Frank Feely obituary: The man who ‘ran’ Dublin

Born: May 13th, 1931

Died: February 20th, 2023

Frank Feely, who has died at the age of 91, was one of Dublin’s longest-serving city managers, holding the post for 17 years from 1979 until he retired in 1996. Unlike his predecessors, who were often faceless bureaucrats, he cultivated a larger-than-life public persona and became such a ubiquitous presence at events in the city that he could fairly claim the title “Mr Dublin”.

Tall, craggy and bushy-browed with thick-framed spectacles, he “bestrides the city like a colossus”, as the Sunday Press hyperbolically put it at the height of his power. Lord mayors changed year after year, but the city manager was a permanent fixture. “If anyone could be said to have ‘run’ Dublin over the past 16 years, it is Frank Feely,” according to a review in The Irish Times of his term of office as it finally came to an end.

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Feely was avuncular and gregarious. He revelled in major public occasions, such as the 1995 visit by Bill Clinton when he acted as MC – wearing robes of office that he had chosen – to confer the US president with the Freedom of the City, watched by a vast, enthusiastic crowd in front of Bank of Ireland on College Green. Indeed, some foreign visitors were left with the impression that he was Dublin’s real lord mayor.

The son of a Leitrim-born garda, he was born in Dublin and educated at Synge Street CBS. He joined the staff of Dublin Corporation straight from school in 1949 as a clerk, working his way up through the ranks as a staff officer, organisational methods officer, senior administrative officer, principal officer and assistant city manager. Having studied accountancy at night, he also served as the corporation’s finance officer.

I don’t feel proud of it. I don’t feel ashamed of it

—  Frank Feely referring to the Civic Offices at Wood Quay

Before being appointed as Dublin city and county manager – as well as town clerk, a medieval title that he cherished – Feely had been in charge of progressing the corporation’s controversial plans to develop its Civic Offices at Wood Quay, in the face of opposition from city councillors, archaeologists, historians and others who sought to save what was hailed as one of the most important Viking sites in Europe.

In September 1978, up to 20,000 people marched from Kildare Street to Wood Quay, calling for its preservation. Campaigners later occupied the site, which the High Court declared as a national monument. But it was all to no avail. Construction of the first two blocks, designed by Sam Stephenson and dubbed by critics as “bunkers”, went ahead. Feely said of the completed project: “I don’t feel proud of it. I don’t feel ashamed of it.”

He never moved into the Civic Offices, preferring to operate from the old city manager’s office in City Hall on Dame Street. It was while walking through the neoclassical building’s soaring rotunda one day in 1985 with city archivist Mary Clark that he was shown one of its murals depicting Sitric, the Viking ruler of Dublin, submitting to the Irish high king Malachy in 988. That’s what gave Feely the bright idea of celebrating 1,000 years of Dublin in 1988.

Although it is generally accepted by historians that the city’s foundation dates back to 841, the Dublin Millennium caught the public imagination at a time when there wasn’t much to celebrate. Ireland was in the midst of a deep recession, tens of thousands of its younger people were emigrating and Dublin itself was in a dreadful state, with derelict sites and decaying historic buildings all over the place, including the Liffey quays.

Frank Feely was naturally defensive about the corporation’s role in the destruction of Dublin, and took as a personal affront when the media focused on it. Determined to turn the tide, he got his public relations officer Noel Carroll to wheel out an “I ❤️ Dublin” lectern at every civic event and even arranged a free public concert by the James Last Orchestra at College Green in 1986. But the Dublin Millennium was the biggest bash of all.

“The Aluminium”, as wags called it, was given a boost during its first six months by the city’s lord mayor, Carmencita Hederman, a charismatic and outspoken conservationist who had clashed repeatedly with Feely on the city council. He got on much better with her successor, Fianna Fáil’s Ben Briscoe, who could be counted on to support the corporation’s agenda, which included turning historic streets into dual carriageways.

The celebrations witnessed a giant figure of Gulliver beached on Dollymount strand and then floated upriver, the unveiling of a statue of Molly Malone and the relatively short-lived Anna Livia fountain in O’Connell Street, pedestrianised Grafton Street dug up and repaved, souvenir milk bottles from Premier Dairies and a huge street carnival in mid-July. The “bread and circuses” did focus attention on the inner city and its renewal.

Until then, the only new housing in the heart of Dublin was developed by the corporation itself, in places such as City Quay and later in the north inner city, where 440 two- or three-storey houses were built on foot of the “Gregory Deal” – a bargain made in 1982 by Charlie Haughey to win the support of Independent TD Tony Gregory for his minority Fianna Fáil government. (Funding was in short supply due to the abolition of domestic rates in 1978.)

The 1986 Urban Renewal Act introduced tax incentives for commercial and residential schemes in run-down areas and established the Custom House Docks Development Authority, which took over a 27-acre site for what became the International Financial Services Centre. But Frank Feely enlisted the support of Bertie Ahern to ensure that a metropolitan commission set up to take charge of the city’s principal streets was aborted within 12 months.

Dublin Corporation suffered another blow in 1991 when a State agency was incorporated to develop Temple Bar as the city’s “cultural quarter”, under the powerful patronage of then taoiseach Charlie Haughey. For the first time in living memory, an architectural framework plan was prepared for a key area of the city centre, generating widespread interest at home and abroad, even though it was later sacrificed in the interests of tourism and the pub trade.

Frank Feely evinced little awareness of what was happening in other European cities, such as Barcelona, then being reinvented by its visionary mayor Pasqual Maragall. He did, however, pay close attention to San José in California, with which Dublin was “twinned” in 1986, and regularly attended its annual Irish Week. This connection with Silicon Valley paid dividends when US tech companies set up their European headquarters in Dublin.

As well as being Dublin city manager, Feely was also Dublin County manager until the county was divided into three new councils under a reorganisation of local government in the early 1990s. Feely delegated administration of the county to the assistant city and county manager George Redmond. In 1989, after developer Tom Gilmartin made serious allegations to Feely about Redmond and Fianna Fáil TD Liam Lawlor, the city manager informed then minister for local government at the time, Pádraig Flynn. A Garda investigation ensued and a subsequent Tribunal of Inquiry into planning corruption. Redmond went to jail for accepting bribes but this conviction was later quashed.

When Feely retired in 1996, he was succeeded as city manager by John Fitzgerald, who adopted a more low-key approach to the role, with a clearer vision of the city and what needed to be done to improve it. Fitzgerald was also lucky in that his term of office coincided with the Celtic Tiger economy, so he had more resources to invest in major projects such as the rejuvenation of O’Connell Street and the redevelopment of Ballymun.

Frank Feely, who was above all a family man, sadly died the day before his daughter Orla, former professor of electronic engineering at UCD, was named as the college’s first female president. Another daughter, Emer, the wife of former chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan, died from cancer in February 2021. He is survived by his wife Ita, son Ronan, daughters Orla and Niamh, brothers Kevin and Kieran, and 10 grandchildren.