You might have thought you had heard enough of Quidnunc's colleague Frank McDonald as the story of planning corruption in Dublin county dramatically unfolded at the Flood tribunal. Not so. His timely new book, The Construction of Dublin, will be published by Gandon Editions on May 17th and is set to create almost as much controversy as his 1985 The Destruction of Dublin. It details the kind of city which will be set in stone for the next 200 years. "We are at that crucial turning point now and nobody can have any real confidence that we will get it right on the basis of what has happened in the past. Some of the worst decisions were driven by corruption," he says.
There are chapters on Dublin now, the high-rise debate, transport and traffic and the spread of the suburbs into neighbouring counties. It includes the Frank Dunlop revelations. McDonald believes an underground Luas is bad and so are Spencer Dock, Quarryvale, suburban sprawl and the commuter movement to country towns. The DART, Smithfield, the millennium foot bridge, an underground metro from Spencer to Heuston, the Spike and the change in Dublin Corporation's general attitude are all good. Temple Bar he calls a curate's egg. He bemoans that there is no one who fights for Dublin as the IFA fights for the farmers, and that the city's 48 TDs don't provide a Dublin lobby. "But every sector gets a lash this time. Even the conservationists."
In The Destruction of Dublin it was the property developers who were the baddies. There were a couple of libel actions, including one by a man in jail in the Canaries on the suspicion of having murdered his business partner, and some money was paid. When the book sold out it was not reprinted, so it is now a collectors' item and sells for 10 times its original £7. But The Construction of Dublin is not all heavy and serious. McDonald includes the following tale. Charlie Haughey took such a close personal interest in his grand project, the splendid Government Buildings, that he rejected the design for a muted grey carpet with a jagged red line that vanished under the door of the Taoiseach's office. He thought it might be interpreted as a trail of blood.