10 Years of FG Government Have Turned Moore St Into A Place of Defecation & Assault
Aontú Leader Deputy Peadar Tóibín TD slams FG for their continued disregard for our national heritage sites – particularly Moore Street and the Croppy Acre. After 10 years of Fine Gael government the most important battle field site of the republic is shrouded in grime and dereliction. It’s a place where people urinate and defecate and traders are assaulted. Today, Moore Street stands as a monument to the ineptitude of the past 10 years of government and to the prioritisation of vulture funds over our history. We have had no end of expert groups, committees, reports, forums AND Dáil debate but yet the net result of successive FG ministers is to allow the birthplace of the republic become a latrine.
Accordingly, Deputy Tóibín makes three demands of the incumbent FG government:
- Implement the agreed recommendations of the Moore Street Advisor Group
- Commit to the renovation of government owned buildings on Moore Street, predicate a heritage centre befitting the men and women of the rising and rejuvenate Moore Street.
- Purchase the battlefield site on Moore Street, rid Moore Street of its dependency on developers and commit the Irish government to become an engine of rejuvenation and progress in Moore st rather than an agent for dereliction
- Commit to ensuring that heritage sites are not paved over and turned into playgrounds, car parks etc as suggested by elected FG representatives.
Moore St is the birth place of the Irish Republic. The lanes and buildings that surround the street reverberate with the heroism of the people who were out in 1916. The Moore Street battlefield site was the location of the final stand of many of the volunteers who fought in the GPO in 1916. They came under heavy machine gun fire in the laneways around Moore Street and set up the last headquarters of the 1916 Provisional Government of the Irish Republic and the final council of war. These actions were the precursor to this independent State and, hopefully, too, the independence of the North of Ireland someday soon. The Freedoms we hold today, we hold, as a result of the heroism of those men and women. Moore Street represents an opportunity where commercial interests could operate successfully side by side with a strengthened and rejuvenated street trading system. However, in the words of Max Barrett, the High Court Judge, “Moore St is a byword for urban neglect.”
Then there is Croppy Acre. The Croppy Acre in Dublin is a mass grave for Irish rebel casualties of the 1798 Rebellion. The National Graves Association maintains that it was also used after 1798 to bury veterans of the conflict, including Matthew Tone, brother of Wolfe Tone and Bartholomew Teeling after being hanged at Provost Prison. A FG Cllr on Dublin City Council seeks to build a playground on it. What’s next? Maybe a café over Arbour Hill or a gym in Glasnevin? Fine Gael must end its slow destruction of our history – this is not what our forebears made their sacrifices for.
