Sir, - On a recent Sunday morning, I walked along the banks of the Royal Canal in Dublin. A short distance west of Cross Guns Bridge, I met two young Finglas lads bringing their pony to Smithfield Market. "Don't go up there, mister," they warned me. "There's a gang of five fellas with knives. We had to leg it outa there." I had no reason to disbelieve them and walked back with them to Cross Guns.
Next, I walked along a pleasant stretch of the canal to Binn's Bridge in Drumcondra. Then, across the road and on towards Croke Park. No knives here, but dismal desolation. Three street men sipping their early morning cans. Burnt-out mattresses. The canal full of tyres, shopping trolleys, pallets, cans and bottles. Rats having breakfast from abandoned rubbish bags. Two youngsters with golf clubs banging stones into the water - and cheerfully into me until I protested.
Off Whitworth Road, a disconsolate couple examined the remains of their burnt-out car. At Russell Street bridge, there's an official notice regretting that the stretch of the canal passing Croke Park will be closed until March 2000! Nine months later and there's still no sign of it being reopened. The sad reality is that the inner-city stretch of the Royal Canal has been effectively closed - and used as a dump - for many decades. All this desolation is visible during a 15-minute walk within the heart of Dublin city, literally under the shadow of the new £100 million Croke Park. It lies in a Dail constituency represented by some of our most influential TDs, including the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. Are even these politicians powerless to have the mess cleared up and a potentially beautiful amenity restored to civic use? I don't believe there's another city in the world where this neglect would be tolerated for one week, never mind 50 years. Whatever happened to the Cairns Report which in 1995 (!) put forward dramatic restoration plans? Is the Royal Canal neglected simply because it passes through the north inner city and our Celtic tigers and tigresses never venture that far into the urban jungle?
On Sunday, January 7th, at 2.30 p.m. a group of people will meet at the canal bridge on Jones's Road (beside Croke Park) and walk along the canal as far as Broom Bridge in Cabra or Reilly's Bridge at Ashtown. Maximum return time: two hours. The idea is to begin to reclaim the canal as a recreational amenity and to suggest that there might be a sane and healthy alternative to the serial Sunday shopping syndrome which has now gripped our society. We hope some of your readers will join us for an easy-going ramble. - Yours, etc.,
Jerry Crowley, Fontenoy Street, Dublin 7.