Manifesto for a better Dublin: Charge motorists, reimagine Stephen’s Green and move RTÉ

In the summer of 1348, the Black Death reached Dublin. By that Christmas, a quarter of the city’s population was dead. It bounced back, of course, and today, the Irish village that became a Viking town and a British city is the capital of a dynamic European democracy. What could go wrong?

Everything.

The Enlightenment myth of progress is just that: a comforting fantasy. In a hundred years from now, Dublin may have reason to celebrate nothing except its former glories. Some readers would relish that prospect, for the capital exists at one remove: from Ireland and, more recently, from itself. There are many Irish people who would welcome the demise of Dublin. Sadly, that includes lots of Dubliners.

Right now, the capital seems to be at one of its periodic crossroads, as Dublin City Council chief executive Owen Keegan is about to retire, and the media has revived one of its favourite tropes about the mean streets of Dublin. It hardly matters that crime levels are falling. The narrative has taken hold in the public imagination.

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There is much to celebrate about post-pandemic life in the capital of a prosperous republic with a free press, fair elections and an independent judiciary: a place where freedom of speech is taken for granted by the locals and prized by immigrants from less liberal societies. Yet those celebrations are muted and irregular.

[ Once the ‘noblest street in Europe’: The changing fortunes of Dublin’s O’Connell Street ]

My new book, A Little History of Dublin, charts some of the reasons for that neglect. But this article is more concerned with the future. What can we do to ensure that Dublin continues to thrive? And how can we challenge the negative attitudes that contribute to some of the problems that beset our capital?

Here is a manifesto for enhancing the quality of life in Dublin and, in some cases, Ireland. Some of these proposals may strike the reader as daft. Some are common sense. All 12 ideas are offered in a spirit of love and gratitude for a place that has given me a home, a career and a life of privilege. I admit as much. But I also believe that Dublin deserves better.

This is how we can get there.

Give young people somewhere to live

When President Michael D Higgins described housing as “our great, great failure”, he was criticising the Government, but also the electorate. If we consistently vote for right-wing governments, we should not be surprised to see right-wing solutions. That’s why shelter, food and education are all – as the president put it – “at the mercy of speculative forces”.

If Sinn Féin takes power at the next general election, it has promised to deliver “the largest public house building programme that Ireland has ever seen” – since, that is, Fianna Fáil cleared the slums of Dublin in the 1930s. Fianna Fáil could well be involved once again, this time as a junior coalition partner; what’s certain is that Sinn Féin will discover how hard it is to implement radical change in a late-stage capitalist society. Those “speculative forces” will not give up without a fight.

[ There is a direct line between threat to Irish sovereignty and social disintegration ]

To be fair, Sinn Féin spokesperson on housing, Eoin Ó Broin, is correct when he says that an entire generation is being locked out of home ownership, and while some of his policies smack of electioneering (putting a few weeks’ rent back into renters’ pockets is fig-leaf politics), Ó Broin deserves a chance to try to address a problem that right-wing governments seem ideologically unwilling or unable to fix.

Give Dublin a party

Two-thirds of the Green Party and Social Democrat TDs represent constituencies that are in, or border, Dublin. Four out of People Before Profit’s five TDs represent Dublin. Over half the Labour Party’s Oireachtas members are based in Dublin. These parties of the centre-left are all struggling to be heard. Most of them look set to be swept away by Sinn Féin at the next general election.

At that point, the narcissism of small differences should give way to public duty, with the miniature parties of the centre-left coalescing around the two things that unite them all: their politics and Dublin.

A party to promote the interests of the capital would immediately become a major political force. Under our system of proportional representation, it could well hold the balance of power in some of the vital years ahead.

Of course, all the parties mentioned above would laugh at such an idea today; they are all trying to save their current jobs. But soon enough, the idea may come to seem less preposterous. Watch this space.

Give some power to Dublin

It is fashionable to say that Dublin’s problems all stem from the fact that the city does not have a directly elected mayor, who would run housing, homelessness, transport and emergency services. Successive governments have dragged their heels for many years, but next summer the people of Dublin could finally get to vote on the matter.

[ The man on the bridge: the photographer who captured life on Dublin’s O’Connell Street ]

However, unless the elected mayor has real authority, as well as accountability, then the exercise will smack of tokenism. As Dr Aodh Quinlivan of University College Cork has told this newspaper, “It’s pointless having a directly elected mayor without a major devolution of powers and functions to local government.” Unless this much-hyped mayor has power, don’t expect Dublin to flower.

Either way, it is absurd that no one speaks for Dublin at cabinet level. The city is responsible for nearly half the jobs and tax revenue in Ireland, yet no one is responsible for promoting its interests when major decisions are made. You don’t need to be a Dub to recognise the stupidity of this situation. We have had a Minister for Rural Affairs for many years. Why does no one shout for the city that subsidises country life?

