The Dublin Community Blog

I have gone to St Stephens Green a couple of times over the bank holiday weekend to enjoy the sunshine, along with thousands of others. While there I spent a lot of that time trying to decide what to write in this blog post. You see I am puzzled. As I sit in the shade of a tree that looks like it is over a hundred years old and admire the Victorian gardens that surround me I contemplate a simple question. Does anyone care that this could be the end of St Stephens Green?

I ask because everyone seems to have accepted the governments decision to dig up the Green and install an underground railway station. Yes you read that correctly, the Irish government has decided to dig up St Stephens Green and allow the construction of an underground railway station. This station will link the proposed Metro, the current Luas lines and new line to Heuston station. It seems like a great idea but we don’t need it.

Part of the same Transport 21 Plan that proposes this station also announced the Luas line that currently ends at St Stephens Green will be extended to O’Connell Street, there are also existing buses that run from the Green to O’Connell Street, and lets face it, it is only a 10 minute walk anyway. With the new plan, each of those minutes could easily cost us 1 billion Euros. Once on O’Connell Street you can hop on the other Luas line and speed down to Heuston Station, or if you want you could hop onto the original proposal for a Metro line that would run from O’Connell Street to the airport. Billions and billions and St Stephens Green itself would be saved by finishing the Luas lines and introducing an integrated ticketing system, things they are going to do anyway regardless of the future of the Green.

So why dig up the Green? I don’t understand. Is it, as the Green Party (who should be stopping this crime instead of boasting about it) described, an attempt to build an Irish Grand Central Station? Is it just another folly for Minister Martin Cullen to spend money on? Is it an ego replacement for the failed Bertie Bowl? The Dail is a 2 minute walk from St Stephens Green, can they really not care about it? When was the last time Mary Harney or Michael McDowell took a stroll in the park to enjoy the beauty of green space that has existed since 1663. When was the last time Brian Cowen took five minutes to sit in the shade of a tree planted in 1880 by Arthur Guinness?

Can they look at the park and really think they can close it to the public, dig it up and then restore it to anything but a pale shadow of its current self? No number of Government decrees, committee white papers, consultants reports, contractor deals or press releases can make a tree grow faster or a park ecosystem reestablish itself. You can set the process in motion but once the diggers move in a 130 year old tree will take 130 years to replace.

And still we let them take our park. The public are silent. The bloggers are silent. The community is silent. Why? Does no one care? Do we all hate that 10 minute walk so much that we will give up anything to save having to stroll over O’Connell bridge? Why? Why? Why?

Can we stop it? Yes. The final decision is not yet made, but it will be made after the summer and then it will be too late. A Supreme Court ruling to stop the diggers after they have started will not be able to resurrect the trees. Once they start we may as well let them finish.

What can we do? Well for starters tell people. Get vocal. Build up public knowledge. Next time you are in the park with your friends tell them this wont be here next year.

Then what? Blog, write, complain, bitch, moan, argue, lobby. If you know your local politician, and even if you don’t, tell them they cannot take your park away. Point out that the station is not needed. We only need what they promised us 10 years ago, a Luas line from St Stephens Green to O’Connell Street and an integrated ticket system. If you know a journalist ask them why are they not writing about this? Why are they not willing to stand up and speak?

This is the Dublin Blog and St Stephens Green is the Dublin Park, if we don’t speak out then will anyone? Next year when it is sunny will we sit on mounds of excavated dirt and footpaths around the locked and barricaded park asking how did this happen?