City’s slow progress ‘under Dublin control’
I am quite sure it will be ignored again.
Is it not obvious that any developments in Cork that are controlled from Dublin will be blocked, obstructed or delayed, even if they happen to cost nothing? This is not new.
Consider:
1. Cork airport (I mean the refusal to build it in the 1950s and now the recent farce).
2. Cork School of Music.
3. Cork University Hospital (site purchased in 1930s).
4. Duty-free port promised by Garret FitzGerald when Ford closed its plant at the Marina.
4. Port redevelopment.
5. Kent Station complex.
6. Third-level education for the city’s northside.
7. Roads, especially the N28 (Cork to Ringaskiddy), the N25 (Cork to Dublin) and the N20 (Cork to Limerick).
8. Failure to deal with boundary extensions (masking the real population figures, not only for Cork but also Limerick and Waterford).
These are just eight of the many issues that either have not been resolved at all or have not been dealt with satisfactorily.
Dublin Chamber of Commerce is currently campaigning for new members with a slogan that includes a phrase stating it “has the ear of government”. Belfast knew what they were doing 100 years ago when their business people created the pseudo-religious monster that became Northern Ireland in order to protect them from Dublin control. Cork is not free of the vested interest in Dublin, with which it competes. Cork’s curtailed development is only in spite of those interests and the attitudes they promulgate.
John Whelan
Edenbrook Park
Rathfarnham
Dublin 14