Don’t give too much power to Dublin

Ireland is becoming a city state, with far too much development concentrated around the capital. The result is urban sprawl on a scale that is not good for Ireland or Dublin.

“There is an alternative,” says Frank McDonald, former environment editor of this newspaper, “but the lack of political leadership has thwarted its adoption to date. It’s the idea of closely knit cities, with Galway, Limerick, Cork and Waterford working together to counterbalance Dublin.”

McDonald describes the current situation as “a grotesque imbalance”. He is not wrong. There’s too much going on in Dublin, and not enough going on in other places around the country. The Government needs to provide real power to local authorities in other towns as well as tax incentives to promote development.

[ O’Connell Street: Can our premier street be restored to its former glory?  ]

By the way, there is nothing anti-Dublin about this argument. It only seems counter-intuitive until you try to drive through Liffey Valley on a Friday evening. Balanced regional development is essential if Ireland is to flourish for the rest of this century.

Pay local politicians properly

There is no point lamenting the quality of our elected representatives if we insist on paying them peanuts. The basic salary for Dublin City Councillors is €25,788. If you want to see the results of this meanness, tune into a local area meeting; they are broadcast live, then archived for future generations to have a good giggle. (There are, of course, some excellent Councillors, but no one pretends that the standard of debate is particularly high.)

Big salaries are an easy target for people who cannot join the dots. Their egalitarian sensibilities seem laudable until you see the results of the current situation.

By the way, there is also a body of evidence to support the view that the quality of civil servants is increased when higher wages are offered. Again, this sort of argument is not designed to win votes, but if we are serious about attracting capable people to run our country, we should, at least, debate the matter.

Charge motorists to drive through the city

We are living through a climate emergency. The old prism through which this crisis is viewed – optimism versus pessimism – is unhelpful. And we have heard quite enough whataboutery. We must start thinking about the problem through the lens of duty. Is there an obligation to do what we can for future generations?

Damn right.

Car dependency is a big part of the challenge in reducing emissions from road transportation. With that in mind, it is frankly astonishing that anyone can drive through Dublin at any time of the day without incurring a surcharge.

Congestion charges are fees for driving in the centre of a city at certain times of the day. They reduce traffic congestion – and thus air pollution – by making people think twice before using their cars. That the logic of such initiatives needs to be explained at all speaks to the power of the car lobby and the paucity of leadership at a local level.

While we’re at it, let’s pedestrianise O’Connell Street. “Turn it into a proper civic space,” says Aodhán Ó'Riordáin TD. “Anywhere that goes pedestrian never goes back.” He’s right, of course. Is anyone listening?

Make public transport free

Even with congestion pricing, cars impose many costs on a society that drivers don’t pay for. These negative externalities are increasingly hard to justify in the context of a climate emergency. Free public transport would dramatically reduce the number of cars on the road. It would also have profound benefits for society at large. As Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia, once put it, “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s a place where the rich use public transport.”

There would be additional costs in the short term, but free travel would benefit the most disadvantaged members of our society. It would attract both the higher-income (economists call them ‘choice riders’) and the lower-income (‘captive riders’), promoting social cohesion at a time when extremist cretins are trying to sow divisions for their own cynical purposes.

[ Dublin’s O’Connell Street represents a spectacular failure of what our Republic should be ]

Making public transport free would increase support for visionary measures such as the BusConnects project. It would also demonstrate a society-wide commitment to tackling climate change, enhancing the prestige of Dublin and increasing civic pride at a delicate moment in the history of the city. Why are we not talking about this idea? Again, because there are powerful vested interests who oppose it behind closed doors.

And because common sense isn’t so common.

Move RTÉ out of Dublin 4

Anyone who has ever tried to say something nice about Dublin on RTÉ will know what it’s like to be shouted down by the anti-Dublin mob. There are sound historical reasons for being suspicious of the city, which was the centre of the colonial project, and people in many countries blame the capital for the woes of the hinterland, but the location of RTÉ does not help the situation.

The national broadcaster and voice of the people is housed in leafy Montrose, D4. That tension between its national remit and its location in the epicentre of bourgeois privilege means that RTÉ is always and forever on the back foot about Dublin. A change of scene would be good for everyone.

While we’re at it, let’s have a grown-up conversation about the value of a public service broadcaster that is not subsidised by advertising.

Make Dublin great again

Civic pride is the amount of affection that a place has for itself. It is more important than you may imagine, as there is a demonstrable link between civic pride and economic performance. If Dublin has a low opinion of itself – and there is much evidence to support that view – why don’t the four local authorities create a pretext to bring their people together?

