Una Mullally: Kellie Harrington's victory shows community matters

Kellie Harrington didn’t just win an Olympic gold medal with incredible resilience, composure, sophistication and style. In showing us who she is and how she is, and in her community showing the nation who they are, she, and her community of Portland Row and Dublin 1, collectively demonstrated something to be proud of, something to aspire to, and something to protect. Community matters.

It’s the thing that should be at the core of all Dublin city’s plans and places, old and new. Look at it. Feel it.

The community of Portland Row has found itself in the spotlight like never before. But what if those television cameras and reporters didn’t leave?

What if they trained their lenses on what’s happening in the inner city now: the magic of the place that’s still here, even though it’s contending with the displacement of long-standing communities due to corporate gentrification and regressive development masquerading as progress, an amenities crisis, and communities hanging on while luxury student blocks and apart-hotels fly up around them instead of actual housing, leaving young people unable to afford to rent or buy in the area they call home.

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Throughout the Olympics, Portland Row made the intangible tangible. For all the lofty talk about the importance of community, this Dublin 1 community just showed it

If we know these communities are fantastic, what is the Government and the council doing to support them?

By the time we get to Paris 2024, or Los Angeles 2028, or Brisbane 2032, what inner city communities will be left? Or will the ecosystem of the inner city be so infringed upon that communities core to the character and culture of the capital and country will be left like polar bears on lone ice floes, their habitat melted around them?

This is what’s happening at speed in communities such as the Liberties, for example, now pockmarked with nonsense buildings that contribute nothing but high rent and hotel rooms.

The council’s big plan for amenities in Dublin 1 remains the ludicrous attempt to drop a white water rafting centre into the area that simply does not take the needs of those who live there into account. In April, Sorcha Pollak wrote a piece in this newspaper about the ongoing debate around the white water rafting facility, and an alternative some people have called for – a public swimming pool on George’s Dock.

Dublin City Council chief executive Owen Keegan summed up his attitude to young people in the area by saying, “We think high-adrenaline sport could interest young people who we find difficult to engage in other activities.” I’m sorry, but what are you on about?

“It would animate the area and be really good for tourism,” Keegan told Pollak, which cuts to the heart of how the city is being sliced up and who is being served: tourists over those who come from and move here. What about taking that land, and derelict buildings in the area, and building a creche, a youth centre, a public pool, green space and a new boxing gym?

Creative force

As a cultural and creative force, Dublin 1’s impact is huge. The number of unique talents that emerge from this part of the capital is incredible. And place matters. In 2017, ahead of the release of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, the Hollywood Reporter interviewed the actor Barry Keoghan, announcing him as “Hollywood’s next big thing”.

The article began, “Barry Keoghan would like it noted that he was born and raised in Dublin 1.” Keoghan – who also boxes in his spare time – said, “I call it the real Dublin.” The interviewer was probably wondering how on earth a capital city could have postcodes so brief yet so important. “It’s been a big part of everything to me,” Keoghan said.

When Harrington was interviewed by Vincent Hogan in the Irish Independent in 2019, she spoke of other people from her area; Wes Hoolahan, Troy Parrott, Lynn Rafferty, Olivia O’Toole, Laurence Kinlan, Barry Keoghan, “I could be here all day naming people from the inner city,” she said. “These are world-class people who’ve come out of the same place as me.” When individuals from Dublin 1 triumph, they constantly refer to their context; it says a lot about its importance.

Real communities

The communities of the inner city are real. Look at what we’ve seen demonstrated in Dublin 1 over the course of the Olympics. They’re not marketing. They’re not museum pieces. They don’t exist to be commodified for tourists. They’re not fake people frozen in images of “coming soon” developments on hoardings, the digital renderings of phoney aspirations by developers framing the eradication of a sense of place as a contribution to it.

They act as incubators for the likes of Harrington. Stories abound about her generosity, humility, humour, grace, commitment, kindness, enthusiasm. She is a product of her environment, as we all are. It must be a pretty spectacular environment.

One of the most powerful lyrics by an artist from Dublin 1 in recent years is by Gemma Dunleavy, from Sheriff Street. On Up De Flats, an ode to her area, she sings, “They said we had nothing but we had it all.”

Throughout the Olympics, Portland Row made the intangible tangible. For all the lofty talk about the importance of community, this Dublin 1 community just showed it. Their togetherness, joy and pride was on our nightly news for all to see. It is beautiful. In fact, it’s golden.