Sir, In a recent particle on Temple Bar ("Temple of Bars"), the managing director of state owned Temple Bar Properties, Ms Laura Magahy, says her company has no control over the number or type of pubs in the area. This is not so. TBP, as the largest landholder in the area, has deliberately through site disposals, or through its own development, facilitated or built many new or newly expanded drinking premises in the area.
These include Fitzsimons in Essex Street East; the Porterhouse, Parliament Street; the Front Lounge Parliament Street; the Foggy Dew, Fownes Street; the River Club, Merchants Arch; the Temple Bar Pub, Temple Bar; the shortly to open pub on Essex Quay/Essex Gate; and the Norseman, Essex Street East which I nominate as the greatest pub travesty of 1996. To my knowledge, no pub in Temple Bar is now the same as it was five years ago.
The problem is not confined to Temple Bar. Between 15 and 20 out of 800 pubs in Dublin retain their original Victorian interiors. None of their interiors are listed for preservation. So, of course, the number is diminishing.
I suppose we can live with the boomtown demolition of the likes of Kitty O'Shea's or Hill 16, but an application for demolition of the former Barney Kiernan's on Little Britain Street has recently been lodged. This is, of course, the essential pub, the setting for the scene in Joyce's Ulysses where the anti Semitic "Citizen" vents his tirade against Bloom. This is far more serious.
It is well known that the interiors of some of Dublin's greatest churches are to be found in newly built Irish theme pubs. It would be a pity if the interiors of our best pubs were to be exported for German, Irish theme pubs. The Government, committed to reform of the law relating to listed buildings. as a matter of priority should address failures to list properly that most important cultural institution, the Dublin pub. - Yours, etc.,
Chairman, An Taisce,
Dublin City
Planning Committee, Tailors Hall,
Dublin 8.