As Mr. Connolly Heron stated, we were going to make a PowerPoint presentation. However, we will now be obliged to read through the hard copies instead. To that end, I am circulating to members a rough copy of our plan for Moore Street. It is very easy to criticise what is on the table but it is much more effective if one brings forward an alternative.
Members now have in front of them copies of a document entitled "HQ 16 - A Citizens' Plan for Dublin". This plan was drawn up by myself and other interested parties. It was then presented to the relatives, who have endorsed it. In effect, therefore, members are looking at what is, as much as anything else, the relatives' plan for the area. I am the public relations officer, PRO, for the Save 16 Moore Street Committee and for the 1916 relatives group. Members have before them relatives of James Connolly, Éamonn Ceannt, Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Mary Plunkett. Supporting us and the plan are relatives of each of the executed leaders of the 1916 rising. That is a fairly formidable imprimatur for "HQ 16 - A Citizens' Plan for Dublin".
Members who have not visited Moore Street should perhaps take a trip down there. The street is in a very sorry state and is very much a cross between a shanty town and a Third World slum. In the middle of it is our so-called national monument, which we tend to refer to as a "national disgrace". I was in Moore Street which a chap who worked there as a butcher for 40 years. He informed me that the rot set in when the Ilac Centre was built. That was when the street began to disintegrate. He pointed the finger at Dublin City Council - formerly Dublin Corporation - for allowing the area to become run down. If members visit the area today, tomorrow or next week - they are all welcome to join one of our tours - they will see how run down it has become. The idea that we are in some way holding up progress is nonsense. We want to see both progress and development on the site. However, we want such development to be appropriate in the context of the historical, cultural and social connections.
Without further ado, I will proceed to discuss the plan. It is not laid out as it will be when fully printed because as already stated, this is a rough version. We have used images to convey the character of the street. For example, there is a page which is full of the very familiar faces of stall-holders on Moore Street. I also spoke to the latter last week and discovered that some of them can trace their ancestry on the street back over a century. These people do not want to leave. This is because they love their jobs and their heritage. However, under Chartered Land's plan, their stalls and, consequently, the only street market on Dublin's north side will disappear. It is interesting that when the Queen of England visited Ireland recently, she was brought to the English Market in Cork. She was not taken to Tesco or Dunnes Stores. As a Corkonian exile, I know how wonderful that space is. I do not understand why we do not have one in Dublin but if HQ 16 is adopted and implemented we might be able to invite people down there.
I will not go through the copy of the presentation as I will email it to the members. We do not want this area to be a fossilised historical quarter; we want it to convey an area that has a social, cultural and retail history. I have a letter from Retail Excellence Ireland - which I can also email to the members - with which we have linked up because it recognises the importance of our plan. Our plan does not concentrate only on the national monuments and the spirit of 1916, it also recognises the fact that many of the small shops in Dublin that we may have liked to visit have disappeared during the past 30 years due to the obscene upward only rents. If one walks around the streets of Dublin, apart from the "To Let" signs, one will find shops that one can find on any High Street in Britain. We view the terrace and the laneways around it as an opportunity to put the clock back a little, have rent control and encourage the development of a retail area with a difference on that street and in the area around it, a retail area that we would recognise from 30, 40, 50 and 60 years ago. As things come full circle, it is clear that is the way the retail sector is going. The day of the large dinosaur developments is over. Those are zombie developments. Unfortunately, there are a number of people in public life and in the development sector who still think these developments are valid and that they will happen but they will not.
Members will note on page 4 a slide of two images of architects' drawings. These are some of our proposals. We have a proposal for the entire terrace. The upper illustration is of the national monument, Nos. 14, 15, 16, 17. We see that as a commemorative hub. We envisage those buildings being restored to an appearance that is far more appropriate. They would be a commemorative centre and the buildings on either side of No. 16, No. 15 and No. 17, would be a buffer zone. We would have an interpretative centre - a shop of some kind. Beyond that, the other buildings between the national monument should be small retail spaces. They should be let out to retailers who would have the types of shops that would attract tourists and natives back into the city. Members will note that we want to keep the stalls on the street because we believe they are important and, with the growth of the organic sector, we believe the market should be expanded. It should not be removed. How many television programmes are broadcast showing Irish cooks going to France whingeing about how they cannot find such produce at home? They can; it is just not available in Dublin, apart from perhaps in Fallon and Byrne's. We need to bring that into the north side.
