Temple Bar is an old part of Dublin but what is the future for an area where the plan is to build a bus station?
Historian Peter Pearson has a passionate interest in Dublin City. He makes a personal journey around the city’s Temple Bar area, at least half of which is owned by Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ).
The dilapidated, run-down buildings in Temple Bar are home to people involved with music, fashion, filmmaking and art, breathing life into the area. This creative hub is under threat as CIÉ has earmarked an area between Eustace Street and Fownes Street for a new underground bus station with a shopping complex overground.
CIÉ traffic engineer Barry Collins understands the Temple Bar area is dogged by a fair proportion of derelict sites and,
It’s in need of development and the transportation centre is the ideal development for it.
Irish Times journalist Frank McDonald reckons that the transportation hub would require demolishing about 70 or 80 properties,
It’s not worth the cost in terms of demoloishing all of them to go ahead with that plan.
On Fownes Street, while many of the buildings are in poor condition, they have eye-catching panelling and stonework. Peter Pearson questions the need for another building like the Central Bank,
In any other capital city in the world, I think these buildings would be given priority for renovation or restoration.
Stonemason Matt Byrne meets Peter Pearson at the junction of Temple Lane and Cecilia Street. He estimates the street contains 300 paving stones and 15,000 cobblestones each one cut and set by hand.
It would be like Paris if we looked after the place.
CIÉ gave Páraic (Paddy) Dunning a short-term lease on the space now home to Temple Lane Studios. Páraic Dunning has plans to develop the rehearsal studios further. Next door on Temple Lane is Phase, selling a mix of new and second-hand clothing. The shop is run by Kieran Brown and clothes designer Marion Cullen who are renting the premises from Temple Lane Studios.
Joe Smith runs the Dublin Resource Centre on Crow Street. The building, a former clothing warehouse, had not been maintained by CIÉ and was rebuilt from scratch. Joe Smith would like to see the other buildings on the street given over to,
Community groups, artists, people who want to make work for themselves and see the buildings used more creatively.
Dublin City Manager Fran Feely appreciates what Temple Bar has become,
We’d be very sad to see it go, but there's no reason to believe that that cannot exist beside the bus station.
This episode of TV GAGA was broadcast on 31 May 1985. The presenter is Liam Mackey.
TV GAGA ran for two series in 1985 and 1986. Aimed at an audience aged 18 to 30 each programme was presented with a live studio audience and contained a mixture of film reports, live music and studio discussion.
