There's hardly a row of homes in Cork city’s older southside suburbs with as much ‘kerb appeal’ as those on one side of Ardfoyle Crescent: even their entrance pillars set quite a tone of grandeur, in red brick and crowned with large terracotta globes.

MY friends and I are outraged to see another teenage hang-out — the skate park on Penrose Quay in Cork — closed again. Instead of being safe and warm in there, we must now go back out in the cold and rain wet on the side of the street while watching skate boarders slip on the wet ground.