‘Dithering’ lost us Web Summit
Founder accuses Government of failing to save event
WEB Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave has released a series of emails with the Taoiseach’s office which he says show how his pleas for support to keep the event in Dublin weren’t acted on.
The selected emails from Mr Cosgrave reveal strained relations between the Web Summit and the Government just weeks before Mr Cosgrave announced that he was moving the successful event to Lisbon next year.
In a series of emails to Enda Kenny’s office, beginning on August 24, Mr Cosgrave said he wanted to keep the Web Summit in Ireland after 2015 but would have to move it if support was not offered in relation to transporting delegates to and from the RDS, keeping hotel room prices at affordable levels and improving the Wi-Fi coverage at the RDS. Mr Cosgrave added the conference organisers ‘were not looking for a penny,’ but were desperate to see a plan from the Government that would outline how it would address these concerns.
The emails highlighted how the Summit was in communication with a number of other potential cities in Europe that were making ‘incredible offers’ that would address all these concerns. It has been estimated that the Web Summit was worth as much as €100million to the Irish economy last year.
‘Without even a basic plan for Web Summit 2016, Web Summit will be forced out of Dublin in the coming weeks. We don’t want a penny, we just want a plan for public transport, traffic flow management, Wi-Fi and hotels,’ he wrote to the Taoiseach’s private secretary Nick Reddy.
The emails appear to show Mr Cosgrave growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of a substantial response from the Taoiseach’s office, complaining on September 3 that he had only received ‘holding emails’ from it. He added: ‘I’m about to board another flight to Lisbon to meet once again with a number of ministers, and the PM’s right hand. I will then spend Friday and Saturday in the Netherlands finalising their plan for 2016, having previously met with the Prime Minster, Minster for Finance, Minister for Economic affairs, mayor of Amsterdam and all other relevant stakeholders.’
In a response on September 10, Mr Reddy states that before planning for 2016’s Web Summit, it would be best to see how this year’s Summit goes.
Responding, Mr Cosgrave said that the Summits take more than 12 months to plan and added that previous Government assurances had not been lived up to. Eventually, with just two days to go before Web Summit signed a deal with Lisbon, the Government’s presented a strategy addressing concerns about inadequate infrastructure, traffic management and hotel price gouging.
But last night Mr Cosgrave dismissed the presentation as merely ‘a plan for a plan, for a plan’ that represented no material change in position from the Government.
‘It was merely tinkering at the edges and did not address the core issues that we had repeatedly put to them in writing,’ Mr Cosgrave told RTÉ’s Six One News last night.
He said that while ministers were more than willing to attend glitzy photo opportunities during the conference itself, there were never any bilateral meetings between the ministers and Web Summit.
A spokesman for the Government revealed that the IDA had given the Web Summit a combined total of €320,000 over the past three years, while Enterprise Ireland has provided grants worth almost €406,000 over the same period. The spokesman added: ‘Significant financial and non-financial support has also been provided by other Agencies including Fáilte Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland, Dublin City Council, Bord Bia, Culture Ireland.’
Fianna Fáil’s jobs spokesman Dara Calleary last night said that the emails were ‘shocking’ and revealed the Government’s complete ‘disinterest’ in retaining the unique summit. ‘These emails expose this Government for what it is – obsessed with spin and PR and indifferent to taking any real action,’ he said.
The RDS rejected Mr Cosgrave’s criticisms of their facilities.
‘Mr Cosgrave has made baseless assertions regarding the RDS approach to Wi-Fi supply.’
Dublin City Council also rejected Mr Cosgrave’s criticisms of their perceived lack of support.
‘Dublin City Council has been very supportive of the Web Summit over the years and everything possible and within reason was done to facilitate it,’ a council spokesman said. Hoteliers also defended themselves against Mr Cosgrave’s accusations of ‘price gouging’ revealed in the dossier of emails.
IT was approaching Christmas, and I was standing with my mum at a bus stop in Dún Laoghaire, sometime in the mid-to-late Sixties. She was bringing me to Dublin city to see Santa in Clerys. The thought of meeting Santa for some reason always terrified me, perhaps because of all the ‘have you been a good boy?’ shtick; very often, I hadn’t been very good at all, and so the prospect of being denied my presents on Christmas Day was profoundly disturbing.
That f ear was, however, overridden by excitement. There would be a visit to Hector Grey’s to look at toys, a wonderland even when you only were as tall as the second shelf.
We would be treated to sausage, egg and chips in the upstairs café in Woolworths on Henry Street (and, not a word of a lie, I still recall the taste of them so vividly, they are my own equivalent of Proust’s madeleine).
Above all, though, I just was excited about getting the bus.
Until I was eight, I walked to the local school, and envied the boys who came from farther afield, because I loved buses. I loved hopping onto the open platform at the back, hoping the driver would pull away before I went upstairs so I could have a swing around the pole while the bus was moving.
