Irish Examiner view: Dublin's concentration of concerts indicative of regional imbalance
Swifties Draw Night, Picture: Three Dublin Begin Concerts The Tomorrow Swift's Taylor Stadium Of To Thousands Of Aviva The In Alamy/pa And Centre Will
Taylor Swift looms over everything in Ireland this week like a bejewelled colossus. Her three concerts in the Aviva Stadium begin tomorrow night, and will draw thousands of Swifties to the centre of Dublin to worship their high queen — who arrives like the very herald of summer.
Excessive? Hardly. This weekend the holiday season launches in earnest. It is estimated there may be well over 500,000 people in Dublin soaking up not just the gigs in the Aviva, but attending a variety of other events in other locations around the capital.
Swift is just the tip of the spear: The music festival Longitude takes place, not to mention Shania Twain concerts, while thousands are expected to attend the Dublin Pride parade on Saturday, and four All-Ireland SFC games will also be played in Croke Park over the weekend.
This presents its own challenges.
The taxi lobby was out this week pointing out a potential shortage of taxis for such a large number of people in Dublin, while there has been simmering resentment about the pricing of hotel rooms in the capital for quite some time. The ongoing industrial relations conflict in Aer Lingus complicates matters further.
It is worth pointing out here that music and arts are available in other parts of the country also.
In Cork, the long-running Live At The Marquee series brought in a wide variety of acts this year — ranging from Bicep to Bryan Adams. Musgrave Park hosted Crowded House, Sting, and Blondie, among others.
The wonderful Cork Midsummer Festival, which ended this week, offered a wide array of artistic experiences in an innovative series of locations; it was preceded earlier this month by the Cork Harbour Festival, with many more occasions of a similar ilk to follow in the coming months.
This situation is replicated in many other parts of the country, albeit on a smaller scale, where local fairs and festivals serve to drive tourism, to strengthen local identity, and to simply offer an enjoyable experience to locals and residents alike. That smaller scale may become more and more attractive after this weekend in Dublin.
The sheer concentration of those events in the capital — and the crowds attending them — serves to expose the consequences of decades of imbalance when it comes to regional development. Focusing so much on the capital does a disservice to the rest of the country, while the coming days will provide a very real test of Dublin’s infrastructure — and whether that can cope with a significant increase in the number of visitors.
Are there any indications of future changes? It was noteworthy that among the proposals which emerged from RTÉ this week were plans for a new studio and production facility in Cork, which is to produce a mix of in-house and commissioned programmes.
“The production centre will increase the number of regionally produced hours across TV, on-demand, video, and audio,” according to the broadcaster.
“It will have a dedicated regional commissioning editor who will increase investment in, and support the growth of, the companies based outside of Dublin.”
Real regional development is good news for areas outside Dublin. By relieving pressures in the capital, it can only be good news for Dublin as well.
The British refusal to return the Elgin Marbles to their home in Athens has rankled in Greece for many years. Does Ireland have something in common with our Grecian cousins?
Fianna Fáil TD for Clare Cathal Crowe has called on the Irish Government to work with the Holy See to have the crown of Brian Boru returned to Ireland. It is said that the crown was given to the Vatican by Brian’s son Donnchadh as a gift to the Pope. Now Mr Crowe has asked the Tánaiste to work with the Irish embassy to the Holy See to have the crown returned.
Before we begin to gird our loins for battle to regain this priceless heirloom, a couple of matters need to be settled. For instance, the Tánaiste, responding to Mr Crowe’s inquiries, pointed out that it is not currently known whether the crown is located in the Vatican. Or in fact whether the crown existed in the first place.
This is of a piece with our general impressions of Brian Boru.
There was a time when one of the facts every Irish schoolchild had at their fingertips was Brian Boru’s central role in driving the Vikings out of Ireland in the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, though the truth of the Viking contribution to Ireland — before and after Clontarf — is a good deal more complicated than simple victory or defeat.
Generations of Irish children were also told that Brian was killed by a rogue Viking, Brodir, who surprised the king praying in his tent. A well-known history lecturer in University College Cork liked to get a rise out of first-year students by saying that whatever Brian was doing in his tent, praying was not high on his list of priorities.
Despite these uncertainties in the historical record, there is something irresistible about the prospect of Brian Boru’s crown nestling somewhere among the treasures of the Vatican. Perhaps a resourceful archivist will come across it in a vast underground warehouse, hidden like the Ark of the Covenant in an Indiana Jones movie, and unveil it to the world in a blaze of publicity in Rome.
In which case we will need it returned immediately.