Outside Dublin’s City Hall, the popular wedding venue and marginally less popular council chamber, sits an empty plinth.
It was once the granite platform upon which a marble Daniel O’Connell in a toga embodied the concept of democracy to the people of Ireland.
But it has been vacant since the 1860s, when concerns about Ireland’s other long-term oppressor, the weather, led to the sculpture being taken inside to the elegant 18th century rotunda, where it remains today.
A candlestick by artist Alan Phelan temporarily took the spot from 2021 to 2023 in an echo of London’s Trafalgar Square fourth plinth, which is often adorned with artworks.
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And the Dublin Inquirer’s extensive investigation into the subject revealed that Dublin City Council’s former public arts officer asked the council and the Office of Public Works if they had any good historical sculptures in storage to replace it. They did not.
Overheard has an idea that could kill two birds with one stone: Molly Malone. The famed fishmonger is having her patina pawed off by uncouth tourists on Suffolk Street, causing the council to attempt everything from getting her a bouncer to planting deterrent flowers in a ring around her.
The O’Connell plinth is about three metres high, based on Overheard’s eyeballing, more than enough to ward off most pests. It’s time to get Molly off the street.
Step outside, summertime’s in bloom
Tánaiste Simon Harris joined the growing ranks of Irish politicians shouted at online for going to a concert last weekend as he soaked up the “magical atmosphere” at Oasis.
The 38-year-old, who has been a TD since he was 24 and who we assumed was permanently sewn into his suit at that time, donned appropriate attire, including a band-branded bucket hat.
His selfie from Croke Park on Instagram gained a mixed response. “Looks like an undercover cop,” said one comment. “EVERYONE deserves a break now and again!” said another. “Glad you enjoyed the gig Simon, heard it was incredible to be fair ... anyway, wtf are you doing about scoliosis waiting lists,” said a third.
Despite Fine Gael’s general reputation for not being any fun, Harris is one of a long line of party grandees cutting loose to popular music despite the risk of backlash. Ministers Helen McEntee (in bucket hat) and Patrick O’Donovan (dressed as a dad on holiday) were both at the gig too.
Meanwhile, private citizen Leo Varadkar danced into the wee hours at Barcelona’s prestigious Primavera festival earlier this summer, continuing the habit of a lifetime. As Tánaiste, he famously attended a pop nostalgia festival in London at a time when large gigs were still banned in Ireland in 2021, and as Taoiseach he used official headed paper to attempt to meet Kylie Minogue in 2019 (successfully).
Enda Kenny also made headlines by miming guitar-playing at a Bruce Springsteen concert.
Then there’s Paschal Donohoe, on record as a fan of every musical artist from Billie Eilish to Led Zeppelin to Kendrick Lamar. This year he’s been spotted at Olivia Rodrigo in Marlay Park and Macklemore at St Anne’s Park, where he took some criticism from fans of the vocal-on-Palestine Irish-American rapper.
He also skipped an important dinner in 2022 despite Ursula von der Leyen being in attendance – because he had to go see The Cure.
Something fishy
The Cork Blackwater fish kill, in which anglers estimate more than 40,000 fish died, has been attracting much attention this summer. But it’s not the only one, with local media dutifully reporting on a bad year for trout around the country.
Dozens of dead fish, including trout, were noticed at Tullamore last week and attributed to low oxygen levels due to the warm temperatures, Offaly Live reported.
At least 100 trout were found dead in July at Lough Sheelin, Co Cavan, with oxygen levels again the main suspect, Northern Sound reported, while elsewhere in the county the Anglo-Celt reported that a thousand were killed at Ballinagh, where wastewater was suspected.
In a separate incident in Cork, 1,500 fish, including trout and eel, were killed on the Douglas River due to suspected chemical pollution from a member of the public, the Examiner reported.
It’s tough going for the brown trout, one of “very few” native fish species in Irish rivers, per IFI. They come in several local types, including the ferox, the gillaroo, the sonaghan and the croneen, and they serve as “indicators of environmental quality because they require relatively clean water and are sensitive to pollution and habitat degradation”. Which is a worry, given all the deaths.
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Even in a cooler year, they fight against discharges both urban and agricultural, invasive species like carp, interlopers from ‘put and take’ recreational fishing lakes, and the ongoing Irish insistence on “arterial drainage”, which keeps our rivers straight-edged, bare-banked and oxygen-starved.
It might take more than hoping for better weather next year to keep them going.
Computer says níl
The Irish word for a computer, ríomhaire, derives from the name of the monk in medieval monasteries whose job it was to calculate – or compute – dates of religious festivals.
This fact may prove useful for any IT professionals looking to ingratiate themselves at Údarás na Gaeltachta, which has a tender out for information and communications technology support services for its up to 250 staff across Galway, Donegal, Kerry, Mayo and Cork.
It’s mostly fairly standard stuff, helping workers to navigate the updates and password hassles that dog any organisation reliant on the dastardly laptop. But the contract does have one requirement that could narrow the field: “As Irish is the administrative language of the organisation, it is a requirement that tenderers have the capability to deliver the service through both the Irish as well as the English language as required.”
IT ability and facility with the first national language are not necessarily mutually exclusive – see Dublin City University’s Gaois project, for example, where modern-day saois and technologists collaborate to produce many impressive databases and other endeavours.
But 38 per cent of IT professionals were non-Irish citizens according to 2024 data from the Parliamentary Budget Office, dramatically reducing the odds that they know the Irish for “catastrophic system error”. We’re guessing that at least another 38 per cent did ordinary Irish for the Leaving.
Irish-language credentials account for 15 per cent of the total score in the selection framework. Given the potentially limited field, it could be worth a punt for a cúpla-focaller.