[ State and local government have failed to deliver urban spaces that feel functional or comfortable ]

To be fair, Dublin City Council has some experience in re-branding. In the Little Museum of Dublin, I often meet people who gush about the millennium (or d’aluminium, as some Dubs call it), when the late former Dublin city manager Frank Feely decided that Dublin was a thousand years old. With the help of a catchy slogan, “Dublin, Be Proud”, and those millennium milk bottles, Dublin really was great in ‘88. It hardly mattered that Feely’s grasp of history was a bit shaky. The wheeze worked. Now it is time for a similarly bold initiative.

Personally, I think friendliness should be at the core of any new brand. (Dublinsmilesbetter?) When Fáilte Ireland conducts exit surveys, the warmth and good humour of the locals is what visitors mention most often about Dublin. Yes, we have our problems, and no, I wouldn’t recommend the O’Connell Street area to a tourist today, but the conviviality of Dubliners – and their great conversation – are a big part of the city’s charms.

“Dublin can be heaven, with a coffee at eleven...”

Give Dublin the centrepiece it deserves

Four million people stroll through St Stephen’s Green every year. Our grandest square was designed to focus attention on the centre, which has been missing a centrepiece since 1937, when republicans blew up the statue of King George II. Are we all so devoid of imagination that we cannot come up with a suitable replacement?

The space once occupied by the statue is still empty, except for a modest flowerbed. As a result, visiting the middle of the Green is a disappointing experience, like opening a lazy present. A monument to the sensitivity of Irish history, it is achingly dull, but the dead centre of Ireland’s greatest square is also a potential source of national pride.

What should we put in the middle of the park? Probably not a local hero. (See: Bishop Berkeley.) But it could be a photo-friendly abstract sculpture, or a plinth topped by something new every year. It could even be a tower with views to die for. Deciding what to put there has the makings of a great Dublin debate, though frankly I am less concerned about the outcome than the principle of the thing.

With a little imagination and a few million euro – a pittance for a cash-rich country – a major new landmark could be created, attracting many more millions of people and providing a powerful focus for civic pride. What are we waiting for?

See homelessness for what it is

Homelessness is both a problem and the symptom of a much larger problem. For example, when 43-year-old Jonathan Corrie died in a sleeping bag across the road from Leinster House in 2014, there was the usual flurry of condemnation. How could a rich country allow anyone to die in such circumstances?

Jonathan Corrie was later described by those who knew him as “a bright young man who got caught up in drugs”.

Drug users continue to face stigma. As Dr Austin O’Carroll, who works with the marginalised in Dublin, has said, “Irish people have a lot of sympathy for the homeless. They’ve no sympathy for drug users.”

Now is a good time to think about ways in which everyone – not just politicians and city planners – can play a part in making our capital one of the great small cities of the world

Addiction is typically a symptom of larger social issues. Under-investment in deprived pockets of the capital helps to explain why O’Connell Street is so beleaguered, and why most of the prisoners in Mountjoy come from six postal districts. As Dr O’Carroll says, “Homelessness and drug use are inextricably linked with poverty.”

We seldom consider the implications of that fact. For example, less than 0.5 per cent of people are homeless, yet homeless people account for 10 per cent of the hospital bed days in the Mater and St James’s Hospitals. Unless the Government launches a major capital programme of urban renewal, invests in long-term residential treatment and abandons the futile criminalisation of drug use, we will continue to see thousands of our citizens die needless deaths every year.

Get smart

A smart city is a place where traditional networks and services are made more efficient with the use of digital solutions to thorny problems. It is easy to be sceptical about the term, which sounds like something dreamt up by a PR person. But smart cities are a good idea – and, to be fair, Dublin’s four local authorities have already realised as much. Their challenge now is to move more quickly. That won’t happen without public and Government support.

Smart cities take energy efficiency to the next level, by generating more power than they consume. They provide seamless broadband and wifi coverage. They grow their own food and make products from recycled materials. They measure water usage by the drop and conserve natural resources by the ton.

In a really smart city, nothing goes to waste. There are solar-powered smart trash bins that signal when they’re getting full and street lights are equipped with sensors to spot potholes and measure traffic flow. Finally, smart cities transform public transport. Real-time tracking of buses in Singapore has reduced the rate of overcrowded buses by 92 per cent.

[ Bust-up over congestion charges in London could soon play out in Dublin ]

All this may suggest that tech-based solutions are the only way to create a modern metropolis. Nonsense. The most innovative cities favour neighbourhood initiatives over grandiose master plans; municipal bigwigs know that quality of life depends on healthy streets, vibrant shops and a diversified economy.

Dublin survived a plague. With a little imagination and some of the tenacity that our forebears showed, we can get over this hump. Now is a good time to think about ways in which everyone – not just politicians and city planners – can play a part in making our capital one of the great small cities of the world. That is the spirit in which I offer these ideas. If they prompt you to come up with better solutions, let’s hear them, please.

Dublin, be proud.

Trevor White is the founder of the Little Museum of Dublin. A Little History of Dublin is published by Merrion Press