The Friday View 13/01
14% of office space in Cork and one in five retail units on St Patrick's Street are vacant, according to a new property report.
Ellie writes….
I’m going car-free for a month, and I’m going to write about it.
A couple of years ago, I was interviewing a climate scientist.
It was during Covid lockdowns and difficult to arrange photos, so at that time, editors were asking for photos direct from interviewees, and this one required a family snap. My climate scientist was having a tough time locating such a thing, but eventually they forwarded it to me. It was a holiday photo.
In the email accompanying the photo, they suggested that I arrange to have the background “photoshopped” because they were worried about the optics of having been on a foreign family holiday involving flights, air travel being a mortal sin in terms of carbon emissions.
Because reality was not aligned with the message the climate scientist was trying to get across, they thought it reasonable to request that reality be subtly altered.
I’m writing this because there seems to be an increasingly yawning gulf between ideology and reality. Between well-intentioned aspirations, and the reality of how we live our lives. Because increasingly, policy seems to be being dictated by the former and not the latter.
I think social media is partly to blame: our carefully curated online version of our best selves is not a reflection of how we actually live, and yet we so easily fall prey not only to the notion that the glimpse we get of the lives of others is a faithful snapshot of how they live, but to our own portrayal of ourselves.
Politicians are people too, and as subject to the terrible fallacy of the filter bubble as the rest of us.
We desperately need more Realpolitik. We can’t make genuine improvements to things if we don’t have a clear picture of how and why things are the way they are. And we can’t afford not to make genuine improvements. And the best way to find out about something is to go do it.
At the moment, with big decisions being made about how we travel, we need honest conversations in transport and active travel as much as anywhere else.
I’m going fully car-free: this week has been the first week of a month, or probably a lot longer, that I’ll be going without personal motorised transport. I’ve always cycled, but since moving to a steep hill on the Northside a couple of years ago, I have become more car-dependent than I’ve ever been.
I want to write honestly about what it’s like to try to rely solely on a combination of public transport and bike while maintaining a busy work schedule and the regular demands of family and all the rest.
I’m also doing it because my vehicle suffered a brazenly spectacular engine failure on a narrow country laneway in a different county, at night, in a thunderstorm, last weekend. But I won’t be putting pictures of that on my social media.
The first instalment of a limited four-week series, Car-free in Cork, will be out next Monday.
News in brief
14% of Cork’s office space is vacant
Vacancy rates in office buildings in Cork are slightly higher than in Dublin, and are likely to continue to increase into 2023, according to property company Lisney’s annual report, published this week.
14% of Cork’s office space is vacant, while 13% of Dublin’s office space is.
With the trend towards working from home continuing, Lisney predicts that so-called “grey space,” or office sub-lets, will start to be seen in Cork in 2023 and that this could push vacancy rates even higher than 14%.
In Dublin, 32% of available office space is now sub-let, often by tech companies.
Retail and pubs
Meanwhile, in retail, just over one in five units on Cork city’s main thoroughfare is now vacant, the report reveals that -
21% of retail units on Patrick’s St are vacant
12% of Oliver Plunkett St’s retail units are vacant
The report also predicts that the trend of rural pub closures and the conversion of former licensed premises to residential and other uses will continue. Licensed premises in urban centres are doing better than their rural counterparts, Lisney reports.
Countdown is on for Young Scientists
Today is the final day of the annual BT Young Scientists Exhibition in the RDS, Dublin.
Over 8,000 people attended the annual competition on Thursday, while 80 judges circulated amongst the projects on display. Prizes are due to be announced this evening. Cork has traditionally been very well-represented amongst winning projects at the national contest, with schools including Coláiste Choilm in Ballincollig and Kinsale Community School holding trophies for multiple years.
The 2020 winners, Alan O’Sullivan and Cormac Harris, were from Coláiste Choilm, while the 2021 winner was Greg Tarr from Bandon Grammar School.
Out + About
New Yin Art
Twelve female visual artists join forces for a new exhibition of recent works, New Yin Art, at CRANE VISUAL at the Firkin Crane in Shandon. Dance Cork Firkin Crane launched their new curated exhibition space last year as they celebrated their 30th anniversary.
Time, date, place: Running at CRANE VISUAL at the Firkin Crane, Shandon, until Thursday, February 23. Check website for opening times.
Commemorating the Big Fella and his bicycle
The public are invited to come and hear about plans for a statue to commemorate Michael Collins this weekend: The Michael Collins Statue Fund plan will be presented by members of the Michael Collins 100 Committee at Cork City Library. The plan is to depict the Big Fella with his trusty bicycle, as depicted in the above drawing. Everyone is welcome.
Time, date, place: Saturday, January 14 from 2pm to 4pm, Cork City Library on Grand Parade.
EVEnEVE
Cork city lesbian community centre LINC has had an amateur drama group for many years, and following on from the popular success of plays in previous years, such as the sell-out Leeside Lezzies, now they’ve returned to the stage with EVEnEVE, a raucous comedy romp set at a couples’ retreat. You may still get a ticket, but only if you hurry.
Time, date, place: EVEnEVE runs at Cork Arts Theatre from Wednesday, January 18 til Saturday, January 21 at 8pm nightly. Friday and Saturday are sold out; Wednesday and Thursday tickets still available here.
This week on Tripe + Drisheen
Both Cork City Council and Cork County Council held their first meeting of 2023 this week, and Tripe + Drisheen attended both. Although we reported on the complaints at the county council meeting about Irish Water, there was a similar litany of negative comment regarding the water authority at the city council meeting.
The motion to introduce free buses for Cork City, tabled by Worker’s Party councillor Ted Tynan and generating broad approval with the exception of a Green Party councillor, was our report from the city council meeting:
On Thursday, we published a news story by Noel Sweeney on the current state of play in negotiations that could see half of Castletownbere’s fishing fleet scrapped; of the 40 boats still registered in the town, 19 owners applied for a compensation package under the Brexit Voluntary Permanent Cessation Scheme. Castletownbere was the focus of this piece, but all fishing harbour towns in Ireland will be affected.
Alongside Noel’s insightful reporting, we published a beautiful short film he made last April with veteran fisherman Mick Orpen: we don’t use the video function on Substack much and would love to know what readers think of it! Do readers like or want embedded video in their newsletter? Drop us a line and let us know.