AIMSIR
Out of the sun it could be cold ach bhí sé te go leor otherwise and jackets had to be removed.
DAOINE
Bróna, Orla agus Diarmuid were the core team today but Steve joined us near the end. Of course many Irish signed today and among those hailing from further afield was a Panamanian and a Polish resident woman and a Persian (Iranian) man. A Kerryman responded in Irish to a “go raibh maith agat” and then it was Gaeilge only at the table until he left us.
UPDATES
There was an article in The Village magazine last week detailing the dodgy goings-on around paying street traders off in a three-way share of the the cost between Dublin City Council, the Department of Heritage and Hammerson, the property speculator with the planning permission for Moore street. The article was by Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD, who also has a conservation Bill for Moore Street before Leinster House (for many months now but still to be debated). The allegation is that the street traders were offered up to 1.5 million to support the Hammerson plan, allegedly to compensate for the loss of their pitches while the demolition and building by Hammerson is going on but another way to see it is as a buy-off to remove an iconic part of the street market. Of course, the independent shopkeepers get nothing, not to speak of staff employed.
We have long observed that there is an Unholy Trinity at work, an alliance to destroy historic artefacts and the market in order to favour the speculator, who was O’Reilly previously and is now Hammerson. The three-way costing of the payout proposed certainly bears this out.
But two public agencies — one a government department and the other a local authority — using public funds to facilitate a property speculator?!
Meanwhile, An Bord Pleanála has not yet adjudicated on the appeals (including ours) placed before it with regard to the Hammerson plan; it has however already refused us an oral hearing which is a bad sign – they want to do the whole business behind closed doors without having to hear the objections.
The signpost for the O’Rahilly Monument continues to be missing, after over two months since it disappeared.
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