Richard Boyd Barrett: Urges Government to Save City Cultural Spaces

I'm happy to support this extension in so far as it is contributing to allowing street life in cities and towns and villages to enabling it and supporting it, allow people to socialise and interact on the streets, enjoy the lovely weather we're having at the moment and make the very best of it and just generally bring vibrancy and energy to our cities and towns and villages. So yes, this is a good move by the government, but I wish it was matched by a greater commitment to ensuring that that doesn't just happen in terms of enabling bars or restaurants to see people out on the streets, but more generally seeing a commitment from the government to enlivening our city centres and our town centres and creating the spaces that people need for socialising and for art and culture more generally. One of the things that I most enjoyed of, you know, the many protests I've been on in recent years, over the years, but one of the most enjoyable protests I was on recently was the Izekiah protest that I was involved in, where a club that young people, a music venue for DJs and so on, an alternative music venue, is threatened with closure because of a decision by the new owners of what used to be the Central Hotel, the Hoxton Hotel, to try and take an injunction out against a club that had been operating there for years and was a great venue for grassroots music and DJs, and you really think about these people who took over the hotel, like, the club was there when you bought the hotel, so if you didn't like the fact that the club was there, don't buy the hotel, but don't try and close down a venue which is an important venue for young people and for music and for culture in the inner city. But there was fantastic energy on the protest outside, and I met loads and loads of people I've never seen on protests before, some of them even people I knew, but I didn't know that they had any stake in this, but lots of young people, and what was driving their involvement in the protest was a sense of anger that really, that the cultural spaces and the spaces where people can pursue things like developing grassroots music and different cultural pursuits and endeavours, that there's not enough of those spaces, and that the spaces that do exist are under constant pressure, and that there isn't enough support from the authorities and from the state in terms of providing those spaces for people, for people involved in music and arts, and just generally for the community and society, and people felt the need therefore to go out and protest, but actually the protest wasn't just about Izekia, it was about a much wider issue of the spaces available, and of course just around the corner from that is Drury Street, where you have over the last while developed a very vibrant scene of young people sitting outside, enjoying themselves, drinking and eating, very very pleasant, nice atmosphere, and that's been shut down now because of a decision by the council, which I think is very regrettable, and has taken what was a very good new development, a sort of organic development in the city centre, has taken it away. I think that's a mistake, it's not helping the vibrance of the city. Or another example which was underlined for me during the recent by-election, but we involved in beforehand, Owen Arkanovonas, who was our candidate, but he's also a musician himself, was very much involved in the campaign around the complex, and it was raised repeatedly in here, but came up again during the recent by-election in Dublin Central, and I met the director or the person who ran the complex during the course of the election campaign, and she was just kind of reiterating to me and reminding me just how absolutely disgraceful was that the government allowed the complex to close down, where lots of artists lost their studios, lots of people who practiced, rehearsed there, performed there, people who were employed, hundreds of people who used it in some shape or form, lost this wonderful multidisciplinary arts and cultural and musical venue for the lack of, I think the figure was six million euro, which Pascal Donoghue had more or less indicated when he was the minister and was the TD for the area that would be forthcoming to save the venue, because it was being put up for sale, but was not forthcoming despite, you know, begging and pleading with the government to save that venue, and what I'd forgotten, and I don't know if it was made clear to the government, but it certainly made clear to the department at the time, and to the local authority, was what actually the complex people, which has now been closed down, proposed to the government was that they had a few million, I think they said they had about four million, but they need another six million to buy the venue which was being sold, save the complex, all the artists and cultural space, but that it could be redeveloped and have social and affordable housing on top of it, so it would be win-win for the north inner city, save a cultural space, save all that those places for artists studios and so on, rehearsal space, performance spaces, save all that, and get social and affordable housing on top of it for a very small amount of money, relatively speaking, in the greater schemes of things, and the government didn't do it. The government just refused point blank to intervene, and that place has been closed down, and what I would just say in my last few seconds is, apparently it's not over yet, because the sale hasn't gone through, so I would once again ask the government to look at this again, right, if they are committed to having vibrant cultural spaces in our cities for social interaction, all that kind of stuff, for a few million, we could save the complex, and we could get social and affordable housing on top of it, it's win-win for the city, for culture, for arts, for music, for everybody, why wouldn't the government do it? I would appeal to them to reconsider.