The removal of trees to make way for the new-look O'ConnellStreet has sparked a wave of controversy and sentiment.But let's get the facts straight first, argues Kathy Sheridan
IT was not meant to happen like this. The next great tide of invective towards Dublin City Council was scheduled to gush forth in two weeks time, when a mighty crane lumbers in to raise the Spire of Dublin. Just two weeks. Then someone mentioned the trees . . .
Suddenly, surly hacks who have probably driven over dozens of them, are keening over homeless little wagtails. Greens are chaining themselves to defenceless London planes. Letter-writers are emoting over "Witness Trees . . . noble trees that were wounded during the Easter Rising and survived". They speak of "bullet-holes" almost in terms of Christ's stigmata. And in the Dáil, Bertie Ahern makes history of his own by agreeing with Gay Mitchell.
Quietly, the Taoiseach is said to be "very upset" and no wonder. Why did no one tell him about the Witness Trees while he was up every other lousy tree in north Dublin gathering evidence on Ray Burke? The story, as reported in the media this week, to accompany the pictures of four Greens clanking (very) briefly under one noble specimen, was that century-old trees were to be destroyed, imminently, to make way for the Spire.
In fact, it is 14 months since eight trees were removed for the Spire. More were felled between Middle and Lower Abbey Streets to make way for a Luas sub-station, which will be on the rail route towards Connolly. A few weeks ago, three more were removed between the Spike hoarding and the Father Mathew statue. One will disappear this weekend (may be gone by now) to make way for the crane.
Next April, 14 trees between Princes Street and Abbey Street (south of the GPO) will be felled.
As for venerability, many of these are spindly sidewalk or median specimens - often with bicycles chained to them - and no one seems able to put a definite age on any of them. But they are most probably not Witness Trees (unless the witnessing includes stabbings, head-kickings, urine and vomit of more recent vintage). Anne Graham, project manager for the city council, has examined 1950s and 1960s photographs of the street's southern end and says they show no trees there at all. The one being removed this weekend is about 10 years old.
That leaves the 10 trees at Upper O'Connell Street (opposite the Gresham) which may well be the same as those in photographs from 1908. These venerable trees were never scheduled to go anywhere until 2004. That leaves 18 months for argument and review. Graham says they are happy to review the plan, although she cautions that it will be difficult.
The problem with any review must be evident to anyone who took a cursory look at the pretty plan-drawings. This presumably included Bertie Ahern, Gay Mitchell as well as the Green and other city councillors who no doubt carefully studied the integrated area plan launched way back in 1998, and which was since adopted by them. While it is nowhere spelt out that mature trees would be yanked out down the full length of the street, the drawings illustrate clearly that they could not be accommodated amid the formal arrangements of small trees in the narrowed median and taller trees on the footpaths. The caption specifies "formal tree-planting throughout".
Indeed, on the two information panels currently prominent in the street's median (one set among the Witness Trees), Bertie Ahern states that he supports the regeneration project: "The last 20 years or so have not been kind to the street", he acknowledges.
And key to the project is the regeneration of the plug-ugly, Soviet-style, virtually derelict northern end of the street (the Gresham being an honourable exception). If success depends on drawing that end back into the city's heart, by way of a natural, uniform, stylish flow of trees and generous pedestrian space from one end to the other, then accommodating the Witness Trees will be a challenge.
Meanwhile, for anyone who has not tried it lately, the news is that walking along O'Connell Street remains a nasty, unrewarding, menacing challenge. To read the Taoiseach's glowing tribute to it as "being a focal point of Dublin life for generations, for whom it was as central to Dublin as the Champs Elysées to Paris or Broadway to New York" would be laughable but for the death-grip you find yourself keeping on your purse while cursing the unimpeded blasts of bone-chilling wind and nauseating odours from the fast-food joints.
To set the tone, start your journey in front of the O'Connell monument with its large, eye-catching graffiti legend, "F..K THE GARDAI!!! by Leon Wright". And if that seems tame, try it at night.
The significant achievement of the trees controversy is to have triggered an information-gathering debate, however belated, about the shape of the nation's premier street. Finally, citizens have begun to look at what our elected representatives have dealt to us: the 200 new trees to replace the old 50, the slatted wood and glass kiosks planned for the medians, the wider footpaths, the girlie tugging slyly at her knickers in the huge Ann Summers posters opposite the historic GPO (a new kind of Witness?), 800 disoriented wagtails, the horribly disappointed project staff at the Civic Offices.
Next up, the Spike. Or, to give it its proper title, the Spire of Dublin.
Waggling on their merry way
If every tree on O'Connell Street was composted this morning, the 800 resident pied wagtails would merely waggle their tails disdainfully and seek alternative accommodation.
"In ecological terms, it would be of no significance whatsoever," says ornithologist and wildlife consultant, Dr Richard Collins. "The wagtails do not depend on O'Connell Street. They would go somewhere else."
About a million of them live in Ireland and it's not as if their little maps warn "Here be Dragons" south of Daniel O'Connell's portly figure. His street is merely their winter home. Anyway they've been voting with their, um, claws for years. The first record of a roost in O'Connell Street was in December 1929, when about 100 were in residence. The 1950s were the peak years, when the trees were alive with 3,500 of them.
Insectiverous to a man, they revelled in the dense humanity in the tenements around An Lár, the horses, the dung, the flies and the seed droppings, all highly conducive to the spiders and creepy crawlies which in wagtail cuisine, is the cream in their coffee.
From those heady days, they have fallen to 800 but they are probably settled at that, says Dr Collins. In wagtail terms, things are as bad as they're going to get (until this tree business anyway) and the current habitat - bright and sheltered, with nice heat from the light bulbs and traffic belches plus the detritus from the fast-food joints - is right up their street.
So who loses if they abandon An Lár? Not the independent little wagtails, whose great long tails give them the manoeuvrability of helicopters, to twist and turn, to negotiate cliff-faces and tall buildings and who, uniquely in a big city, bless us with what Dr Collins calls "their humanising influence on a street that is brutish, nasty and violent".
The loss will be all ours. "We lose a cultural amenity, a human one, an enhancement," says Dr Collins. "They are the most interesting feature of O'Connell Street, something strange and different. We should have bus tours going to see them."
But surely as long as there are trees - which the council swears there will be, at all times - they will stay? Not necessarily. Wagtails have a clear preference for "nice, mature, decent, stand-alone trees". And if the existing London plane trees are replaced with 200 smaller, more closely-packed limes?
"Wildlife can always surprise you," says Dr Collins carefully. "But if I had to put money on it, I'd say they will go."