The Friday View 03/06
It's a big, big sporting weekend in Cork. And city councillors made a big decision this week involving Bishop Lucey Park and the Freemasons’ Hall on Tuckey Street.
No secret handshakes, nothing to see here
Ellie writes….
National Maternity Hospital Scandal eat your heart out: it's a Monday evening in the year 2022, and I’ve just watched Cork City Council vote in favour of a plan that will take a chunk out of the city’s most iconic public park for the use of a male-only secret society.
Yes, you did read that correctly.
At a special meeting of Cork City Council Monday evening, councillors did indeed vote 24 to seven in favour of granting a material contravention of the Cork City Development Plan to facilitate a planning application by the Freemasons Hall on Tuckey St for a four-storey extension to provide disability access to the building.
Bishop Lucey Park is zoned as Public Open Space. The Cork City Development Plan 2015-2021 has a clear stated objective of retaining and protecting Public Open Space. So how on earth have the council just decided to override this objective to the advantage of the Freemasons?
The motion was proposed by Cllr Ken O’Flynn and seconded by Cllr Paudie Dineen. For the record, Councillors Ryan, Moran, Boyle, Tynan, Maher, Bogue, and Finn voted against, while the remainder voted for.
Such was the farcical, pinch-yourself nature of many of the comments from councillors at the meeting, that I chuckled out loud to myself on several occasions before lapsing into a kind of stunned disbelief that I was actually going to be watching this happen.
Here was Cllr Deirdre Forde expressing the hope that the Freemasons would become “more inclusive to women” before weighing down in favour of the contravention. More inclusive to women. The Freemasons. No, I’m not joking.
Several other councillors expressed the hope that the Cork city outpost of the world’s largest secret society would hold more public events in future. Or even that the council would be permitted the use of the building. How appropriate that would be, right? We’d love a closer connection between our elected representatives and a large male-only organisation that keeps secrets, wouldn’t we?
The original old boy’s club
Conspiracy theories abound as to the activities and purpose of the Freemasons, of course. Secrecy will probably bring that with it, especially when it comes with, you know, images of the all-seeing eye and ceremonies and secret handshakes and all that.
But even if you just think it’s probably kind of the original old boy’s club, well, forgive, me, but I feel weirdly mistrusting towards the notion of a fully functioning old boy’s club, made up of members of the business community and people working in numerous social institutions, that excludes women.
If giving a chunk of public land, however small, to an organisation that’s male-only isn’t the actual definition of structural inequality, as in, a structure that will not be equally accessed by all, I don’t know what is. The building works may be to facilitate disability access, but for the vast bulk of the time, this extra access will be for the benefit of members only.
As Cllr Fiona Ryan pointed out in her comments at the council meeting, the 2,000 members of the public that do access the Freemason’s Hall are largely made up of the visitors who queue up for a gawp on Culture Night each year.
I’ve been amongst their number; upon entry, I was greeted by a clean-shaven, smiling young gent who said to me, “People say we’re a secret society, but we’re just a society with secrets.”
“Death by a thousand cuts” for city green space
Rather than getting all het up about the implications of giving public land to a male-only organisation, though, many of the objections to this council vote came from commentators who don’t want to see the city’s public green space eroded.
But many of the comments from councillors in favour of the material contravention were on the basis that the amount of land being disposed of to the Masons is “only 1%” of Bishop Lucey Park.
After the vote I messaged UCC plant scientist Dr Eoin Lettice, who had made a submission to the council on the basis of the loss of even a small proportion of the park. He said he wasn’t surprised by the result of the vote, but he was disappointed; Cork City needs all the green space it can get, he believes, and this vote set a poor precedent.
“Unfortunately this is a ‘death by a thousand cuts’ scenario where the precedent has now been set to allow development on public parks which has no genuine benefit to the public at large,” he told me.
“It's 1% this year. Next year it could be 2% of another park and a few hundred metres in another park. It is the piecemeal erosion of public open space. For this to be driven by the local authority, as we face into the existential crises of climate change and biodiversity loss beggars belief.”
“You cannot build a sustainable city by carving up the only public park of any note in the city centre and giving it away to whoever wants a piece.”
Public plans for the park
Although the vote was online and publicly accessible, the preceding briefing and, I understand, a further briefing since, were held privately.
Councillors had to vote on the material contravention in the absence of any knowledge of the arrangements by which the public land will actually be disposed of to the Freemasons: will it be sold to them, or gifted? We don’t know.
The other thing we don’t know is exactly how the Freemasons’ plan will interact with the city’s plans to redesign Bishop Lucey Park as part of a €46 million facelift for the Grand Parade area.
The park overhaul, unpopular with some because of the additional paving and built structures it involves, was due to begin “in early 2022” at the time we published the above last year. There appears to be a visual rendition of the Freemasons’ extension in this plan, published last July.
