What will we do with the General Post Office? In the absence of a directly elected mayor, TDs have answered this question with a lot of performative blather. The Dáil even hosted a catfight between Tánaiste Simon Harris and Pearse Doherty TD.
It is hard to imagine the rebel leaders or anyone else being impressed by such grandstanding. The future of the building deserves more serious attention.
“The GPO is not just a landmark,” Gary Gannon TD said, “it is a physical foundation of the Republic itself.”
Perhaps the weight of all that history accounts for the sameness of most proposed uses. Everyone thinks the GPO should remain in use as a post office. And our TDs want museums galore. Indeed, they all want to press the culture button.
French ambassador’s residence, once Ireland’s most expensive house, gets a full refurbishment
From ‘LID-ill or LEED-ill?’ to bargain canoes: 25 lessons from Lidl’s 25 years in Ireland
Germany might have solved Ireland’s urban EV charging problem
Rosie O’Donnell: ‘People say, you moved to Ireland, just forget about Trump. I can’t, the crimes are endless’
Unfortunately, this virtue-signalling has a rather soporific effect. The safest time to fart in Leinster House is when you’re talking about the importance of the arts, because no one will be paying attention.
As chair of the Dublin City Taskforce, David McRedmond produced some great ideas for renewing the north city centre. His report has now been adopted as Government policy. (Except, of course, his plea for a directly-elected mayor.)
McRedmond would like to see the GPO revamped into a mixed‑use site with cultural spaces, offices, retail and – inspired by television studios in Times Square, New York – a new home for RTÉ.
[ The Irish Times view on plans for the GPO: a terrible idea is born ]
When Taoiseach Micheál Martin endorsed the McRedmond report, noting its ambition for “first-class retail and office components” in the GPO, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald TD responded in her usual understated way with a petition to Save the GPO.
“In any other city in the world,” she said, “we would see visionary, ambitious plans to develop the site, preserving our rebel history with a national museum, arts and culture, education, tourism and homes to make it a living, breathing area.”
Visionary, indeed – except that plan sounds rather like the Government plan, with some social housing thrown in for good measure.
To be fair, Dublin has many vacant offices, and McDonald is right to worry about the retail mix. As her party colleague, Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD, put it – channelling his inner WB Yeats – “Was it for a Starbucks that all the blood was shed? Or for Carrolls Irish Gifts, no harm to them?”
Politicians of all stripes talked wistfully about arts, culture and heritage. Labour TD Robert O’Donoghue probably had the Chelsea Hotel in mind when he proposed “affordable apartments for artists and cultural workers”. It was even suggested that the GPO could house an Irish academy of fine arts.
In all these ideas, there is an assumption that someone is visiting. It’s part of the Irish condition. We need a good room, where commerce does not outbid culture and history is sacrosanct. Strangely enough, there is already such a place in the GPO. It’s called the GPO Museum. Anyone who wistfully imagines a museum in the GPO should pay a visit. The GPO Museum has been open since 2016.
The offices adjoining the GPO have more-than-symbolic significance because the northeast city centre has one of the lowest levels of owner-occupation in the State. Put simply, there are not enough permanent residents. Instead, there is all the evidence of decades of social deprivation. In a violent cul-de-sac of neoliberalism. Then we wonder why the area feels squalid. At its most depressing, O’Connell Street reflects our voting preferences.
Let’s remember that the north city centre is not crying out for more office and retail space
At 25,000sq m, the GPO is “almost two-thirds bigger than the pitch in Croke Park”, Labour’s Marie Sherlock TD said. That figure includes shops in the GPO Arcade and Henry Street. The offices alone could house about 100 two-bed apartments. What could we do with them?
There is already social housing near O’Connell Street and a lot of emergency shelter for vulnerable people, but only a handful of owner-occupiers. They are the residents who, in sufficient numbers, could command the attention of our Government and ultimately give Dublin (back) its Champs-Élysées.
Here, then, is an idea. Convert the GPO offices into owner-occupied apartments – then sell them and use the proceeds to develop social and affordable housing in affluent suburbs. This would breathe new life into a neglected area, along with money, clout and fresh ideas.
Re-purposing the offices would be kind to the environment, too, preserving all of its embodied carbon. That is the circular economy in action. (Remember, too, that 10 per cent of the GPO apartments would be used for social housing.)
This proposal will be caricatured as a sop to the rich – gentrification on steroids – but the evidence is clear. Mixed neighbourhoods are more robust. Using the proceeds of the apartments’ sale to create social housing in more affluent areas of Dublin would encourage balanced urban development, resilient communities and a more inclusive city.
The GPO is part of our complex shared history. As we consider its future, let’s remember that the north city centre is not crying out for more office and retail space.
To tackle the inequality that threatens to tear our democracy apart, let’s stop the virtue signalling and the performative outrage. Rather, let us honour the rebels of 1916 by creating a socially inclusive capital, with a main street equal to the size of the Irish heart.
Trevor White is a writer and founder of the Little Museum of Dublin
