Where is Joyce's Dublin?

THERE is a planning application in to demolish the building on Little Britain Street which was once the pub where the most famous drinking scene in literature took place. It was here, in Barney Kiernan's, that the Citizen launched a racist attack on the Jewish Bloom in Joyce's Ulysses. If the application is successful, an apartment block will soon stand in its place.

Now a hairdressing salon, with the top knocked off it, it could still be redeveloped as a pub if the will were there - and Barney Kiernan's grandson is reported to be interested in getting involved.

Businesses which work with heritage are surely to be preferred to heritage businesses, such as the visitors' centre in No 15 Ussher's Island, scene of Joyce's The Dead, for which planning permission is likely to be granted any day. During the four year period of negotiations since the acquisition of the house by Heritage Properties, it was vandalised, with the result that An Taisce found its fanlight in an antique shop. Plans to develop the house as a hostel or to put a gym in the back of it have now been abandoned, and Heritage Properties is planning to restore the house to its 1904 glory.

Murray O'Laoire, the architects responsible for heritage projects such as Dublinia will take charge of the redevelopment, and the house will function as a "pay in museum". A seminar room is also planned, but still the worry must be there that Dublin Corporation will allow the creation of yet another sterile "attraction" for tourists, not a lived in building.