On The Town: Traders in Temple Bar were encouraged to celebrate their green and clean image at a reception in Dublin this week. Nine prizes were awarded to city-centre businesses in the second year of the Temple Bar Green 'N' Clean Awards.
The competition aims to "get traders to be more responsible for their individual environments", said Martin Harte, executive manager of the Traders in the Area Supporting the Cultural Quarter (TASCQ), which organised the awards with Dublin City Corporation.
"There's a perception there, but we wouldn't consider violence and drinking a huge problem in Temple Bar. Crime is down," he said.
Barry O'Sullivan, general manager of Blooms Hotel, which won the Best Hotel award, said the area gets "quite a lot of bad press, people thinking mass rioting and debauchery is going on". This was not the case, he insisted.
Broadcaster and rugby pundit George Hook, one of the five independent judges in the competition, announced the awards at a reception in the Temple Bar Gallery and Studios.
"I'm sold on the place [Temple Bar]. There's a feel of London's West End in the 1960s or the Left Bank in Paris here," said Hook.
The Deputy Lord Mayor, Andrew Montague, another judge, said he was "surprised by how clean it is".
The judges arrived unannounced one day last August to make their decision, taking a number of criteria into account such as the upkeep of paintwork, the use of floral displays, the presence or not of cigarette-related litter, the cleanliness of footpaths outside premises and the appearance of the buildings.
The overall winner was the Queen of Tarts restaurant, which also won the Best Restaurant award. Other winners in various categories were Temple Bar Jewellers, Temple Bar Information Centre, the Oliver St John Gogarty pub, Barnacles Temple Bar House hostel, The Temple Bar Trading Company and the Lemon Jelly coffee shop.