Madam, - There is a depressing sense of deja-vu about the proposal to move the National College of Art and Design from Thomas Street to the UCD campus at Belfield (The Irish Times, November 12th). The move of UCD itself from Earlsfort Terrace to the greenfield site at Belfield in the late 1960s is considered by many, planning professionals included, to have been the worst single planning decision in the recent history of Dublin.
At a time when, in other countries,the relocation of city universities to greenfield sites had been all but abandoned as being bad for cities and bad for students, the move to Belfield was pushed through, spearheaded obsessively by the president of the college at the time, Dr Michael Tierney. The possibility of an inner-city campus based around Iveagh Gardens, where adequate development property was available at the time, and which would have immeasurably enriched the cultural life of the city, was lost.
This campus would have linked, via the spine of existing cultural institutions, the National Museum, the College of Science, the National Library and the National College of Art (then in Kildare Street) to the Trinity campus, forming a proper "cultural quarter" instead of the joke that is Temple Bar. Instead, Dáil Éireann and its employees have colonised much of the area and, with gated security, closed off easy access and interchange between the remaining cultural institutions.
Property speculation in the Harcourt Street/St Stephen's Green area at the time facilitated the movement of UCD to Belfield; and already in the case of the NCAD the ringing of the greasy till can be heard. The spokesman for the Inner City Business Association has welcomed the prospective relocation, proposing that the site be developed as "luxury apartments" (Sunday Times, October 23rd).
What will be next? Trinity College as a shopping mall with condominiums and car park? - Yours, etc,
EAMONN O'DOHERTY, Ferns, Co Wexford.