DAOINE
B’iad Bróna agus Diarmuid our team for the day.
Very busy market-wise but our table was not as busy as usual because our outlying leafleters were absent today and Diarmuid, who was leafleting, had long conversations with a number of people about the history of the street and of the campaign.
One of those was Myles, a free-lance photographer preparing a piece about the market who was very interested in both aspects of the history and in the potential of the market developed as a small independent shops and stalls street market with a walk-through museum on the upper floor.
A woman whose name we didn’t get was of a similar opinion.
There was a fight when a homeless person began to urinate in public and assaulted a manager of the new market stalls (Temple Bar company) when he remonstrated with him. In the ensuing struggle part of a BBQ stall was overturned. Diarmuid intervened to prevent further fighting and the offending man was told to leave the area which he reluctantly did (but hours later was sleeping in the same doorway). People say (but we do not know that for a fact) that he also recently assaulted an ILAC shopping centre security person and that he is barred from homeless hostels because of his behaviour.
Market people help one another in situations like this and the ‘gadget’ etc stall-holder was ripping up cardboard boxes to put pieces down over the spilt oil on the cobbles while Diarmuid helped re-erect the table of the BBQ tent (though earlier complaining about the smoke from it!). Bróna had to remain with our stall to to look after it.
The point about much of the antisocial behaviour encountered in Moore Street is that the Gardaí would not be permitted to tolerate it for one minute in Henry Street just around the corner. So either they don’t care about Moore Street or it may be a case of it suiting to have people thinking that redevelopment of Moore Street into a high-end chain-store area would be a good idea.
“MOORE STREET GIRLS”
As we were packing up an older man stopped in front of our banner to have his partner take his photo so of course we offered to take their photo there for our weekly album. Frank Rayer and Sue Walsh are from Nebraska in the USA (‘Walsh’ of course is an Irish name, the English equivalent of Breathnach). Sue knew a song about The Moore Street Girls by a US-based group called The Elders (Kansas-based) and found it on her phone to play it for us. We had never heard it before so brought her over to Caroline, a nearby traditional trader and she didn’t know the song either. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SntZvoz2Z3k
You truly never know what may come of an afternoon in Moore Street!
EILE
People ask us where the conservation struggle is at now. The Planning Department of Dublin City Council approved most of Hammerson’s planning application which includes an hotel in O’Rahilly Parade and a road cut through the 1916 Terrace to link up the ILAC with O’Connell Street directly (Hammerson owns half the ILAC also).
We (and others) have appealed this decision to An Bord Pleanála which is sitting on the appeal, presumably awaiting the outcome of Hammerson’s High Court case against Dublin City Council because councillors voted to give historical preservation status to five buildings other than those which already have “national monument” status.
Hammerson says that decision interferes with their planning permission which is curious, since they also said they have no intention of demolishing those buildings or altering the internal structure!
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!
AIMSIR
Particularly for an open-air market, the weather is always an important factor and it is for our campaign stall also: bhí sé grianmhar tráth, scamallach tráth.