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Irish Times
15 hours ago
- Business
- Irish Times
‘Amazing' plans for Dublin's Sheriff Street include offices and a hotel. Amazing for whom?
For generations, communities in Dublin 1 have been neglected, under-resourced and are now dealing with a wave of incongruous development that prioritises hotels, offices and luxury student accommodation over communities' needs. Nevertheless, Dublin 1 represents the beating heart of life in the capital, along with the Liberties in Dublin 8. These are areas that hold our stories, culture and character. Residents, businesses and social spaces can trace their roots across centuries, alongside the immigrant communities now contributing hugely to contemporary culture. Dublin 1 and Dublin 8 offer examples of what bustling, diverse urban ecosystems actually look like when, as the urbanist Jane Jacobs put it, they encapsulate the 'sidewalk ballet' of functioning street life. Some of the few streets in the capital that can authentically claim to reflect the essential features of what Jacobs described as the 'marvellous order' under 'the seeming disorder', are in both postcodes, including Parnell Street in Dublin 1, and Meath Street in Dublin 8. In a recent article in the Business Post, the chief executive of An Post and chair of the Dublin City Taskforce, David McRedmond, declared: 'Dublin 1 can become one of Europe's most happening neighbourhoods.' This statement ignores the area's existing vibrant culture and community. Happening for whom? READ MORE 'If we transform the core, there are other amazing adjacent plans such as Ballymore's to completely rebuild the Sheriff St area from Amiens Street to Spencer Dock,' McRedmond wrote. 'Amazing' is subjective. These plans include large office blocks and a hotel, along with build-to-rent apartments. So, 'amazing' for whom? Statements about rebuilding the Sheriff Street area can come across as insensitive because of the context of how the needs of the area were generally disregarded during the development of the IFSC. That left a legacy of existential fear within the community that it might be bulldozed once more. In a follow-up interview with the Dublin Inquirer, McRedmond said he was referring to plans about public space, and would 'hate to think that anyone would feel in any way insecure about their homes'. But, fundamentally, the future of this area should not be about more commercial development and expensive apartments, which few people in Dublin 1 can afford, but a grassroots approach that extends across public housing, amenities and facilities that meet the social, cultural and economic needs and aspirations of this unique part of the capital and those who live there. Underserved and under-resourced communities are not development opportunities. Cities are also about streets. It's unfortunate that so much contemporary development across the city results in hostile architecture that sucks life out of places, when we could instead be focusing on streetscapes with a sense of place and human-scale architecture. This cuts to the heart of conversations about 'regeneration' in Dublin 1. When it comes to 'potential', we have to differentiate between what is shared urban space presenting opportunities for all, and what looks like displacement through corporate gentrification. Ambitious plans with vision need to happen. For neighbourhoods, that's about listening, not declaring. In landmark buildings, it's about a coherent mission and purpose. This brings us to the GPO on O'Connell Street. First of all, it is unfortunate that parts of the building – over 75 per cent of it currently vacant – have not already been utilised as short-term cultural use in a city starved of both community centres and spaces for artists and collectives to meet, work and create. Secondly, the Government's recent communication about 'mixed-use' incorporating retail and offices raised more questions than it answered. If you don't actually have a plan, don't toss out something vague and random. It's no wonder the vacuum was then filled with outrage about the building's historic importance being undermined. The GPO should become neither shopping mall nor commercial offices. It represents a brilliant opportunity to create a landmark engine of creativity for Dublin that can inspire and facilitate generations to come. By creating something that both reflects and hosts contemporary Dublin – while taking inspiration from the positive aspects of entities such as the Southbank Centre in London, Factory International in Manchester, Kulturbrauerei in Berlin, Viernulvier in Ghent (and I could go on) – an ambitious, inclusive project would transform cultural activity in the city, alongside the Dublin Port Company's plans for the Artist Campus. The building's historic significance can also be preserved and expressed with a museum of revolution on its ground floor, which could also include a people's canteen. In tandem, Aldborough House – vacant, and on An Taisce's list of most-at-risk buildings, despite it being one of the finest Georgian buildings in the capital – should become a community and cultural space specifically for the communities of Dublin 1. The GPO is O'Connell Street's gem. We should be aspiring to create a world-class centre of culture, for and by the people. Let our diverse communities lead neighbourhood development and let artists inform the opportunity the GPO presents – just as so many of them urged our republic from the realm of the imagination into reality.
