“There will always be losers.”
That’s what Dublin City Manager Owen Keegan said when Sarah McInerney asked him about access to Dublin for people with mobility problems.
She pressed him.
There will be vehicular access to the city. But not all of the city. And not all of the time.
He is responding, he says, to demand from pedestrians.
Is that what we’ve come to so?
A capital city for the fit? A capital city for the able-bodied?
A capital city similar to the way Dun Laoghaire turned out after Mr Keegan ran it?
Ran it into the ground as it happens.
A dead main street. Perfect location for his white water rafting project. Because the main street in Dun Laoghaire is used for little else.
He promised to release his proposals next week.
I look forward to reading them and specifically the parts relating to disabled drivers and people with mobility issues.
And by the way, when he said the council had not removed parking spaces previously reserved for disabled drivers that is simply untrue.
They have been removed on Jervis Street and on Stephen’s Green.
Every one of those spaces is and was important as is access to them.
I would love, one day, to walk down Grafton Street again. (There isn’t a hope in hell of me walking up the street. I can’t even do slight inclines any more.)
If I’m to do that, I’ll need to drive or be driven and collected.
And I’m one of the lucky ones. I can still walk, if not very far and if only on the flat.
I just wonder if Owen Keegan gives and actual shit.
Paddy's World 