Save Moore Street Awareness Week 422 – 22 October 2022

AIMSIR bhreá was what we had.
 
DAOINE
Bróna, Orla, Cathal, Daniel and Diarmuid were our foireann today.
 
As usual, we were kept busy handing out leaflets, collecting petition signatures, explaining the situation or the background and listening to people tell us their stories.
 
We met Frances Caffrey, who spent a lot of her youth in buildings on the east side of the nearby Dominic Street, where her father’s aunt (i.e her own great-aunt) lived. She said her father Jimmy would be interested in what we are doing and took a leaflet to give him.
 
As we were wrapping up, Diarmuid got talking to some Mauritian people (one had gone to school here) who were interested.
 
Drunk Individual:
We had to shift a very drunk individual who was sitting in our spot but then he sat across the street, sporadically roaring. A male and a female police officer passed him and said nothing. One of the shopkeepers went after them to complain and they came back and started telling him off. However, it was only when he dropped his trousers and seemed about to defecate in the street that they actually moved him on.
 
Later that afternoon, he was back again, still roaring drunk but now spitting and making threatening gestures towards passers-by. One of the stall-holders told us that she had moved him from near her stall. A police officer went up the street (one who had been there earlier) but seemed to do nothing about the individual.
 
In society there are a lot of unfortunate people with anti-social attitudes or behaviour who can be difficult to deal with – but the Gardaí would not tolerate that behaviour for one minute in Henry Street or in Grafton Street, for example. Those are city centre streets considered “high end” while at the moment it suits the property speculators and their backers to have Moore Street run down as much as possible in order to convey the ideas that a) it’s not worth saving and b) ANY change is to be welcomed.
 
TOURS AND HISTORY
We saw a couple of guided history tours, in one of which a guide came over to enquire about the current state of play.
 
Later, one of us overheard another guide asking his group to reflect on the feelings of residents in the street as the insurgents tunnelled through the walls.
 
It is right to think about that – and indeed some civilians were shot by British Army fire – but firstly, in 1916 not every building was lived in and many seem to have moved away from the city centre. British artillery had been shelling the city centre since Wednesday; when the GPO evacuation took place, much of what is now O’Connell Street, Eden Quay, Middle Abbey Street and North Earle Street had been demolished or was in flames (followed soon after by parts of Henry St. and the south end of Moore Street).
 
UASDÁTÚ
Nothing much to report except that Peadar Tóibín was raising the question of Moore Street in Leinster House during the week.
 
Also that some refurbishment has been carried out in DCC’s buildings at the north end of the terrace and that a new compactor (crusher) has been installed there, which seems strange if they are expecting to be moved.
 
Some new and long-overdue fixed litter bins have been installed
 
An Bord Pleanála told an objector that they’re expecting to give a response in early November on the third planning appeal, which relates precisely to those two DCC buildings but no sign of a response on the earlier two objections. Strange.
 
The new market stalls are making a comeback for Hallowe’en, we are told – but after that? Cá bhfios?

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