These public works to the park have not begun, and if the council have been briefed on how the Freemasons’ extension will impact these works, and indeed, how much more of Bishop Lucey Park will temporarily be made inaccessible to the public during the building phase should planning permission be granted to the Freemasons, then the public haven’t been.
We would like to keep covering this story with an update on how Cork City Council proposes to dispose of the land to the Freemasons.
News in brief
New loo: Ground was broken this week at the shed in Marina Park as construction of public toilets gets underway. Construction work has been held up due to supply chain issues, but the City Council told Tripe + Drisheen that work is expected to be complete in around four to six weeks. We wrote about the lack of public toilets in the city in one of our long reads last year which you can read here.
Also this week
King and queen of the road: Congratulations are in order for Naad man Seamus Sexton who took gold for Ireland in the European road bowling championships in Germany. Seamus aced his throws on Süderhastedt road near Meldorf in northern Germany. It was a double win for Cork as Rachel Kingston won in the road bowling also. More information here.
The people’s cafe: Gavin O’Callaghan has a lovely read on Tomasz Wrzesien, the Polish owner of Cafe Spresso on MacCurtain Street. "Elderly people like it. A lot of them live alone and come in to meet friends. Many friendships started in this place, people didn't know each other before and now they call here every day and stay in touch,” says Tomasz. It’s definitely not the kind of place where the barista writes your name on a cup.
Photo of the week
Out + About
🏉 Try: The first ever mixed ability rugby world cup gets underway this weekend at Musgrave Park. There’ll be 28 teams converging on the home of Munster rugby in Cork where they’ll be battling it out for the cup. But there’s also a raft of other sports on show. All tickets for the matches are free as well as for the opening ceremony on Sunday evening, which features the Army Band, Majella Cullagh, Altan and Celtic Steps. Tickets for the opening ceremony are here and all information about the event and match times is here.
Time, date, place: June 5-10, Musgrave Park.
🛶 City on the water: The Cork Harbour Festival is truly back this year with 50 different events including the signature ocean to city boat race. The big-ticket race takes place on Saturday and more than 500 boats, from canoes to curragh,s will be battling it out on the harbour. But there’s so much else besides from heritage tours, to scuba diving to kayaking under the bridges of Cork. Full program of events here.
Time, date, place: June 3-15, across Cork harbour.
🖼 Art appreciation: The graduate shows at MTU (formerly CIT) kick off this week and the venues at the Crawford in the city and at the main campus in Bishopstown are open to the public. There’ll be work on show from fine art grads as well as those working across the digital sphere.
Time, date, place: both venues open to the public through to June 9. More information about times and dates here.
🏃♀️🏃♂️Run: If you’re on St. Patrick’s Street early on Sunday morning it’s likely you’ll be getting warmed up for the Cork City marathon which gets underway from 8:30. If you want to catch the runners there are plenty of viewing and supporting spots as the marathon heads out from the city centre to the Jack Lynch Tunnel, back towards Páirc Uí Chaoimh (the half way mark) and then over to Musgrave Park, the Lough and out to the Carrigrohane Straight before winding back in to town for the finish line. What a breeze. Good luck to all. More information here.
The Sanctuary Runners will present two Sanctuary marathon runners with inaugural 'Tony Power Sanctuary Runner of the Year Medal' for 2022. Tony was a long time City Council worker and a friend to many, many organisations in the city. His first anniversary is this month.
Time, date, place: race starts at 8:30 am St Patrick’s Street, June 5
🧶🎵Browse, sing: Nano Nagle Place will hold their June bank holiday market this weekend on the grounds of the museum and convent this Saturday and Sunday. Also, if you’re stopping by you can catch Molgoggers, a Cobh-based choir who’ll be taking centre stage in the Goldie Chapel where they’ll be singing sea shanties and maritime songs on Saturday, June 4 at 4:30 pm. More information here.
Time, date, place: 10 am - 4 pm, June 4 & 5, Nano Nagle Place.
📸 Faces, places: Cobbler and photographer Martin Duggan will be showing his work from ‘Faces of Shandon’ at Blackpool library for the month of June. (See above images). Martin will be known to many for his shop Duggan’s Shoe Repair on Shandon Street.
Time, date, place: Throughout the month of June, Blackpool library.
This week on T +D
On Thursday we profiled Alan Craughwell who is the director of the international mixed ability rugby tournament that kicks off for the first time ever in Ireland this weekend.
That’s it for this week’s Friday View. Watch out for tomorrow’s instalment of our Arts+ Culture newsletter from Ellie.
Any tips, news or events you’d like to share with Tripe+Drisheen, you can contact either of us at jj.odonoghue@gmail.com or emailellieobyrne@gmail.com. We are always happy to speak to people off the record in the first instance, and we will treat your information with confidence and sensitivity. Get in touch.
The ridiculous but very saddening poor news of the reduction of grass and green space in Cork City, ironically comes with the uplifting and celebratory events organised by the people of the city. The city council does not appear to be in tune with the aspirations of its citizens.