Tag Archives: Dublin Inquirer

This morning.

In fairness.

Dublin Neighborhoods Mapped (GisForThought)

Interactive Map here

Anyone?

Dublin Inquirer

Illustration on the cover of this month’s Dublin Inquirer

Dublin illustrator Amy McGrath has created this month’s cover for the Dublin Inquirer.

Amy writes:

I  was asked to put a spotlight on the work being done by frontline supermarket staff during this stressful time.

During college, I worked at my local supermarket and I was lucky to team up some of the most resilient and quietly confident people I’ve ever met; the checkout staff in particular could handle anything thrown at them.

My response celebrates this can-do attitude – with a wink, the cashier tells the reader that she is handling it – and there’s more than enough stock to go around!

Print edition cover (Dublin Inquirer)

Amy McGrath

Part of the print edition cover of the current issue of the Dublin Inquirer

This week.

Illustrator Eoin Whelehan and writer Dara T Higgins have created the cover for the current print edition of the Dublin Inquirer.

In the newspaper they write:

“This is a protest poem, in pictures. Because that’s all we have. Words, images and a sense that not all is right in the capital.

“The spaces that once existed to do things, studios for art or rehearsal, spaces in which to perform, to sell, or to show, are disappearing. The names of venues read like they should be on the foot of a cenotaph. The fallen in a cultural war.”

View their protest poem and read their article in full here

Dublin Inquirer

Dublin Lord Mayor Nial Ring who took office in June 2018

Laoise Neylon, in The Dublin Inquirer, reports:

The costs of having a sociable lord mayor of Dublin have been totted up.

The annual costs incurred by Dublin City Council for running the Mansion House and the Office of the Lord Mayor have increased by about €665,000 in recent years.

They grew from €1,166,000 in 2015/16 to €1,831,000 in 2018/19, according to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Having a Particularly Sociable Lord Mayor Was Expensive (Laoise Neylon, The Dublin Inquirer)

Previously: A New ‘Mare

This month’s cover of Dublin Inquirer by Conor Nolan.

In the Dublin Inquirer, he writes:

F or this cover I wanted to focus on the subject of overtourism and the cost of it to the city.

I came up with this idea of a character looking like they’re shadily dealing out the city.

Print edition cover (Dublin Inquirer)

Conor Nolan

Save Poolbeg

From top: Illegal dump close to people’s homes in Moatview Estate, Priorswood, north Dublin: aeriel view 2002-2019

In today’s Dublin Inquirer.

Journalists Sean Finnan and Lois Kapila are reporting that residents of Moatview Estate in Priorswood, north Dublin, have health concerns due to an illegal dump close to their homes.

The dump is on Dublin City Council-owned land and the Dublin Inquirer has previously reported that residents have been complaining about the dump for years.

They report:

Like others who live around the Moatview Court estate in Priorswood in north Dublin, Jervis is deeply worried that the sprawling – and illegal – dump, just the other side of a green on council land, is making him and his neighbours sick.

They’re worried that pollutants may have seeped into the ground under the growing mounds of household and construction waste – there are dirty nappies, empty bottles, keg-like empty industrial containers, bricks, tyres, machine parts, and even, they fear, asbestos.

Only some of the waste is visible. It pokes through the undergrowth along the path that runs from Moatview Court to Cara Park. Just north of that are mounds high as single-storey homes, with shrubs atop the older piles.

Last February, there were smouldering ashes alongside the path. Residents are worried, too, that fumes from the sporadic fires at the dump have spread toxins through the air, into their homes.

In April, an analysis of cancer incidence in the wider area by the National Cancer Registry of Ireland (NCRI) flagged high rates of lung cancer.

Rates were 70 percent higher than expected, if incidence rates were expected to be the same as Dublin as a whole, it said. They were 110 percent higher than expected, if incidence rates were expected to be the same as Ireland as a whole.

But figuring out if the area’s high cancer rates have been caused by the landfill is complex, say health researchers.

READ IN FULL: Priorswood Residents Worry That Giant Illegal Dump Is Making Them Sick (Sean Finnan and Lois Kapila, Dublin Inquirer)

Related: For Years, an Illegal Dump Has Been Growing in a North Dublin Neighbourhood (Sean Finnan and Lois Kapila, Dublin Inquirer, February 27, 2019)

Picture: Lois Kapila

Ballymun, Dublin

Sean Finnan, in the Dublin Inquirer, reports:

“Yeah. We’ve no pubs in Ballymun,” says [Patricia] Mulready. “No pubs and no shops.”

“Ballymun is gone,” says [Dinagh] Neeson.

Both women say the fact that the last pub is now done is symptomatic of the wider malaise in the town, where social life for all age groups has been hollowed out.

“No shops, no pubs, no entertainment for the kids, we’ve to go on the bus to the bingo,” says Neeson. “There’s nowhere to socialise.”

“This is why the young fellas are getting into trouble,” says Neeson. They’ve nothing to do.”

. . . “A good-quality pub with food, and a meeting space, is seriously lacking in the town, and is important for both business and social life, [Head of Ballymun4Business Robert Murphy] says.

Nicola Keating, who lives locally and works in the Axis centre, just across the square says she agrees with Murphy.

“There was a big theatre show on recently in Axis, she says. The actors asked after where they could go for a drink, and maybe a bite to eat.

“We kept them here and we gave them drink here but we couldn’t feed them. Well, I gave them crisp sandwiches,” says Keating. “It’s embarrassing.”

Ballymun Should Have at Least One Pub, Local Residents Say (Sean Finnan, Dublin Inquirer)

Meanwhile…

Pic: Dublin Inquirer

Lois Kapila, in the Dublin Inquirer, reports:

The biggest difference between the mammoth shared-living blocks being put forward by developers such as Bartra, and cohousing models, boils down, in a sense, to who gets listened to.

Shared living is mainly speculative, said Padraig Flynn, of Self-Organised Architecture (SOA), on Friday, in a meeting room at the Fumbally Exchange in Blackpitts.

“People who live there have no agency or input of the design or the long-term management of the building,” Flynn says.

Cohousing is the opposite: it’s resident-led, from design to management.

“It gives people an opportunity to decide where they cut costs, what’s important to them, and what they don’t actually need,” he says.

“They’re two completely different concepts. But the wording is almost identical so it becomes very confusing for people,” said Flynn.

The CoHousing Here! event [in Dublin] in mid-June, organised by Flynn and others at SOA, should help get that message out – and further open up debates around future affordable housing in the city.

READ IN FULL: An Upcoming Conference Offers Cohousing – Not Coliving – as an Affordable Housing Solution (Lois Kapila, Dublin Inquirer)

Previously: Co-Living Dangerously