Michael Moynihan: Cork City residents deserve their voices to be heard and understood

To quote Eoin English, writing here before the Christmas: “The hugely successful Marina Market in Cork is set to compete for a multi-million State aid package to deliver an event and conference centre in the city.

“It has established a team and says it is working with a leading architectural body to oversee an international competition to design a new 5,000-seat conference space, a 100-bed hotel, and a gallery, focused on its south docklands site.

“‘It would attract close to 500,000 people annually and would include and integrate the Marina Market. A spokesman said: ‘We have asked the architects to look to developments such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Guggenheim Bilbao for inspiration.’”

This is the kind of ambition everyone can get behind for 2025 — not least because of the reference to the Spanish Basque territory

This instantly gets me onside. There is a time limit in the Moynihan household — unilaterally imposed, I might add — when it comes to eulogising the Basque country. The limit is about 58 seconds but, in that time, I usually get in references to the txikiteo and... (reason for time limit now understood).

Bilbao’s a very good comparison here for Cork. It was an industrial powerhouse which fell on hard times when the factories it depended upon became outmoded, and what had been a bustling zone along the river became derelict and dilapidated. Sound familiar?

The city got superstar architect Frank Gehry to design the Guggenheim Museum, which immediately became a symbol of the city and drew millions of visitors — whose spending in Bilbao generated the taxes which paid for the museum.

Nowadays,  the ‘Bilbao effect’ is the catch-all term for the benefits derived from the combination of cultural investment and eye-catching architecture

There are criticisms about gentrification which accompany the praise, but anyone who has come from the Bilbao Airport in over the La Salve bridge, with the Guggenheim a dazzling sight to one’s right, will acknowledge the impact.

Anyway, given the shambles we have now endured for almost a decade when it comes to a building which has not materialised in the heart of the city — which looks about as likely to materialise as the Loch Ness Monster, let’s be honest — this is a welcome development. 

It shows a mixture of common sense (surely the docklands area is a better fit for concert trucks) and ambition (a landmark venue would be transformative).

Anyway, I was going to continue in this direction towards the sunlit uplands until I saw the message from Valerie O’Sullivan, chief executive of Cork City Council, in The Echo. The headline: "'Cork is looked on with envy by others,' says Cork City Council chief executive".

The piece is of a type familiar to readers: A list of the activities of the municipal authority and its various achievements, delineated in precise financial detail.

Granted, no reference to disasters like the event centre in the 11 capital projects listed in the piece — a list which contained no project on the northside of the city, I might add.

The section on maintenance didn’t mention the utter decay of projects such as the Pride crossing in St Patrick’s St, where the colours have worn away to reveal black tarmacadam beneath — not exactly an indication of pride with either a capital or lower-case P, and a stark contrast with the ballyhoo of its unveiling.

No mention of the Fireman’s Rest either, which we learned almost 12 months ago may cost almost €300,000. As one councillor pointed out back then: “... The cost of a council house for something the size of a garden shed.

If it was looked after carefully over those years and stored properly, we might not have this bill today

Very little information on the Fireman’s Rest has been forthcoming in general — at least for your columnist, who has asked city council for information a couple of times in the past 11 months. None has been forthcoming.

What was striking about the chief executive’s message, however, was its tone: “We aren’t in the council for accolades; we are here to make a difference to the places and people we serve, and the accolades don’t come anyway! Too often we read or hear about the city’s issues. Too rarely we read about what Cork City Council delivers, day in day out, regardless of perceptions or bad press.”

We often read or hear about the city’s issues because those are real concerns which have an ongoing impact on people’s experience of the city.

An obvious example: The piece quoted above appeared online right next to another Echo headline: ‘‘'I find a lot of syringes’: Discarded drug paraphernalia a problem which has increased in Cork in recent years".

It’s easy to understand in that context why the matter of accolades for the staff of Cork City Council is lower down the people’s list of priorities.

Open drug use, widespread dereliction, ongoing traffic congestion, and antisocial behaviour in the city centre are ongoing problems for people who are living and working in Cork. That is why we hear and read about those issues.

The chief executive finished her piece with an extraordinary flourish, writing: “I have noticed in the past two months that the people most critical of Cork are Cork people. In reality, while I’m more than aware of the problems, Cork is looked on with envy by others — for its performance and potential.

“People who have made the city their home love Cork. We should listen to what they see that maybe we don’t. While we are working to improve the city, I often wonder if we don’t accentuate its many positives, who will?”

Scolding the people who live in the city for being critical is an unusual tactic

Those who live in Cork have for generations contributed to the city in every imaginable way. They have run businesses, raised families, been educated here and educated others, played sports, volunteered for community organisations, paid their rates, walked the streets, and enjoyed the hospitality, and they have carried the name and idea of Cork to every corner of the globe.

The element missing from the chief executive’s piece is this: The natives are critical of Cork as it is being managed because they are passionate about their city. They want the best for Cork and feel the city deserves better than the multi-faceted omnishambles we are now enduring on Leeside.

Those people have made Cork what it is. That entitles them to articulate their dissatisfaction with a malfunctioning city.