Michael Moynihan: Dublin thinks it can better Cork's English Market? Leave them off 

Dublin City Council’s chief executive claims capital's new market will be 'far better than [the English Market in] Cork once we get going'

People queue for fish at O'Connells in the English Market, Cork. Picture: Dan Linehan

There was an earthquake in the New York area last week, with reverberations felt for miles around.

On Saturday morning there was a similar vibration in the Cork area, an emanation on a low frequency, as comments made far to the north came to light.

If you missed out, there were reports coming from Dublin about a new market which is to open there, or perhaps an old market being reopened: the city’s Victorian fruit and vegetable market is to be redeveloped at a cost of €25m.

So far so good. Best of luck and all that.

Then Dublin City Council’s chief executive chipped in, telling the Irish Times: “We’ll be far better than [the English Market in] Cork once we get going, but things take a while to get to a point where you pull the trigger. Then when you pull the trigger it happens very quickly.” Shots fired, eh?

Those are brave words given that the redevelopment was first proposed in (checks notes) 2002 and is still in the distance almost a quarter of a century on.

They’re even braver when you drill into the detail.

Dublin City Council is undertaking stablisation works on the building in the hopes that the new market will be able to open in two years’, but there are several legal cases ongoing in relation to the site. That means there are no guarantees the council will even own the site when the market is due to open.

“Given that it’s the subject of numerous court cases, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens next", was a less eye-catching but perhaps more accurate comment from the chief executive.

The fact that this official’s name is Richard Shakespeare can be filed under ‘added bonuses’. It’s not fair to pick on someone’s name but in this case it can only be done with a physical effort: two charcuterie counters, both alike in dignity, etc.

Sometimes a column just assembles itself in front of you, with all the constituent parts more or less aligned together, ready to slot into place. In this case, there are almost too many parts on hand.

There’s an effrontery angle here, a bullishness-so-brazen-you-almost-have-to-admire-it angle: saying a non-existent, aspirational space will be better than a functioning enterprise now in its fourth century of operation takes some neck.

Then there’s the we’re-reinventing-what-a-market-is angle: Mr Shakespeare said the Dublin market will have a “quintessentially Dublin . . . That isn’t just Irish stew; it should reflect the business and restaurant environment in the city, and reflect a modern Ireland.” 

 Putting aside the gratuitous shots fired at Irish stew, this statement is a neat encapsulation of something that the English Market has been doing since 1788. The market has always reflected Ireland without having that spelt out as a mission statement.

Add in the inevitable part of our-tourism-offering angle: putting the new market as part of a “chain to link O’Connell Street, Henry Street, Mary Street, Abbey Street and Capel Street” is an admirable wish, but one reason the English Market has survived for so long is that it is a working market serving generations of Corkonians. Its status as a tourist landmark is incidental, not fundamental.

Then you can add in the blissful ignorance angle: the English Market is the iconic centrepiece of the city, but there are other successful markets in Cork. The Marina Market down on the river sounds like the kind of restaurant location envisaged for Dublin. The Black Market, a smaller boutique market with food outlets, is a couple of hundred metres from the Marina Market.

That makes three separate markets in a city of 224,000 people, as opposed to the, ah, range of markets in Dublin, a city of 1.2 million.

It was interesting that in media reports of Mr Shakespeare’s comments there was no mention of the Epicurean Food Hall, a short-lived venture in creating a food market in the centre of Dublin since replaced by a large Dealz.

Most important, though, this report was the Dublin attitude writ large, raw and unvarnished: what we’ll do in Dublin will be better. Not because of anything grounded in facts, or based on real evidence, but simply because we’re doing it in Dublin.

There’s something inherently cringeworthy in that kind of attitude, of course, an infantile need to be the biggest. A mature approach would have been to cite the English Market as a helpful model or ideal template rather than insulting it on one hand and handing a hostage to fortune with the other.

The fact that Dublin’s top administrator expressed himself in this way was illuminating, and not just in relation to this new market.

Unfortunately, none of us will be around in two-and-a-half centuries to see if it can match the English Market for longevity, though I doubt it will. Even its most ardent promoter has had to admit that it’s not clear it’ll even open.

The market and its devotees don’t need to respond to desperate bleats for attention. For those reasons, and more, that vibration coming from the Deep South on Saturday morning wasn’t anger or defensiveness. Cork’s weekend emanation could be articulated in a Leeside expression as old as the market itself.

Leave them off.