Irish Examiner view: Save historic house

Joycean legacy

Tom Blake from Rathfarnham with a James Joyce portrait by painter Tom Byrne at the Duke St gallery enjoying Bloomsday celebrations in Dublin’s city centre. Picture:Gareth Chaney/Collins

Bloomsday might be over for another year, but we should not forget the campaign to preserve the historic house that was once the setting of James Joyce’s short story The Dead.

On Tuesday, 10 actors gathered on the steps of 15 Usher’s Island on Dublin’s quays and read a letter from the star of the 1987 Oscar-nominated film The Dead, Anjelica Huston, calling on the Government to oppose development on the site.

An Bord Pleanála has granted planning permission to convert the house into a 54-bed tourist hostel.

Literary greats from Edna O’Brien to Salman Rushdie have already spoken of the folly of destroying this literary landmark. As actor Donal O’Kelly put it so eloquently, James Joyce’s imagination made an amazing world out of a pretty modest building, and it seems crazy that the city of Dublin and the State cannot maintain it.

The time for action is now, before it’s too late. We don’t want to find that we will be mourning the loss of 15 Usher’s Island when Bloomsday comes around again.