Bróna and Diarmuid from the core team were on the cobblestones today with reinforcements from Daniel, Seán (a different one) and Dan.
Our run of good luck with the weather ran out today and it rained constantly, only beginning to ease as we finished our shift for the week. However, our helpers found people responsive and wanting the campaign to succeed. The problem has never been with the people, who overwhelmingly support the aims of the campaign – it is the bias of the City Managers and Department of Heritage towards the property speculators.
UPDATES
During the week, a group of people were seen in Moore Street looking at buildings and making notes in clipboards. Apparently they were archaelogical architects or some such employed by Dublin City Council.
Can it be they were there at last as a result of the unopposed motion by Councillors some months ago that the long-agreed survey of buildings in Moore Street, with a view to giving them protected status, is finally going ahead?
It may have been four years ago that Councillor John Lyons proposed that a number of buildings in Moore Street be given protected status due to their historical connections. These were in addition to the four (Nos.14-17) which the State has named “the 1916 Monument” (but which we insist is the whole quarter).
Lyons’ proposal was agreed at a Council meeting and our campaign group kept raising it at meetings of the Mayor’s Forum on Moore Street. We were told the buildings would have to be examined, the surveying would need to go out to tender; they were not getting replies; they would appoint one to do the work; Hammerson had refused to allow them inside buildings; Hammerson had threatened legal action if they listed buildings which they had applied to demolish; the investigator appointed by the Council, who examined the buildings from the outside and made his report was “not impartial” and so on. Then we spent months trying to get the Planning Department to publish the report (which you could go and see but not copy!) ……
No news from the Planning Department yet regarding the Hammerson application.
NEWSFLASH!
Our group at last has a website. Bart has been working away at this for months – we’ll post the site link a little later. Our weekly reports will be posted on the blog part of the website so that it is constantly being updated. However, there is a huge amount of archive material still to be uploaded – after all, apart from the Lockdown period, we have been on the street every Saturday since September 2014 – and Bart will be doing little bits of that when he can.
You can help the campaign by sharing our posts from time to time.
Save Moore Street Awareness Week 358 – 7 August 2021