On the next set of images, members will note the top image shows the Proclamation of the Irish Republic set out in front of No. 16. We believe the most suitable way to stop people in their tracks is to put a very large bronze representation of the Proclamation across the width of the street. The street can operate around it but that is the commemorative zone, and it can work; it has been done in other cities. The illustration below that image shows Moore Lane, which will once again, as James Connolly Heron said, be obliterated if Chartered Land get its way. We show in the illustration that there are ancillary-auxillary buildings that could be re-used. The tricolour signifies the rear entrance to No. 16. There is a perfect opportunity to open up an artistic hub, a craft hub, there. Despite the dereliction, old slaughter houses and old store rooms are still standing and they could be reused. The vision we have is of development not, as I have always said, with a sledge-hammer but with a scalpel - a far more sophisticated and subtle development of the area.
Moving on to the next set of images, the one at the top right is interesting. It is the barricade that O'Rahilly and the rest of them faced charging up Moore Street. It is a very unusual image. Members can see what they faced. Beside that image is another one in crayon of the pencilled notes of the decision to surrender, which was scribbled in the backroom on the first floor of No. 16 Moore Street. Below that image is the iconic one of Pearse surrendering at the top of Moore Street. Beside the image is the very small one of the commemorative plaque on No. 16.
If one walks around this area, one will note that the commemorative plaques have either been removed or they are insignificant. When we contacted Dublin City Council and asked if they had a record of the plaques it refused. We asked if the council would like one and again it declined. We asked why and it said it thought there was a better way of commemorating the Rising. I would like to know what that is.
The next set of images are architectural ones. If members go down the street, they will see the shell damage and the bullet holes on the facades of the terrace displayed in the images. They also show that the buildings are not as shoddy and as unremarkable as one may think. Some thought was put into this. It is an 18th century street that was remodelled over the years and one will note it has all sorts of interesting architectural details.
The next set of images show some old scenes of Moore Street. I talked to a butcher and he told me that in the 1960s he counted 36 butcher shops on Moore Street but now there are two. Below the top image of the street is an image of the original granite sets which have been tarmaced over. That is the street the garrison ran down. If the tarmac was to be removed it would be still there. Moore Street is all still there; it is just under layers of grime and dereliction. The bottom right image is interesting. It shows how lively the street was; it was a bustling street and it still is. Even though the terrace is boarded up is and used for short-term lets for not particularly appropriate retail outlets, it is still a bustling street.
The next set of images are more architectural in nature and images of connections with 1916. The following set of images of the leaders of the Rising are iconic. The brochure and HQ 16 are dedicated to and supported by at least one member of each of those families. That is a fairly impressive imprimatur to work with.
I will move on to the last two images, which members, when I e-mail them the presentation, will be able to expand on their computers. The top image is Moore Street, the terrace, as it stands and the bottom one is the street as we propose it should be. What is proposed is a scalpel development. We want an archaeological assessment, a more modest development and the re-use of the buildings there. Having been in the restoration industry in the past, I know a little about these buildings and I would say that putting them back in order is not as big a task as demolishing them, excavating and building a new development.
If members turn over the page, they will see the second stretch of the terrace and, to the left of that stretch, they will see the Plunket sign, which signifies the national monument All these buildings are of historic interest and, as James Connolly Heron said, they are also architecturally interesting because the terrace dates from 1760 and it is one of the few terraces left on the north side. A companion street would be South Frederick Street. If members walked down that street, they would get an idea of what Moore Street could look like. They will get a chance to view HQ 16 when we launch it fairly shortly. They will be invited to attend the launch and I hope they will do so.
I envisage this area as being a hub for the north side. Down the road from Moore Street and the area around it are the city markets off Capel Street, which are very much underused, and Henry Street. From there one can link into a route to Parnell Square, which has the Hugh Lane Gallery and the Garden of Remembrance, and from there to the north Georgian core of Dublin, the James Joyce cultural trail, the Royal Canal, Croke Park, the Botanic Gardens and Glasnevin Cemetery. There is a ready-made tourism and cultural trail there, if one chooses a ready-made foot trail. That plan would probably cost a few million euro to get commissioned. We are giving it to the committee, the citizens of the Dublin and citizens of Ireland freely. It is a great gift to have from the descendants of the 1916 leaders.
I always feel a great debt to the people who sit beside me and to what their ancestors did in 1916. While what they fought for may have been discarded in recent years, including, in many respects, our sovereignty, which may have been put to one side, it does not detract from what happened. We owe it to them, at the very least, to give them Moore Street and this area. I believe it was Tom Clarke, in response to people who said he would be shot and that nobody would care, who said words along the lines that "No, the future generations will understand and they will honour us". It is a very modest request to honour the men and women of 1916 and the descendants who are here today by supporting, implementing and making this plan happen. It will benefit everybody.
