The Dublin Community Blog

Hi Guys,

Apologies, we have had a problem with the site tonight that’s resulted in us having to revert back to a snapshot of the site that was taken last Thursday (Jan 17th). As a result, the most recent posts and comments that were made here since then have disappeared.

Fingers crossed this will be the last of the outages. You should also notice that the whole site is running a whole lot faster for you now, having been moved over to a new server.

If anyone spots anything broken, please let us know!

Happy New Year to all our readers out there. We’ve never really spoken about our readership on the blog, but, there are a couple of thousand of you a week, both regular and occasional visitors, who log on to check out what we have to say about life in and around Dublin.

Unfortunately, what we’ve had to say of late is, quite frankly, not a lot! Many of the original team have moved onto bigger and better things, and no longer live in Dublin, or are far too busy living the high life to have time to tell us about it!

So, this is a call to arms as such, to anyone out there who feels that they have a thing or two to say about Dublin. Good, or bad, it should be heard, this isn’t the Dublin Tourist Office, this is a blog all about living in and around Dublin. So, if you are interested in writing, or indeed getting involved in any aspect of the site, such as providing photographs, feature requests, or maybe even a re-design, please get in touch. You can mail me on write4us@dublinblog.ie

Wow, it’s been a while since I posted anything here, but this has come my way and is worthy of a mention.

St. Lukes cancer care hospital is due to be closed down shortly. This is a vital, much needed, and much respected service, and everything possible should be done to try and keep it open. There are numerous petitions and services flying about, this is one that’s just been sent my way and is well worth signing, if you too believe saving St Lukes is a good thing. You can go here in order to sign.

One of the most popular, and debated posts on our blog is a post by Heidi, about changes to the work permit system in Ireland. If you’re not following comments closely, you may be missing out on a debate that you wish to add your voice to, so, I thought I would highlight the fact that the post is here

Marlay Park will be rocking this weekend. Saturday sees Damien Rice headline with support from KT Tunstall, Guillemots, Willy Mason and Fionn Regan. Gates open at 2pm. Sunday the Kaiser Chiefs headline with support from The Fratellis. Gates open at 3.30pm.

Tickets are still available for both concerts from Ticketmaster.

EDIT (Daragh) If you want to get away with having to pay the extortionate Ticketmaster handling fees, I have three tickets for Damien Rice tomorrow for sale at face value – EUR50 each. If you are interested in buying them from me, drop me a line to tickets@daraghmcg.org

Wellies optional!

15:16
I’ve just received a text alert to let me know that emergency services are currently working on a ‘Major Incident’ in Dun Laoghaire. I’ve no details of what it is just yet, if anyone is around and about and has more info, or pictures, please send them on.

15:20
According to Reports on the incident are unclear with some suggesting a bus carrying children entered the water. Other reports say it was a yachting incident.

15:23
Keeping an eye on these webcams from Dun Laoghaire harbour but so far not a whole lot showing up on them.

15:30
Apparently a school-kids regatta has been affected by some freak weather, and up to 120 children have been blown off their boats into the water.

15:35
It would appear that the webcams have disappeared offline, probably due to the volume of people watching them.

15:38
A further update from ireland.com

According to the Department of Transport four local yacht clubs were taking part in a junior regatta involving 91 boats and 110 children when weather conditions worsened sharply at around 2.15pm leading to the overturning of a number of boats.

The children involved were aged between 10 to 15 years of age.

Lifeboats from Dun Laoighre and Howth along with a Dublin-based coastguard helicopter are involved in rescuing the children from the sea.

It is not yet clear how many of the boats overturned or whether there have been any injuries.

A Dublin Fire Brigade spokesman said numerous units have been sent to the scene, including specialist water rescue units.

15:38

According to this RTE News article, this incident actually occurred at 14:00 today, and that up to 120 children had to be rescued from the sea off Dún Laoghaire after over 90 vessels capsized. According to a spokesperson for Dun Laoghaire, all of the children were wearing life jackets and all have since been accounted for.

Big apology due to all our readers and commentators here, I’ve been completely out of the loop for the past two weeks or so, and I noticed this morning that there were a heap of unapproved comments sitting in the queue awaiting approval. They’ve all been approved and are viewable now, hopefully the debate can continue, and fingers crossed it won’t happen again!

Speaking of contributing to the blog, if anyone is interested in coming onboard and joining the team and writing for us, just let me know, we’d love to have you here if you have something, good or bad to say about Dublin!

Ok, so, we all like freebies. And if you’re a college student, you kinda expect freebies, right?! Well, if you’re a third level student in Dublin (or, anywhere else in the country for that matter!) and fancy some freebies, along the lines of a blog, hosting and a domain name, then this Digiweb offer may be of interest to you. Yup, a free blog, domain and hosting of same, you heard it right!! Only catch is the offer applies to 3rd level students, postgrads, teaching or research staff, and lecturers only! That’s not so bad!

Thankfully, I rarely have to endure Dublin traffic nowadays, and in fact, as I’m shooting up the motorway in the opposite direction to all the commuters, I regularly take (guilty) pleasure in listening to the traffic reports on the radio. But I would love to know what the deal is with the past two days. By all accounts it’s been completely manic out there, and I’m just wondering if any ideas what has led to traffic being so crazy around the city this week?

There are currently discussions taking place over on the flickr Dublin Group about arranging a flickr meetup in Dublin on Saturday May 12th. I’ve added it to my diary and hope to get along, it would be great if this got a bit of PR and turned into a pretty big event, so, anything that people can do to spread the word and turn up would be cool.

Hopefully at least some of the bloggers here will turn up and grab some shots and write home about it and we can make this a more regular event.