I loved the return on the stairs, and the back seat wedged between the stairwell and the window.
Commune
I loved the conductor’s machine, dangling from a strap over his shoulder, and the way he would crank the handle to spew out the ticket, or multiple tickets when the whole family was together.
I loved the views from the top deck, though there always was consternation when we got j ust past St Vincent’s Hospital. There was a colourful commune there for a time and when I asked my mother who lived in it, all I remember her saying, with a distinct curl of the lip, was ‘hippies’.
For years, I actually thought they were a separate species. Mind you, I also thought guerilla warfare was conducted by gorillas, so my childhood was a little more confusing than most.
Then, in 1971, the greatest thing happened. We moved to Ballybrack, but I stayed in school in Dún Laoghaire, so I had to get the bus every day, and not just twice either.
The lunch break ran from 12.30 to 1.45 and though it was tight, we could make it home every day for food.
The 45A stopped on Marine Road at 12.35. We would race through the door just as the one o’clock news started, and wolf down our grub (we had dinner in the middle of the day back then), and occasionally curl up with embarrassment when Frankie Byrne was talking about women’s problems during her Jacobs agony aunt slot. We would be out the door again at 1.20 for the 1.25 bus, and be back at our desks with minutes to spare. How we didn’t die of indigestion remains a complete mystery.
Oddly, the fare used to be cheaper at lunchtime, too, a penny compared with two pence in the morning and late afternoon, though we still often tried to avoid paying at all by taking turns to hide from the conductor.
We would huddle on the floor under coats while shielded by a pal, before spending the money on eight Fruit Salads or Cola Bottles.
Of course, there could be trouble too. I was sitting in the back seat once and a tough guy from Sallynoggin got on and told me to move.
I refused, and I still have a small scar under my lower lip from where his boot made contact with my face.
When I went to college, I was able to get a monthly commuter ticket that opened up the entire city. I took the 7 to Dublin and the 15A from Fleet Street to the College of Commerce in Rathmines.
Naughtiness
On the return journey, the bus went down Grafton Street, at that time still open to traffic, and I particularly loved it coming up to Christmas, when all the shop windows were filled with all- singing, alldancing storefront displays.
Some days, when I didn’t feel like going to college at all, I’d take the bus to Howth or Enniskerry and just go for a walk, relishing the fresh air and the naughtiness of bunking off in equal measure.
The problem with all this, of course, was reliability. It always was the case that you’d wait ages before three came along at once and, in the days before there was any joinedup thinking, the lack of a Nitelink service meant you either got the last bus shortly after 11pm or hitched a lift home. That would be unthinkable nowadays, but everyone did it back then, though there was one night I actually had walked as far as Blackrock before I was successful.
A 7km trudge at 3am was a surefire way to soften your appetite for going into town at all.
I persevered, though, and didn’t bother learning to drive until I was 25.
There never seemed to be much point, because the bus took me anywhere I wanted to go, and if I decided to stay in Dublin after work, I could have a few pints without worrying.
By that stage, though, the Dart had come along and I mostly switched to the train – and when I finally bought a car, I pretty much stopped using public transport altogether.
It was no loss. The buses had got crowded and often, unless you were at the terminus, you wouldn’t get on one at all.
When you did, they were filled with condensation that soaked your sleeve if you rested your arm against the window.
Everyone smoked upstairs, so most journeys proceeded in a dense fog, and if one person got on with a cold, 71 others got off with one too. They were Petri dishes on wheels. And then, about three years ago, that all changed. When I’m in Dublin, I stay on the southside and there’s a bus stop very close by.
If you use the smartphone app that tells you, in real time, when the bus is due, you never have to wait in the wind or rain and can delay leaving the house until you know it is just a few minutes away.
Delighted
The routes have changed too, so that the buses no longer all terminate on Pearse Street beside Trinity College or on Eden Quay and instead go to Parnell Square or Heuston Station.
Bus lanes mean that you can be sure, even in heavy traffic, that you will make an appointment on time. The Leap card is a godsend; I can’t tell you how many times I had to take taxis only because I had no loose change to pay the bus fare.
They even have Wi-Fi on the buses now, though it feels like a bit of a cheat to be engrossed in the internet when you could be snooping on people in their back gardens or pretending not to listen to other people’s conversations (and you definitely get a better class of indiscretion on the bus than on the train).
So when I heard yesterday that the main emphasis of the National Transport Authority’s strategy for Greater Dublin is to encourage more people to use the bus, I was delighted.
Buses and I were estranged for decades, but our reconciliation has been a great pleasure.
Yes, I miss the open platforms at the back and the laugh you’d have with a regular conductor, but the excitement, long dormant, is back.
And, yes, I still sometimes fall asleep and wake up ten stops after the one I was meant to get off at. Some things never change.