Madam, – On Wednesday all the Anglo Irish Bank signage was removed from the bank’s buildings.
Instead of removing the letters, they could have just rearranged the letters to get: “Bi LOANSHARKING” or “HI BRAKING LOANS” or “BAH LOANING RISK”, or my favourite, “OH BANKING LIARS.” – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I note with disgust but little surprise (that the Anglo Irish Bank signage has now been removed from the front of numbers 18-21 St Stephen’s Green (Business, April 21st). I note particularly Mike Aynsley’s comments that “Removing the old Anglo signage is a step towards reflecting . . .” a “. . . new reality” and that consigning the “signage to history” should “Once and for all give people an incredibly strong sense of finality in terms of the fate of this institution that has cost Ireland so dearly.”
It appears that Mr Aynsley, a banker, sees himself as judge and jury in terms of how the Irish people should view this act of forgetting. Burying history is not something that should be taken lightly but, to date, there appears to have been no public debate at all on how this building should be dealt with.
The Anglo Irish Bank building adjoins two protected structures, lies within a Conservation Area (where all new and replacement signage is normally required to be the subject of a planning application to Dublin City Council), faces onto the St Stephen’s Green National Monument and indeed the building itself, designed by Andy Devane of RKD in the early 1970s could now be considered worthy of its own protected structure status under the 2000 Planning Act.
The criteria for determination of whether a building is worthy of protection are wide and the building would be considered worthy of protection in terms of its particular and profound recent historical, cultural and social impact. The idea that its memory should simply be erased is wrong. If the signs are to be removed in the interest of practicality then their preservation in some other place must be the subject of some public consultation and they should certainly not be moved to some “undisclosed location” determined by one banker.
Finally, if there is to be some public debate on the building’s appropriate preservation or indeed how the signage is to be re-erected, could I start by suggesting that the following rearrangement of letters might be employed – “BANAL RISKING HO”. – Yours, etc,