LAST UPDATE | 23 Aug
AS NEWS BROKE this week about a number of further closures of hospitality businesses in Dublin city, it was interesting to read interviews in the Irish Times with the owners of restaurants who are surviving in the city. All of which cited tourism as keeping them afloat.
It is time to collectively acknowledge the fact that we have hollowed out Ireland’s capital city to make way for tourist business and that it is no longer a place that caters to the people who live in the city.
This is not news. People have been sounding the sirens that this was going to happen for years. Newspaper columns, podcasts and radio interviews have all contained warnings that the influx of hotels being built was going to have a negative impact on the city. Hell, I even co-founded a club-night campaign called ‘No More Hotels’.
And whilst it is imperative to state that hotels are an essential part of a bustling and vibrant city, when all that is being built in the city is hotels, aparthotels and luxury student accommodation – replacing places to dance and socialise and at the expense of housing in the city, a monoculture of tourism is created.
Other factors are also at play of course. The effect Covid had on the city cannot be underplayed. The people who would habitually make their way into town found their needs being met closer to home and got used to a local way of life.
The cost of living has meant people have far less money to spend, so they are choosing occasions to visit the city rather than casual and regular sojourns.
The housing crisis means young people and the creatives and artists who literally create the energy and what’s happening in the city can’t afford to be there (a one-bedroom apartment to rent in recently built Newmarket Yards in the Liberties is €2,400 a month) so the people propping up the hospitality industry during the week have flocked to the more affordable suburbs or counties or countries with a better quality of city life.
As all of these issues have coalesced, the cost of wages has increased to try to manage the cost of living crisis and fewer and fewer staff can live in the city. Empty glass-fronted buildings at street level hide emptier floors of offices above. People are no longer stopping for their coffee and they are not staying for their after work pints.
So what you now see is places that were hugely popular with the people who live, work and socialise in Dublin are not getting the footfall. Places that were bustling and buzzing are empty and flat. There’s hardly anywhere left to dance.
The places that were open late during the week are either closing till the weekend or simply closing down. And as more and more late-night venues disappear, the streets are left empty at night allowing for its safety to be encroached upon, exactly as we saw happen during Covid.
What we are seeing opening in their place are pastiche venues with names like Craic, Ceól agus Ól or tailgate parties being held for Georgia Tech v Florida State games. These are not places or events targeted at Dublin locals.
I can already hear cries of “but the market decides”, but when you’ve created the market by eradicating anything unique and culturally relevant to the people who live in Dublin in favour of hotels, you have to take responsibility for the market you’ve created. Or the one you’ve killed.
Allowing developers to take control of what is being built, or what is commercially viable to build and sell, leads us to the situation of what is happening in the Liberties where the last vestiges of the old city are being bulldozed to make way for white label, budget hotels and closed off, gated student accommodation for wealthy international students.
So we have to ask, who is Dublin City for anymore?
Dublin needs people who have a vision for the city that works for visitors and the people who live here alike because if the trend for closures continues, there will be no Dubliners left in the city. And when both the architecture of the city and locals are removed, sooner or later there will be no tourists either. Tourists need locals and locals need tourists. Right now, that pact has been broken.
Local businesses will continue to close. Global chains will continue to capitalise on the closures, and go tobann, authentic Dublin will be nothing more than a soulless, faded dream.
Sending love and well wishes to the teams from Ukiyo, Brasserie Sixty6, Rustic Stone and VFace, THIS week’s closures.
Andrea Horan is the founder of Dublin nail bar Tropical Popical, The Hunreal Issues, co-founder of No More Hotels, and co-presenter of Don’t Stop Repealin’, United Ireland and a new upcoming podcast with Una Mullally. Twitter @andreahoran.
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