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
David McRedmond: ‘An Post has been brilliant. I've never been remunerated less and enjoyed a job more'
An Post chief executive David McRedmond probably has the best view of any chief executive in Dublin. 'I think so, yeah,' he says, as we admire the view from the rooftop of An Post's funky new headquarters at the Exo Building beside the 3Arena in Dublin's north docks. We are looking south across Grand Canal Dock towards the Aviva Stadium in Ballsbridge. It's where the river Dodder, the Grand Canal and the Liffey all meet. 'This spot I love. This is Dubh Linn, the black pool,' he says, in a nod to the origins of the city's name. Does the music from concerts at the Aviva travel across the Liffey? READ MORE 'I don't know. I wanted to do a [rooftop] party for the Taylor Swift concerts but we couldn't do it for insurance reasons,' he says. An Post moved to the Exo two years ago, quitting its historic GPO headquarters (although the post office and museum remain, along with about 200 staff). Although centrally located, McRedmond says the GPO was 'just not fit for purpose at the moment' as an office and most of it needs to be 'knocked down and rebuilt'. He would like to see a museum of the Irish nation opened there, a place of pilgrimage for the diaspora. Exo Building, headquarters of An Post. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw An Post is paying annual rent of just over €7 million for the Exo, which houses 1,000 staff and is more than paying its way for the company, he says. 'Just in the pure marketing value, we get a multiple of that. If you bring in someone like Amazon or M&S, they come in and go 'Wow, this is a company that's really good on technology, really forward-looking. They don't think we're just an old postal service. That means we win their accounts ... They do tend to look on postal companies as a bit old-fashioned so it completely changes the perception.' McRedmond's ninth-floor office looks into Dublin Port, which is apt given that parcel deliveries, turbocharged by Covid lockdowns, are now a big driver of growth at the State-owned postal group. It delivered just over a million parcels a week last year, with growth of 20 per cent in this space already this year. That would be another 10 million parcels on an annual basis if that run rate continues. He says it earns about €3 for each parcel delivered. By contrast, letter volumes, traditionally the company's cash cow, fell by 7 per cent last year, with a similar decline expected in 2025. An Post's pivot away from letters to parcels (and financial services to a lesser degree) has defined McRedmond's nine years in charge. 'My general philosophy is that all businesses are dying; you have to find the new thing. This year letter volumes will probably fall 7 per cent. So each year we have to find more and more [other business]. We've got to grow and that's the challenge.' [ An Post named most reputable organisation over last 15 years as RTÉ suffers greatest decline Opens in new window ] Amazon is a big customer of its parcels business, along with the Chinese ecommerce giants Temu and Shein, 'who are massive companies'. British online retailer Asos is another big customer, along with Vinted, a platform for selling unworn clothes that launched into Ireland last October. According to McRedmond, Vinted had its best ever launch here and is already An Post's fourth-biggest parcels customer. 'It's such a cool idea. Vinted is the future. We're getting a whole new cohort of young people going into post offices to post or collect their Vinted,' he says. 'We brought Vinted into the country and it was our marketing team who did it. I have the best marketing team in the country by a distance,' he says with a touch of hyperbole. 'We have the best brand, we have brilliant relationships with our customers and we work day and night to make sure that our customers know that we know what they want.' It's not all good news when it comes to parcels. Customs rules post Brexit have been a 'nightmare' in terms of moving parcels across the Irish Sea. 'For us it's a nightmare. We still return 5,000 parcels a week to the UK [typically parcels that go over the counter] and that's got to stop. We have no choice. Customs say, 'That's got to return to the UK', because there's some mislabelling, or the value wouldn't be correct. He says parcels aren't being returned to Britain with the same gusto by other EU countries, which simply turn a blind eye to the issue. How does he know this? 'Every year I get PwC to send a whole load of parcels with incorrect information to their European offices and we see what gets returned, and only Ireland is returning. One or two do stop the parcels and a person has to come in and correct the stuff but that's it.' He wants Ireland to follow Europe's lead by tweaking the Universal Service Obligation that requires it to offer a daily postal service to each house in the country from Monday to Friday. 'It's changed in every European country, one way or another. Some of the countries have that obligation but they just bend the rules.' Ireland was once famed for ignoring rules but McRedmond argues that we've become 'too bureaucratic' and 'risk averse'. 'The Government has fallen into the trap: centralise everything, regulate everything, control everything, have rules for everything. It's not good and it needs to change now. We have an entrepreneurial spirt in this country and built brilliant world-class businesses, and can continue to do so, but not if we stay in that risk-averse, control mentality.' David McRedmond. