DAOINE
B’iad Bróna, Deirdre, Eileen agus Diarmuid our team for the day.
As much as last week was slow for us at the stall, this week was busy, getting us through a lot of leaflets with loads of signatures collected so maybe we went a bit mad with photographs. As is usually the case, we had lots of conversations with people and we enjoy pointing out to children some of the artifacts of the battle in the street.
Liam visited us again, still researching the market stall people and the conservation campaign for his academic course, this time wanting to take our 500 Saturday milestone as a starting point. Taking Diarmuid to one side, he videoed him talking about our campaign.
The Nigerian food stall offered us some free food and though it was early in the day for most of us, Diarmuid had some: baked hake, spicy rice and some plantain slices.
We still have some biographies of Harry Boland (famous relation of Bróna’s who happens to have fought in Moore Street) on sale for the silly price of €5. We also have our campaign logo badges, D-pin models for €2 each and others in pin-and-butterfly-clasp type for €4 each.
One woman earnestly asked for a blank petition sheet to take down to Trinity to her son who she told us is a student and camped there in solidarity with Palestine. It was heart-warming to see her pride in him getting into Trinity to study but also standing up against genocide. We gave her a couple of sheets and some leaflets, along with our encouragement.
EILE
Property speculator Hammerson’s case against Dublin City Council was briefly in the High Court during the week, as expected but we learned that the full hearing has been scheduled for much later in the year. Hammerson claim that the decision of DCC Councillors that five additional buildings merit being given “protected historical monument status” is “interfering” with Hammerson’s planning permission. It will be interesting to learn why they believe this given that they have said that their intention is not to destroy the identified buildings or to knock down internal walls.
Dublin City Council’s legal counsel in this respect is one who represented Colm Moore in his case for the conservation of the area beginning in 2015 and being heard in 2016, resulting in a judgement that the whole area is a national historical monument. But the Minister of Heritage appealed that decision and the Appeal Court in February 2017 judged that the High Court Judge had exceeded his powers in conferring historical monument status on the area.
Subsequently NAMA allowed massively in debt speculator O’Reilly to hand over his properties to Hammerson, who then put in a different planning application and DCC’s Planning Department which, as usual, approved it. And which we and others have appealed to An Bord Pleanála from which a decision is awaited.
AIMSIR
Bhí sé grianmhar ach bhí an ghaoth fuar.
AGUS …
Have you signed our petition online yet? You can get to it through the link https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/save-moore-street or by scanning our QR image.
Have you asked others to do so? We want to reach as many on line as we did in hard copy – well over 380,000. You can help us get there!
