Iveagh's fate a symptom of our times

According to Sam Smyth's book Thanks A Million, Big Fella, Charles Haughey and Ben Dunne snr had a row at the Irish Trade Fair in Manhattan in 1968. Haughey was there to open the fair, but was horrified to find old Ben exhibiting cheap St Bernard Bri-nylon shirts. He confronted the Dunnes Stores patriarch: "What do you think this is? The f---ing Iveagh Market?"

That row would resonate through Irish political life in ways familiar to everyone. Another small aspect of the encounter, however, also has its resonances. It is significant that Haughey chose the Iveagh Market in Dublin's Liberties as the measure of his scorn. The market was an arena for the lively street-life of the capital city, a symbol of an old, ragged, unpolished urban culture that was a million miles from the emerging Ireland of Charvet shirts and Manhattan trade fairs.

It is now a symbol of another stage in that process of creating a smooth, bland place that keeps its scruffy past as far behind it as possible. Watching Se Merry Doyle's fine documentary on Dublin street traders, Alive, Alive O!, on RTE last week, I was struck by how well the fate of the market sums up large cultural forces at work in Ireland now: the encroachment of commerce on public space, the marginalisation of the poor, the sterilisation of urban Ireland.

The Iveagh Market goes back to a time when at least some people entertained a notion that is now almost unimaginable: that the rich had some obligations to the poor. It is one part of the Guinness philanthropic legacy that was stitched into the fabric of the city.

In 1890 Guinness established the Iveagh Trust to provide housing and related amenities for the "labouring poor". In Dublin, the Trust built 600 homes, mostly around St Patrick's Cathedral, as well as public baths, a swimming pool, St Patrick's Park, a children's play centre and the Iveagh Hostel for homeless men. Thousands of people over many generations benefited from this practical help.

The Iveagh Markets in Francis Street grew directly out of the trust's work. The new buildings and the park displaced street traders whose rights went back to a charter granted by Charles I. The trust responded by building an enclosed market, opened in 1906, for the sale of old clothes, vegetables and fish, and giving it as a gift to Dublin Corporation.

This was done under special legislation, the Dublin Corporation Markets Act of 1901. The market was to be "held and maintained" by the corporation "as a market for the sale of old clothes and other commodities". No change in use could be made without the permission of the trust.

FOR decades the market was an essential part of life in the Liberties, providing work to traders and cheap goods to buyers. The corporation failed, however, in its obligation to maintain the buildings. As the market grew tatty, it became clear the place needed a radical overhaul. By the early 1990s the corporation had started to develop a plan for "the restoration of the building to its original splendour and its refurbishment as a modern indoor market".

The resident traders, encouraged by the usual buzz words about consultation and participation, went ahead and drew up their own plans for redevelopment, essentially involving the traders themselves taking control of running the market, which would remain in public ownership.

From early on, however, there were hints that private enterprise might be invited to take a hand. Initially, these suggestions were turned down. By 1996, however, it was clear that the corporation was determined to turn this public space into a private commercial development. It announced that the redevelopment would be a joint venture with a private developer.

In 1997 a company called MK/Slattery Ltd, run by Mr Martin Keane, was chosen as the developer. The agreement was that in return for carrying out the refurbishment and for the payment of a quarter of a million pounds, MK/Slattery would receive a 500-year lease on the buildings at an annual rent of just £100. The corporation would, in addition, receive a small percentage of the annual profits, rising from 6 per cent initially to 10 per cent.

As well as this very nice deal, however, MK/Slattery also gets, in return for just £450,000, the right to a 36-bed hotel on part of the market site. This site is also leased for 500 years at an annual rent of £100. In return for less than a million pounds, therefore, a prime public space in an area that has been successfully gentrified in recent years will become essentially just another upmarket retail and hotel complex. As for the traders, about a dozen are to be accommodated at low initial rents, but for the most part the old market will simply cease to exist.

As it happens, the redevelopment has been held up by the awkward presence of the past. The remains of an 18th-century streetscape were uncovered when redevelopment began, and the site was declared to be of "major archaeological significance". This is probably history's last stand before both the lives of the poor and the generosity of one rich family are buried once and for all beneath the new, faceless retail opportunity that is Ireland now.

fotoole@irish-times.ie