SIMON’S Taskforce (AKA the A**eforce) has come up with ten recommendations to rejuvenate Dublin.
Top of the list of “things that could be done” (that’ll never get done) is to potentially move RTE into the GPO.
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How that’ll stop the streets of the capital from being crime-ridden, filthy, no-go zones is anybody’s guess.
Maybe the sight of Claire Byrne and Joe Duffy rocking up the middle of O’Connell Street on their way to the office will somehow tame the mobs of feral young drug dealers who ply their trade openly in the vicinity, not a cop in sight.
Maybe the presence of RTE at the GPO will persuade the poor unfortunate drug addicts to quit the gear.
Maybe the organised begging gangs will call it a day and move to Montrose.
Maybe the ubiquitous smell of urine will evaporate now Montrose and a dose of south-sider civility has taken up residence in the hallowed halls of the national Post Office.
Maybe the pools of last-night’s dried in vomit and swirling-in-the wind rubbish will suddenly be cleaned up by the council, now VIPs are walking the streets.
Window-dressing tosh, the lot of it.
In the How To Revitalise A Dying City manual, moving RTE to the GPO wouldn’t feature. It wouldn’t even make the footnotes.
Because it’s bonkers.
Taoiseach Simon Harris has had the A**eforce report on his desk since the beginning of September. He brought a “memo” to cabinet last Tuesday recommending the report be finally published next week.
Hallelujah.
TALKING SHOPS
But here’s where the whole exercise falls down.
Harris has promised to set up an “interdepartmental implementation group” which will, wait for it, examine the A**eforce’s recommendations and come up with its OWN recommendations before the end of the year (2055, probably).
So, an A**eforce made recommendations that a SECOND government A**eforce will consider before coming up with a new set of recommendations. Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Talking shops upon talking shops and meanwhile Dublin city centre is quickly turning into skid row.
WON’T MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Bottom line is this: Whatever the iconic GPO becomes, RTE HQ, a museum or a government department, it won’t make a blind bit of difference to the myriad of problems the city centre faces.
Without a mayor with real power to transform the public realm, Dublin will continue to stagnate.
Without major capital investment to transform the city from a place for tourists into a place where people actually live, the capital will continue to rot.
Without more cops on the beat, the city will remain a dangerous and lawless place.
PIPE DREAM
Unless the planning system is revolutionised, the vital public transport projects required to make the city thrive economically cannot be built.
BusConnects is SIX YEARS old, yet barely half the new network has been rolled out.
The long-promised metro remains a pipe dream. Irish rail is buckling trying to cope with the huge numbers using its services — and not ONE METRE of new track has been laid since the DART was launched in 1984.
Unless the city council is staffed properly, the streets will remain dirty.
QUICK SOLUTIONS EXIST
Without tax supports, restaurants and pubs will continue to close.
The promised reform of the licensing laws to transform the night-time economy has never materialised. Nor will it.
It remains to be seen what the A**eforce’s nine other recommendations are. GPO aside, we’re promised initiatives on housing, culture, policing and waste.
When it comes to housing, quick solutions exist. A stroll through the city will reveal thousands of offices that lie abandoned and unused.
They could easily be repurposed into flats, if the imagination and will existed. Neither do, unfortunately.
You can set up as many A**eforces as you please, Simon, none will come close to solving the capital city’s problems.
As I’ve said on countless occasions, only a directly-elected mayor with executive powers can.
SINN FEIN MIRED IN SCANDAL
SINN Fein is deep in the do-do. And with weeks to an expected General Election, the party that once commanded 35 per cent in the polls, is fighting for its very political survival.
Mary Lou and the Shinners have been rocked by three scandals in as many weeks.
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Scandal number one: Late last month, it emerges that two senior Sinn Fein press officers had provided a convicted sex offender colleague with job references.
Scandal number two: Last Saturday, TD Brian Stanley quits the party after an internal probe into allegations of “gross misconduct” against him are upheld. Stanley lambasts Sinn Fein saying the inquiry amounted to “character assassination” in a “kangaroo court”. Sinn Fein then hands the matter to the Gardai to investigate.
Scandal Number three: On Tuesday, it emerges a former Sinn Fein senator of almost eight years, Niall Ó Donnghaile, sent inappropriate text messages to a 17-year-old.
All very tawdry and a disaster for a party desperate to be in government.
The current government has been cautious in how it has challenged Sinn Fein.
The thinking of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail strategists, ‘Let the Shinners stew’. To add to it would muddy the waters.
Mary Lou has made a number of “comprehensive” statements in the last week.
The old adage rings true – if you’re having to constantly explain, you’re losing.
MAN OF STEEL
DO kids play conkers any more? Doubtful they do in this tech-obsessed world.
It’s been a long time since conkers made the news, but they did this week when a competitor in the World Championships was wrongly accused of winning by brandishing a STEEL conker, painted to look like a real one. The scoundrel.
David Jakins, 82, known as ‘King Conker’ raised several eyebrows after scoring one and two-hit wins on his way to the Grand Final, which he lost.
Alastair Johnson-Ferguson, 23, who lost to Jakins said: “My conker disintegrated in one hit, and that just doesn’t happen.”
For his part, Jakins denied cheating, insisting: “I had the steel conker in my pocket, but it’s just something I carry for laughs. I didn’t use it in competition.
Organisers agreed, saying they couldn’t find any proof the steely was used.
CRAWL OVER IN PRAGUE
DID you know you can drink in boozers until 6am in Prague?
Well, that’s one of the reasons the Czech capital attracts so many booze tourists.
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The long opening hours and the fact you can get your hands on a local pilsner for about €1.50. Peanuts really.
Prague – a beautiful city – has been plagued by gangs of drunken stag parties for years now. But the locals are fed up with it.
Yes, it brings in dollars, but residents are sick of the noise, the rowdiness and the ubiquitous vomiting.
So local officials have acted.
With immediate effect, organised pub crawls from 10pm to 6am will be BANNED throughout the city centre.
Jiri Pospisil, a deputy mayor, said Prague city hall was “seeking a more cultured, wealthier tourist… not one who comes for a short time only to get drunk.”
Good luck with that.
Vaclav Starek, head of the Czech Association of Hotels and Restaurants, hailed the city’s pub-crawl ban.
He said: “Trips to the centre in search of beer have been a problem for local people and for other tourists too.”
Dead right. Imagine being able to have a quiet pint at 5 in the morning.
ALLEN’S AGONY
CAPITULATION of the week goes to Leitrim GAA team, Allen Gaels, who were leading by a more than comfortable EIGHT POINTS going into injury time in the Intermediate County Final against Melvin Gaels last Saturday.
Victory, the club’s first in 22 years, was just over the brow of the hill for the men from Drumshanbo, but the most amazing comeback by their opponents from Kinlough, turned what was the likeliest of victories into the most unimagined of losses.
In the space of five crazy injury time minutes, Melvin scored THREE GOALS to beat Allen by a solitary point 3-8 to 2-10.
Commiserations lads. Sport is joy and pain rolled into one.
PUTIN’S CRAZED CONQUEST
The relentless Russian war of aggression in Ukraine grinds on.
Putin’s forces continue to indiscriminately bomb civilians – such as those at a local market in Mykolaiv, below – while engaging in medieval-like hand-to-hand combat with the exhausted Ukrainian army all along the Eastern front.
Ukraine is no longer in the news, but its people continue to suffer.
All to sate Putin’s insane fantasies of conquest.
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