'We're in a great place'
T+D saved the date and went to a breakfast media briefing from the higher ups at Cork City Hall this week. Croissants there were not.
Earlier last month, Cork City Council sent out an email entitled “SAVE THE DATE: Invite to Cork City Council media briefing on the future of the city” to members of the media in Cork (and maybe not Cork?).
T+D turned up expecting THE EVENT CENTRE BROUGHT TO YOU BY CENTRA.
It didn’t take long for the elephant-shaped building site that isn’t a building site to manifest itself in the form of questions.
When asked for an update on the ongoing saga surrounding the planned Event Centre on the site of the former Beamish & Crawford brewery on South Main St., Cork, Ann Doherty, City Council Chief Executive, said “we’re in a great place.”
Delivered with a straight face, this was quite the statement, given former Taoiseach Enda Kenny was pictured ‘turning the sod’ in February 2016, almost all of eight years ago now and work has yet to commence on the much delayed project.
In a media briefing given on Tuesday morning in the City Hall outlining significant investment plans for Cork City in the next five years, Doherty went on to add, how the site has been secured, the council have full planning permission and that it’s a really viable project but, the long and the short of it is, they need more money and have had to apply for additional state funding as a result of inflation in the last two years.
So, if and when Cork's Event Centre eventually does get the green light, it’s going to cost a much larger sum than the €57 million euro grant that was approved by the government in 2022.
Should this be a cause of public outrage or at this stage, something not even worth getting worked up over? Well, this very much depends on whether you accept the unforeseen circumstances put forward by Doherty, such as Covid and the conflict in the Ukraine as valid reasons to cause such an extraordinary delay and dramatic rise in cost.
Although the Event Centre was what everyone gathered in the new civic offices thought was going to be discussed, it was in fact barely touched upon in the series of slick presentations given by various members of the City Council Executive, ranging from plans for housing and transport, to improvements to the docklands area and other public spaces in and around the city.
What these talks amounted to over an hour and half was a veritable information overload, an exercise in self-promotion, focusing solely on all of the good work being done, with an array of facts and figures being bandied about the place at an alarming pace, which was impossible to digest in one sitting. There were however a few notable utterances amongst all the talk of “unprecedented growth and opportunity.”
Top of this list was housing. For anyone struggling to find a place to live at the moment, it will be comforting to know that Assistant Chief Executive Brian Geaney said the Council “are exceeding our target” for providing housing units between 2022 - 2026 and with 1,145 homes under construction, they are “well placed to deal with the current need”.
To say this felt out of touch with reality, would be an understatement, but it was also true in terms of what management exists to do i.e. to hit targets, to tick boxes and to solely blame the Council for the current housing debacle would be a mistake, especially when it comes to dereliction and vacant houses.
Many of these buildings are privately owned, and it is the owners who are at fault in the first place for allowing them to go to ruin, and presumably a large proportion of these property owners are Cork people, so it is they who should feel the primary onus to do something.
Of course they need to be chased after and there was, to be fair, a recognition that more needs to be done, especially by Feargal Reidy, Director of Strategic and Economic Development, who explained that all these derelict buildings are “individual cases” and that unfortunately, there is no one size fits all fix to restore them all.
Another glaringly problematic issue however, was fetishisation by the council of jobs created by multinationals in the area, as these companies cause untold social damage to a city, driving the cost of rent and living up in any area they choose to locate in. Sure they create jobs, but it could be argued that the type of job they create and quality of life they provide for the majority of those doing them is not very high.
Now, even rural areas are beginning to feel the effects of this kind of large scale industry, as remote workers relocate all over the county and country and in doing so push costs up for locals in their area also, so people wishing to escape the city are finding the same issues wherever they look to move to.
Finally, there was a lot of talk about climate change and how “it is the biggest challenge of our lifetime.” The claim then that sustainability and climate protection will be at the forefront of all these plans for development is problematic because if production and growth is prioritised, how can we square that with protecting the environment?
An example of this being discussed was the building of a swimming pool by the river. Surely, a better idea would be to utilise the river itself as a swimming area (the lido in the Lee), perhaps not at the docklands side right now as it it is still a working port, but at the other other side of the city by Lee Fields?
Anyway, you’ll be hearing much more about these plans as the council roll out their public information campaign “Our City is Changing” over the coming months to “familiarise those who love, work and study in Cork with the rationale behind these projects and details of the transformational schemes they will see in the city over the coming years.”
€2.5 billion in numbers
According to a press release from Cork City Council, the Council and its public sector partners are working to ensure the delivery of:
€1.9 billion on housing
€120 million on walking and cycling facilities including Marina Promenade upgrade
€200 million on rail and light rail planning and design
€190 million on Cork Docklands
€40 million on flood prevention
€35 million on new city library
€25 million of public realm improvements – Grand Parade Quarter and Bishop Lucey Park
€14 million on Marina Park Phase 2
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"untold social damage" is quite the ungrateful comment. Would Padraig prefer that we dispense with the multinationals that have given employment & futures to the 000's of Cork boys & girls who would otherwise have migrated to England & Oz ?
Look at the many kids who, having got their start in a multi, have gone out & created their own businesses & created employment here.
Cork is here to stay Padraig, and a full bucket to the begrudgers !!
Thank you for this great article and summary. To me it sounds like big talk and no action. Is there any timeframes given (apart from the housing to be built until 2026) on whether the event center will be built at all and when? They received more funding last year as well and it has been way before the pandemic or the wars that it should have been started - was there any comment from city council on that? I always wonder (and that feeds into the lack of accountability in regional councils in Ireland that you had an article on last year), if a city council is ever being held accountable- from the people living and working in Cork but also from the government who seems to be their „boss“!?