Irish Examiner view: Vanity project rightly hits the rocks

The project proved to be highly controversial. Picture: Nick Laham/ALLSPORT

Bucharest’s notorious Palace of the Parliament stands as one of modern Europe’s loudest expressions of bureaucratic hubris and disconnect. The building is so grossly excessive that it contributed to the 1989 execution of Romania’s communist dictator, Nicolae Ceauescu, and his wife Elena.

There is a considerable difference, if only in scale, between that vanity folly and the proposal to spend €25m on a whitewater rafting attraction in Dublin’s docklands. The mindsets behind both projects are far closer than is comfortable.