British government, engage with us or suffer the financial consequences.

This is why John Hume became an important public cog in the talks as it took the heat off No 10 Downing Street, because it looked as if they were not dealing directly with the IRA or Sinn Féin.

As for the SDLP, they are nothing without John Hume – who, it has to be said, always wanted to talk to friend or foe.

The establishment’s attempt to put John Hume on the highest pedestal of sainthood possible shone through on RTÉ’s selective coverage of his passing.

That is not to say that he didn’t deserve high praise, but it appeared that Hume’s part in the negotiations was being used to diminish or belittle the actions of other negotiators whose places were earned right at the coalface of dodging assassins’ bullets on a daily basis.

JAMES WOODS, Gort an Choirce, Dún na nGall.