Fish market to close after 100 years

Dublin City Council is to close the 100-year-old fish market in the north inner-city as part of a €70 million rejuvenation of the markets area.

The closure will also see the adjacent fruit and vegetable market move to a site near the M50, at a location yet to be finalised, as the council plans to refurbish its Victorian building for use as a retail "table-top market" modelled on the English market in Cork.

It is hoped the table-top market will ultimately see high quality fresh vegetables, fruit and home produce - including organic foods, cheeses and pastas - attract new visitors and shoppers to the area.

The city council envisages the current fruit and vegetable market building becoming "the Victorian set-piece" for the rejuvenation of a large surrounding area which currently includes much warehousing.

Included in the first phase of the rejuvenation is two floors of retail units dedicated to food, two floors of offices and 2½ floors of residences.

Unfortunately for the Fish Hall, however, the city council sees little merit in its covered halls and intends to knock it completely, creating a 350 space car park, service area and storage for the new market.

An Taisce has agreed with the council and described the Fish Hall as "an unexciting building (which) has long lost its original function".

The city's fish market is still held there with about 10 major fish dealers holding sales five mornings a week, according to Mr Eamon Duffy, a council spokesman. The fish market will close in late spring and move to Finglas, after which an archaeological survey will get under way on the site. Depending on what is found, phase one of the rejuvenation will get under way late in 2005.

However, many people in the local community are unhappy with the closure of the markets and a Markets Development Area Group, known as MARDAG, has been set up to secure community facilities from the redevelopment scheme. According to Mr Danny Pender, chairman of MARDAG, locals have not been properly consulted . "We were consulted by one group and we said a playground for the kids should be an important part of any scheme, but we were told that the kids could always walk down to Phoenix Park. Then they told us the fish market was needed for a two-storey basement level car-park - and it is right beside the Luas line," said Mr Pender.

Another issue the locals want addressed is what they say is an urgent need for a community centre.

"We don't even have a room for a meeting, and we would like to have a sports hall. But when we raised this at a meeting with the planners, they demanded to know how we were going to fill it day and night from early morning to 10 o'clock at night."