We need you Trinny, come here and yank this city up by its knickers
IT’S difficult to predict how a post-Covid Ireland is going to look, but the signs aren’t great. Obviously, I only know what it’s like to walk through Dublin city centre at the moment – well within my 5km. And with the throngs of tourists and office workers gone, what’s been left behind is all a bit, well, grubby and depressing.
It needs more than a good going over with an industrial power hose, although that would help. It needs a proper no-nonsense makeover, think Trinny and Susannah in their heyday, yanking women up by their underwear to make all the bits sit right.
With the crowds gone, you get a better look at how the city has been allowed to evolve over the last number of decades. Large squares of Georgian houses lie silent now, waiting for the workers to come back. The two main shopping streets lined with shut big-chain stores, many of which will never open again.
But even with Level 5 restrictions, even with all non-essential retail and offices shut down, surely there should be more evidence of life in a city of Dublin’s modest size, especially when you’ve got a housing crisis of epic proportions?
Just before this pandemic hit, back when we had one of our most surprising general election results in recent times, housing was the biggest issue for voters all over the country, apart perhaps from the health service – there’s always health.
We may have been distracted for the last year, in the worst possible way, but finding people a place to live is still a serious concern that’s nowhere close to being solved.
We need more homes, we know this. And the difficulties associated with tackling this huge problem are complex and multi-layered, we can agree on that.
Mostly it’s money, and with the amount of cash being currently spent on trying to keep this country afloat, budgets are only going to get tighter.
We need developers. Ideology is a wonderful thing, we need that too, but it needs to be paid for.
This doesn’t mean, however, that we have to prostrate ourselves at the feet of anyone willing to throw up a tower block of luxury apartments, affordable only for the very elite or those who spend a couple of years here working for Google.
Government is powerful and nothing should be more influential than the State. It has proved itself before, but these successes only seem to happen when things are at their absolute worst, like when the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) was set up to combat out-of-control crime gangs wreaking havoc across Dublin and Limerick. The effect it had was almost immediate.
It doesn’t help, of course, that our current Government is fractured and feels like it’s constantly on the verge of implosion. But they’re here for now, and for the next few years ahead. And now is the time to start putting a great big plan in place for what is going to happen with our housing situation.
We need a vision. Give us brilliant ideas of what our cities and towns could be. Persuade us that apartment living isn’t all that bad, that for many people the right kind of unit can be perfect.
Show us they can be attractive and functional, not just redbrick rectangle blocks, shoehorned into communities where resources and amenities are already overstretched. Already some good things, thankfully, have come out of this pandemic. From the extraordinary leaps forward in science and medicine to simpler benefits, like how many people are discovering joy in leading a more outdoorsy life.
But we could get more. Let’s take this opportunity to even just kick-start a serious effort to make Dublin city centre a more liveable space. Think of all the people who live above businesses right in the heart of places like Barcelona, Manhattan and Lisbon.
Think of the difference it would make to somewhere like O’Connell Street to have residents there once again; how eventually, with some initial help from the relevant authorities, the inhabitants would bring more than just life to our main thoroughfare, but they would help bring order.
Surely, there is legislation that could be introduced to help make this happen?
Tax breaks for landlords who convert existing upper floors into decent homes and rent them out.
Areas of the city that could be designated with a special status to make them desirable as places to live full time – and once we do start opening up again, let’s not give back potential homes to the likes of Airbnb.
I know moves like this won’t even scratch the surface of what’s needed in the long term. But we need to have some sign that good things can happen within our planning structures.
All we seem to have at the moment are multiple modest developments going up in places where existing residents don’t want them.
It’s like plugging a leaking dam with a tissue, causing resentment and distrust.
Let’s face it, Ireland is not known for our innate good taste in architecture, most of the good stuff comes from the Georgian period, when we weren’t in charge. And much of what has been built in recent times is either loved or loathed, depending on your disposition.
But let’s not give up hope of having a vibrant, attractive capital city we can all be proud of and where we want to spend time, not just at night in the pubs and restaurants, which of course we do. But a place where we can wander safely with our kids, or continue to meet friends outdoors because it’s a nice thing to do, not because it’s our only choice.
I’ll be honest, on my last wander through the city centre, my overriding feeling was that this place doesn’t feel like home right now, but it could.
We just need to take it back and breathe some life into it.