Republican News · Thursday 6 February 2002

What's the point?

BY JIM GIBNEY

I know I haven't written for a few weeks and I also know that my column is usually about the unfolding political situation. I rarely comment on matters unrelated to the peace process.

But I have been thinking about branching out into other topics, which may have political implications but aren't political with a big 'P' or indeed, party political.

I've been prompted along this road by the recent positive reaction I got to a review of a film I wrote a few weeks ago about the film 'Magdalen Sisters' for Belfast's Andersonstown News. That reaction set me thinking. So here goes.

On my first outing I'm a bit nervous about tackling the issue to hand because it has national implications and it should provoke a national debate. But set against that is the feeling that I'm not skilled up enough to proffer views on such a pointed issue.

Yet I feel passionate enough about it to spend some time ordering my thoughts, no easy thing at times, in order that I pen an article of interest.

I am offering up my views on Dublin's Millennium ?, which went public last week. The ? is there because I don't know what to call it nor it seems does any one else in officialdom or across the nation.

It has been called among other things the 'Spire', the 'Spike' the 'Needle', the 'pinnacle for the cynical', 'Bertie's pole' in lieu of his 'bowl', the 'nail in the Pale', the 'stiletto in the ghetto', the 'spike in the dyke'.

Let me begin by stating the obvious. Dublin is Ireland's capital city. O'Connell Street is the nation's primary thoroughfare. For both reasons what happens there aesthetically has major ramifications beyond the stretch of street between O'Connell's Bridge and Parnell's monument.

Dublin is one thousand years old. The people of Dublin, the city's streets and buildings, played a leading role in the struggle for national independence.

The streets of Dublin have been home to some of the world's finest writers, poets, musicians, and scholars from many disciplines. It is a living museum of all that we were, what we are and what we will be.

The city also houses over one fifth of the population of Ireland.

So O'Connell Street isn't just a thoroughfare. It symbolises the nation's history. It isn't just a place to shop, eat and carouse along. It represents the Irish nation at work at leisure. It shapes us and we in turn shape it.

It is on this tarmac that many issues of concern are petitioned by the sound of marching feet. There you can hear many voices, republican, trade unionist, women, farmers, gays, pro and anti abortionists and latterly, those opposed to the war in Iraq.

Add to this the growing numbers of immigrants seeking to make Dublin their home and you get a human rainbow threading along O'Connell Street every minute of the day.

Also part of this milieu are the less fortunate, the homeless, the drug addicts and the prostitutes.

It was for these people and for the rest of us who don't live in Dublin that the ? was erected.

Does it do justice to those before us? Does it do justice to us and will it do justice to those after us?

Equally importantly, one might ask, are we entitled to ask that national monuments represent us in our diversity or is that decision to be made by the artistic establishment only?

What freedom is the artist to have in constructing an edifice? Is it sufficient for us to accept that the artist won a competition and is therefore entitled to represent his/her ideas and we have to live with the result?

For me, the recent addition to O'Connell's Street architecture is meaningless. What does it say about the city? What does it represent? Are we to see it as a representation of modern and prosperous life? I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder but the eye is not challenged.

At what point do the people engage with the structure? Are we to all end up with creaks in our necks staring up into space at its zenith?

Last Saturday afternoon I spent half an hour observing people observing the ?. I noticed that very few of them were Dubliners. They were mainly tourists. It's hardly a scientific analysis of its popularity but two days after its unveiling I would have expected more curiosity from local people.

I spoke to a number of people who work with addicts in the city. They believe it is also insensitive to the tens of thousands of people who are affected by drug addiction because it resembles a needle, an instrument which has caused so much pain to the people of Dublin.

I asked my 17-year-old niece Sinead what she and her friends, who love shopping and dandering along Dublin's streets on a Saturday afternoon, thought about it. As quick as a flash she said: "What's the point?" Sums it all up really.