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw McRedmond's forthrightness tell the story of a man who will be 63 next week and is due to step down in September 2026. He was extended for three years following the expiry of his original seven-year contract, which is usually the ceiling for a public-sector boss. An Post's annual report for 2024 has yet to be published but it had a 'brilliant year', says McRedmond, who adds that its revenues exceeded €1 billion for the first time. Its Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) rose to €52 million, up from €38 million a year earlier. It's after-tax profit was €10 million. 'We need that because we need to invest typically about €25 million a year,' he says, citing how An Post needs a new, big parcel hub to keep up with the growth in deliveries. An Post also now has about €100 million tied up in working capital. 'And the faster we grow the more that will be tied up in working capital because we are a trading company now,' he says. He is trying to persuade the Government to change the borrowing cap of €85 million, which dates back 40 years. 'That needs to increase.' If McRedmond had a free run, he would scrap the obligation to deliver to every household each weekday. Instead, he'd have a 'brilliant next-day service that could be quite expensive, maybe another euro on it [the price of a stamp]', using a digital stamp, probably with a later cut-off time for posting and a text alert when the mail is available to be delivered. 'A courier-level next-day service,' is how he describes it, while also acknowledging that such a move would cannibalise its existing Express Post revenues. 'But we would also have a [regular] two- or three-day service, which is where the bulk of the mail would go. What do people use a next-day service for? Usually birthdays and condolences. 'What we need to do with our delivery network is not have people visiting every house, every day when there's fewer and fewer letters. It's just not economical. And it doesn't make a service sense either. An Post has about 5,500 postmen and postwomen as part of its 10,000-strong workforce. Its overall headcount is due to be reduced by 1,800 by 2028 through efficiencies and great automation. 'We have to put labour on parcels and take it off letters, but at the moment we can't do that,' he says. On McRedmond's watch, the price of a stamp has risen from 72 cent to €1.65. Some would argue that this has hastened the decline of letter volumes but he's not for bending on the need for the service to pay its way. 'Letter volumes decline because of digitalisation, not because of the price of a stamp. We have to put up the price of a stamp because the number of letters has halved and you've got a fixed cost network so you have to put up the price. Every other postal service in Europe has followed us. I don't make any apology about it because what's way more important to an elderly cohort is that they have a local postman or -woman, and that they have a next-day service. I have to do it in a way that's economic so that's why the price has gone up.' RTÉ does a lot more that is good than is bad. At the same time I think it needs to transform a lot more — McRedmond Financial services is the other leg to the growth story at An Post. McRedmond says its agency banking arrangements with AIB and Bank of Ireland means that the post office is now 'the high-street bank' in many parts of rural Ireland, facilitating basic cash transactions. 'That is good business, good for postmasters. The cost of that to the banks is a fraction of the savings from not having to run cash operations. The reason the banks can get so many people digitised is because we exist.' An Post also offers current accounts (which 'needs to scale up'), foreign exchange, insurance options and a range of State savings products (€25 billion) but it has yet to offer mortgages, despite flagging its intention to do so a long while back. 'We need a partner to do that and I'd be hopeful you'd see something relatively soon. Not necessarily in mortgages but in terms of a banking partnership to grow our range of products.' McRedmond will have completed a decade in charge of An Post by the time he leaves the company next year. Looking back, he's most proud of the role the company played during Covid lockdowns and the way 'we found new life for the company'. [ Christmas sorted: How An Post is coping with record demand in its first pandemic festive season Opens in new window ] It seemed a strange move for him in 2016 after a successful career in the private sector with book retailer Waterstones, telco Eir and broadcaster TV3 (now Virgin Media), where he would have earned a lot more money than his current annual salary of €250,000. 'An Post has been brilliant. I've never been remunerated less and I've never enjoyed a job more,' he says. 'It is a really fascinating insight into Ireland and the world. We've moved from being a company that delivers letters to a trading company. It's all about ecommerce now.' A little over two years ago he was linked with the top role at RTÉ, amid the fallout from the Ryan Tubridy payments scandal. He was approached by a headhunter but fell at the first hurdle, after which his candidacy was widely reported by media. 'I thought I could do a good job at RTÉ and I think it is really important to the country. I like media, I miss media and I think it needs transformation. 'RTÉ does a lot more that is good than is bad. At the same time I think it needs to transform a lot more. The world outside is changing too fast so if you're making small moves you're becoming irrelevant. And I think RTÉ still has some big moves to make. 'Kevin Bakhurst has really steadied the ship. But now he needs to make some big moves.' McRedmond was not happy about the public way in which his candidacy 'became very public'. 