Una Mullally: Why is Dublin being starved of outdoor dining spaces?

The Dublin hospitality lockdown will be a brutal one for businesses, and there’s only so many times politicians can pontificate about resilience before that rhetoric starts sounding very thin. The city has been floundering since the pandemic began, and we have to face up to the fact that the people who run the capital, mind-bogglingly, missed the summer.

Multiple outdoor spaces perfect for outdoor dining, for example, were left empty. The city could have been transformed had spaces such as Smithfield’s public cobblestoned square, one of the most underutilised spaces in the city, been used for outdoor dining.

Temple Bar, devoid of tourists when air travel collapsed, could have come back to life for locals. Much of it is pedestrianised anyway, so you can imagine the lanes, streets and squares being used as outdoor dining areas for its pubs, cafes and restaurants. Instead most of those venues are shut with little contingency for life after tourism. The area also includes a semi-covered public space, Meeting House Square. Dublin City Council’s offices are literally at the edge of Temple Bar. Didn’t anyone see this largely pedestrianised network of streets populated by independent businesses on their doorstep and wonder how it could be reclaimed for the pandemic-era city?

The fringes of our city parks, with their broad footpaths – Merrion Square, St Stephen’s Green, Fitzwilliam Square, Mountjoy Square – make for perfect public terraces. Again, tumbleweed. The area in front of the Custom House by the Liffey, all the way down to the East-Link Bridge, is beautifully paved and lit and could have been a riverside meeting place, eating place and reborn public space.

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The IFSC has multiple wide pathways that could have been opened up for socially distanced, safe gatherings. Instead, an area with a high density of now mostly vacant offices just sat there while office workers stayed at home. George’s Dock at the IFSC, which became the focus of the council’s plans for a white-water rafting facility, used to host markets and cultural events. Oh well.

Spar sandwich

Likewise Grand Canal Dock didn’t transform into a brilliant waterside, safe outdoor area for public dining, unless you count buying a sandwich from Spar and eating it while sitting on a nearby bench as an al fresco success. Although that said, life was breathed into that area throughout the summer thanks to the young men and women who use the area for diving and swimming, along with local skateboarders.

Floors and roofs of multistorey carparks, which offer a very obvious solution for indoor-outdoor dining – covered, spacious, ventilated – could have been used. Dublin could have taken the examples of Park in Lisbon, Klunkerkranich in Berlin, or the multiple car-park roof bars in London such as Skylight in Wapping and Frank’s in Peckham.

Instead, what the city got were cheesy tourist campaigns for day-trippers, and promises at the start of summer for pedestrianisation schemes, including, finally, the creation of a public plaza at College Green. Most of those plans seem to have dwindled or were poorly realised, and College Green still hasn’t been pedestrianised.

There were some successes in the bicycle lane department. The cycle lanes on the north quays are great. But new public amenities are so scarce in Dublin that when 750m of cycle path in the north inner city was opened, Green Party leader Eamon Ryan, Lord Mayor Hazel Chu, Minister for Finance Paschal Donohue, and chief executive of the National Transport Authority Anne Graham turned up to cut the ribbon. That’s not to say the cycle pathway isn’t great (it is very pleasant), but these are very small things. It’s hard not to see average initiatives being trumpeted so loudly as being a bit pathetic.

Deprived Dubliners

Dubliners are so deprived of anything that feels novel, nice or innovative that people were basically left applauding the few car-park spaces that have been taken over by restaurants for outdoor diners in the South William Street area. Yes, they’re nice, but it’s also a minuscule outcome for the capital city’s outdoor dining overall.

Instead of coming up with and implementing very obvious big ideas all summer long, on Thursday night after 10pm, the council posted on Twitter that in order for businesses to use street furniture, they must have public liability insurance of €6.4 million in place. And on utilising car-park spaces for outdoor seating, “The preference is for businesses to work together to make these interventions. The city council will provide support and expertise if requested.”

The message is clear: do it yourselves. Given how the council is always in enforcement mode and rarely in facilitation mode, perhaps it’s easier for businesses to just try and save themselves rather than looking to Wood Quay for help or inspiration.

Of course, there are many (although clearly not enough) smart and helpful people working in the council. But they don’t appear to have the kind of scope or authority they – and the city – need. The perception of the council as dawdling, devoid of ideas and incapable of pursuing the kind of adaptable, smart and innovative ideas that get some life back into the city centre is evidenced by how little has actually come to pass. Now the summer is over. Winter is coming, and the economic and social chill will be fierce.