Cover image for Dublin Inquirer print edition #123
"June is deeply associated with Áine, the Irish goddess of summer, fertility, love, and sovereignty, whose presence is especially felt around the midsummer season."
Councillors still looking to dename Herzog Park – and to rename Diamond Park after Terence Wheelock – say they’ve seen no progress from central government on regulations to make it an option.
“The play trail won’t work for us,” says Geraldine O’Driscoll, who runs an early years service on Mountjoy Square.
The full council is set to vote in June on the plan to rejuvenate the square in line with its Georgian heritage, following 196 submissions to a public consultation.
Residents say that organising more events in the hard-won green space could also help it to thrive.
“Pump tracks are very fun,” says Oran Wood, who discovered the hilly tracks while visiting his cousins. Pump tracks can be traversed on bikes, skateboards, skates and scooters.
First floated as an idea more than a decade ago, it stalled without funding.
Owners say they suspect a pattern to their pets falling sick.
In 2019, the council abandoned a previous planning permission application amid similar tensions between Georgian restoration, and sports uses.
Or has Rathgar been living with Orwell Quarry Park all this time?
In mid-October, a new fence went up, connected to the NYX hotel, blocking off a stretch of gravel and grass by the Grand Canal.
There were concerns about the impact on brent geese of the conversion of grassy areas to astroturf.
Residents, who have fed into designs, say they would greatly welcome the amenities – which would be built where, until recently, a giant illegal dump towered over them.