Welcome to Secular Ireland: The Plint Has Arrived
Sep 4th, 2007 by Donagh
‘Well the plinth has arrived on O’Connell Street’, posted GrahamH on the Archiseek forum at the end of August, ‘it’s located to the northern end of the taxi rank, at the junction with Cathal Brugha Street.’
This created a certain amount of interest on the forum, as many were eager to discover what last minute addition was going to be added to finish off the redesign of our favourite boulevard, that ornate and refined street organised to ease the eye and no doubt the mind of Dublin pedestrians as they perambulate, flâneur-like, drunk and sober, up and down it.
Would it be something hi-tech and modern to complement the controversal Spire? Maybe it would be something chic, yet retro to offer a counterpoint to the post-modern flat superficiality of the many fast food outlets.
Well, it is very retro. Very. And quite suitable considering the tone of my previous post.
It is of course the return of this….
Which was taken away for a scrub up and was supposed to be returned in 2002. Worth the wait I think you’ll agree.
Thanks to Michael for the tip.
Remarkable.
It is indeed.
I saw that thing the other day and was completely agog. A Marian shrine in Gleann Cholm Cille is embarrassing enough but perhaps forgivable in the context of things. In a city that claims to be a modern European capital a sacred heart statue is a huge embarrassment.
A few years back when I lived in Belfast some person or persons took it upon themselves to place a statue of Mary on the roundabout on the Andersonstown Road. I remember wanting to take a sledgehammer to it. Eventually the council redeveloped the roundabout and the statue disappeared, only to reappear
Roll on laicité.
It suggests a lot to me about where we are in modern Ireland. The fact that it was slipped in at the end of a redevelopment and that the idea of it returning was never challenged.
Its funny how they disappear, and then quietly reappear. Its almost as if they have some mystical celestial power….
I pray everyday that we will have laicité soon. I’d put a date on it but that would be far too millenarian.