Where is the plan for outdoor living in Dublin this summer?

Over the past month, I've attempted to extract from Dublin City Council what their plans are for the capital outdoors this summer. It goes without saying that radical plans for outdoor living, businesses, socialising and recreation are a top priority for people in Dublin. Without this, the city centre will continue to be an empty, depressing, and unsafe area, and businesses already on their knees will be left in the lurch.

I would love to be writing about the amazing plans the council is developing for a summer in a city. The sad fact is, they simply don’t exist in any real way. While ad-hoc plans and initiatives may be presented and activated from now on, it’s clear that the council - for whatever reason - is not showing the initiative to provide any big-picture plans for the city centre.

After a month of repeatedly asking the Council about their plans, which I’ll detail here, on Thursday the Council finally announced something, a “City Recovery Taskforce” made up of seven men and two women, mostly members of the council’s executive, a councillor, and the head of the press office. That it has taken so long for something like this to be established that should have been done last March is demoralising and incomprehensible.

While much of the recent conversation regarding the capital has been about public toilets, this is merely one obvious example of a lack of resourcing and planning, and the council’s lack of ability to literally provide people with a pot to piss in, pardon my language. That people have been reduced to urinating in side streets and bushes and behind trees throughout the year in the city, with no urgency from the council to address this basic human right, is just one example of what is going wrong.

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The public toilets at Grafton Street and Wolfe Tone Square were opened in June 2020. These toilets, according to the council, get an average of 1,500 users per day. The council says it is “investigating ways to provide additional public toilets across the city”. I repeatedly asked what that means, and no information was forthcoming.

Earlier this week, Olivia Kelly reported on a scheme that would see public toilets provided. This scheme involves people who run coffee stands providing toilets, and the council in turn reducing their fees. This is not the council providing public toilets. It is the council, once again, putting the onus on business owners to do their work for them. Incredibly, at least one councillor was reduced to sharing a petition online asking the council to provide public toilets. By the way, there are actually public toilets in Smithfield, for example, they’re just not open.

Another obvious issue is facilitating outdoor dining. Much of Temple Bar has been essentially sitting derelict for a year. Despite the fact that this area is mostly pedestrianised and is an obvious setting for safe outdoor dining, there is nothing the council can tell me about plans to utilise it as an outdoor space.

When I raised the issues facing outdoor space in the city in a column last September, the council’s Chief Executive, Owen Keegan, wrote to the Irish Times essentially saying that they didn’t have any ideas. “Your columnist is being fanciful if she believes that the creation of outdoor dining spaces, however desirable, offers a panacea in the face of those unfortunate realities,” he wrote, “It is a matter for private operators in the hospitality sector to decide if they wish to trade in the public domain… It is not immediately apparent what more the council can do.” Since then, the Government and Bord Fáilte announced a funding scheme for outdoor dining. The council did not provide me with any information as to what they’ll be doing in relation to that.

What’s also worrying, is that the council is saying it is “delivering” plans, when it is not. In a document sent to me detailing their outdoor plans, which was threadbare to say the least, they stated that they had “delivered a coordinated plan for the Smithfield area to facilitate outdoor dining in the summer of 2020.” When I asked to see this document, the press office responded by saying: “I have been advised to tell you that we are still working on the details and will share with you when it is finalised.” They referred to images they had sent to me which “should give an idea of what we hope it will look like.” These images were a photograph of Smithfield Square as it exists currently, a photograph of a parasol with a heater and chairs scattered around it, and another photograph of Hazel Chu sitting on a picnic bench.

With regards to the urgent need to upgrade and pedestrianise streets to facilitate outdoor dining, socialising, and social distancing, the council told me that they cannot do so.

“Under the Government’s COVID-19 public health restrictions only certain works are permitted in Level 5. Works associated with the pedestrianisation of streets in the Grafton Street area do not fall into this category and therefore they will not be proceeded with until the public health guidance allows. However, when it is possible, the Council is eager to progress with these works as they will support social distancing, facilitate outdoor dining and should also serve as an attraction for bringing people back into the city centre.” Yet Cork is pressing ahead with pedestrianising 17 streets to facilitated outdoor dining and social distancing in public space this month. How is Cork able to begin works on April 12th, but the Dublin cannot?

Over the past year, I have spoken to multiple business owners and workers across pubs, clubs, retail, cafes and restaurants in the city centre. While certain business owners have been reduced to applauding a bench or two, or a small seating area facilitated by the council, which is nice, but for a city of this size frankly pathetic, there is no systemic big-picture plan to address the concerns of hospitality business owners with regards to how they can operate outdoors.

Some good things have happened. Yes there have been new bike lanes created in the city centre, and yes there have been some works to paths and pedestrian crossings. But what we needed – a re-imagining of the city centre for outdoor use – has not happened, and the fact that the council is only announcing a “task force” now speaks to the heel-dragging that has been going on.

Incredibly basic things have not been rolled out, and so here we are again. Perhaps public outrage or political interventions will move the dial, but for now the city is being left high and dry by those who apparently run it. I hope it changes. Cross your fingers, and your legs.