'And nobody did anything about it. It was disrespectful to An Post and to the people and I didn't like that. The nature of work is that sometimes you get approached for a job and of course I'm going to take a look at it, but it doesn't mean you don't like your current job or that you don't want to stay in your current job.' He says the board of An Post was 'very supportive and the department was supportive so people were good about it'. One final thing on RTÉ: he believes the broadcaster should quit its 'immensely valuable' Montrose site, relocate its TV studios to Ballymount (where Virgin is based) and move its radio operations to a newly revamped GPO. 'That would be fantastic for the city,' he says. He was also the independent chairman of the Dublin City Taskforce that was formed in the wake of the riots in the city centre in November 2023. It was tasked with recommending ways to rejuvenate the city and drew up 10 big recommendations covering everything from policing and housing to street cleaning. And a plan to tax tourists, to generate revenue for Dublin City Council. Needless to say, hoteliers are against the idea. 'I think it's not a bad idea. Everywhere I go I get taxed. I don't see why tourists coming into Ireland shouldn't get taxed here. '[The council] only controls 12 per cent of the expenditure in the city. In most cities the local authority typically controls 35-45 per cent. It's very difficult if you have no financing control and you have to go to a department to do something. It doesn't work. I'm still awaiting decisions [at An Post] that are four or five years old. 'If [the council] could raise €50 million and invest it in public realm, I think that would be worthwhile and you'd get a good return on it.' Having had a brush with cancer in recent years, he's keen to remain active once his time with An Post is finished. He stepped down as chairman of Eir last October and is looking to secure a couple of nonexecutive directorships to keep him active over the next few years. For his remaining time with An Post, he would like to 'reopen the UK' for Irish SME exports, which have declined in the wake of Brexit. 'SME exports I think only account for 7 per cent of revenues of SMEs, and in most countries that could be somewhere between 15 and 20 per cent. 'We're working very closely with Enterprise Ireland and we expect to do a major launch on that in the autumn. I would love to see An Post become an active engine to help Irish exports.' CV Name David McRedmond Job Chief executive of An Post Age 63 on July 9th Lives Glasthule, Co Dublin Family Married to Penny McRedmond (an adviser to Minister for Health Jennifer Caroll MacNeill) and three adult children – son Ben and daughters Georgia and Finn (an Irish Times columnist). Hobbies 'Reading. I'm becoming more obsessed with fiction. I've just finished For Whom the Bell Tolls [by Ernest Hemingway]. It was extraordinary, a fantastic book.' Something we might expect 'I love sending letters.' Something that might surprise 'I wrote my history thesis on church building in the 19th century in Dublin. It was one of the great urban programmes. It was after Catholic emancipation [1829], they had to build churches. There weren't any. They built 30 churches. It was a phenomenal work programme.'
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Revamped GPO could host museum to attract Irish diaspora, says An Post chief
A refurbished, modernised GPO building on O'Connell Street in Dublin would be an ideal venue for a large museum of the Irish nation, according to An Post chief executive David McRedmond . 'I would be a big fan of a museum of the Irish nation,' he told The Irish Times in an extensive interview. 'A place of pilgrimage for the diaspora. It could be a massive attraction and get a lot of people in.' Opened in 1818, the GPO was the headquarters of State-owned An Post until mid-2023 when it moved to a modern office building in the north docks, called Exo. Some 200 employees of the company continue to be based at the GPO, including those working in the post office at the front of the building. READ MORE Mr McRedmond said the first 10-20 metres of the large complex could be retained, but the offices at the back were no longer useful and needed to be redeveloped. The complex stretches from O'Connell Street west towards Arnotts and includes some surface car parking. 'The rest of it needs to be knocked down and rebuilt,' he said. 'It will be a huge job. We're not out of there because we want to be out of there. It's just not fit for purpose any more.' However, Mr McRedmond said the GPO could have an exciting future if redeveloped. 'It will end up being some kind of national competition, I would imagine. Both in terms of what the use would be and the design. It's very exciting, it will be absolutely brilliant for the city.' The An Post chief executive would also be in favour of RTÉ relocating its radio operations to the GPO, which previously housed radio broadcasts by 2RN, a predecessor of RTÉ. 'That would be fantastic for the city,' he said. Mr McRedmond's views on the future of the GPO is his 'personal preferences' for the historic building and not linked to his role as chairman of the Dublin City Taskforce, which was set up by the Government to draw up proposals to reinvigorate the city centre in the wake of the riots in November 2023. Among its 10 'Big Move' recommendations is a proposal to redevelop the GPO as a 'major public building'. The Government last week approved the establishment of a new body to oversee the delivery of these recommendations, operating under Dublin City Council . It is to have a role in supporting the Office of Public Works in the redevelopment of the GPO, while the surrounding area is also to receive investment. Designed by Armagh-born architect Francis Johnston, the foundation stone was laid by Charles Whitworth, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in August 1814. The building opened its doors to the public in January 1818. It was destroyed by fire during the 1916 Easter Rising, before being expanded and rebuilt. It reopened in 1929.
