Latest news with #Kilmainham
Irish Times
06-08-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Developer fails in last-ditch bid to salvage approval for apartments near Royal Hospital Kilmainham
A developer's last-ditch bid to appeal an order overturning permission for 399 rental apartments near the Royal Hospital building in Kilmainham, Dublin, has been rejected by the Supreme Court. The disputed permission for five blocks, including an 18-storey tower, was granted, subject to 31 conditions, by An Bord Pleanála in March 2022 under the since-dismantled Strategic Housing Development procedure. The site of the proposed development by HPREF HSQ Investments Ltd in Heuston South Quarter shared a boundary with the gardens of the 17th-century Royal Hospital Kilmainham (RHK), a protected structure. In their High Court case against the board and the State, with the developer a notice party, architect Paul Leech and former Irish Times journalist Frank McDonald , argued that the proposed development would impinge upon a protected view from the RHK to the Phoenix Park. READ MORE This 'cone of vision' was designated in the Dublin City Development Plan to protect the setting of the RHK and would be adversely affected by the high-rise apartments intruding into it and overlooking the hospital's formal garden, they argued. Last November, the High Court's Ms Justice Emily Farrell upheld the challenge by the applicants, represented by barristers Oisin Collins and Michael O'Donnell, instructed by O'Connell Clark solicitors. She said the board failed to consider that the proposed development was a material contravention of the city development plan 2022-2028. Last March, the judge refused to allow the developer to appeal her decision to the Court of Appeal. The developer did not meet the criteria for permission to appeal because it had not shown the decision raised a point of law of exceptional public importance or was desirable in the public interest, she held. The developer then sought a 'leapfrog' appeal directly to the Supreme Court. Its grounds included that the High Court misinterpreted the board's permission decision. It argued an appeal was in the interests of justice and that clarification of several issues raised would benefit other litigants in judicial reviews of planning decisions. The board took a neutral position on the application for an appeal, while Mr Leech and Mr McDonald opposed any appeal because no issues of general public importance were raised. In a recently published determination, a panel of three Supreme Court judges refused leave to appeal. While the proposed development was 'substantial' and its location important, the case was resolved by the High Court in a 'clear and comprehensive' judgment, supplemented by further consideration when leave to appeal was sought and refused, the judges said. The High Court applied 'clear legal principles' to the facts, they added.
Irish Times
04-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
One Night in Dublin ... at the museum: A nocturnal walkabout at the Irish Museum of Modern Art
At 10pm on a Thursday night, a fox slips out from the shadows at the gates of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). Historian Barry Kehoe follows close behind, regarding the fox with professional suspicion. A guide for the night, Kehoe leads the way up a path by now well trodden; he has just shy of 25 years at IMMA under his belt. Kehoe adjusts his head lamp and offers a small torch as the sky quickly darkens. 'The Drummer' by Barry Flanagan, 1941–2009 in the grounds of the Irish Museum of Modern Art IMMA in Kilmainham. Photo: Bryan O'Brien Royal Hospital Kilmainham at night, home to the Irish Museum of Modern Art IMMA. Photo: Bryan O'Brien He heads towards the courtyard as the fox disappears into a hedge. Presumably he has rounds to do. By day, IMMA is full of chatter and curated light. But by night, it's quieter and more theatrical. The building looms in a way it doesn't during daylight hours, suddenly more mausoleum than gallery. READ MORE 'We're walking with Dublin's dead,' Kehoe says, referencing the graveyard a stone's throw away on the site of the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham on the west side of Dublin city. He speaks in hushed tones as if not to disturb them. Built between 1680 and 1684, the Royal Hospital was once home to hundreds of retired soldiers and was the capital's main burial grounds. In more recent history, a temporary mortuary was erected on the old hospital grounds in grim anticipation of a Covid-19 surge in 2020. Today it houses more than 4,500 contemporary artworks by Irish and international artists. Kehoe is not alone within these walls. Aside from the company of ghosts of Ireland past, somewhere in the east wing is artist-in-residence Eoghan Ryan. He lives onsite, in the old stables at the edge of the museum complex only a short walk from the main building. Ryan's immaculate studio shines like a beacon on the otherwise darkened campus. Inside, the walls are painted with brightly coloured trains and a desk in the corner is covered with the works of Thomas Kinsella . The collection is inherited, says Ryan; the poet was his grand-uncle. IMMA artist-in-residence Eoghan Ryan at work in the old stables. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien Artist Eoghan Ryan at the door of his studio/residence at IMMA. Photo: Bryan O'Brien The multidisciplinary artist from Dublin moved back from Berlin and has lived on IMMA's grounds since January, one of a lucky few who have been granted a place on the museum's Dwell Here residency programme. While Ryan's stay lasts a year, others are here on a shorter contract. 'If people come for a month, they're really on a different buzz,' he says. 'The tempo shifts.' The blurring of domestic and professional quarters is not unfamiliar to Ryan. 'I don't know if it's the healthiest relationship,' he says, as he thinks aloud, 'to be so close to the institution that you're working in. But it's something I've been doing a lot in my life.' Much of his artwork – a blend of performance, puppetry and video installations – wades 'through the entanglements with institutions', meditating on systems of power. 'So living close, at that line between where something is made and something is shown, is kind of interesting.' A few days after we meet, Ryan's latest project – a collaborative dance performance piece – takes place on IMMA's grounds. 'It's a very specific mode that I really enjoy, being in a place and getting to know a place as a stage. You start to see things in a different way.' There are some uneasy contradictions, as well, that the artist grapples with. 'You're living in a completely surreal situation, especially when there's a large housing crisis in the city and you're living in a gated ex-military hospital,' says Ryan. 'It's very odd. It adds to the theatre of things. Everything starts to feel weirdly fictional when you come home from the pub and have to press the gate.' Barry Kehoe in the courtyard at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien The IMMA courtyard at night. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien Security guard on night duty, Keely Raghavendra. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien But eventually, 'you do start to switch off from the strangeness of it all'. 'There is something comforting about knowing if you get really scared at night, you can go over to the security guards with a blanket. It's nice to know they're there,' he says. One of the security guards on night duty, Keely Raghavendra, takes a brief pause from patrol to say hello. 'Sometimes I scare myself,' Raghavendra says. When it gets into the wee hours of the morning, the shadows can start to play tricks on even the most grounded guard. 'I saw something in a basement. When I opened the door someone was looking at me. I was scared for a second, then I closed it and relaxed. Then I opened it again and it was gone,' he recalls. [ Lunch with a side of art: Seven Irish galleries with great cafes Opens in new window ] After a sound sleep knowing security have his back, Ryan's days to tend start early, usually at about 6.30am. Looking out the bedroom window in the morning, he often finds a spectacle. 'You wake up and there's always something weird. I woke up last Wednesday and there were just a load of soldiers rehearsing for the commemoration‚' he says, referring to last month's National Day of Commemoration Ceremony . 'I opened the blinds and was like: 'Oh great, this is happening today.'' With the exception of the museum's resident seagulls who continue to swoop and squawk even at night, the museum's courtyard feels otherworldly – strangely detached from its city setting. IMMA's permanent collection at night is a sight to behold. Much of the artwork takes on a new energy. 'When the lights are fully on, the red is a lot more dominant,' says Kehoe, considering Vik Muniz's Portrait of Alice Liddell, after Lewis Carroll. 'Seeing it now gives a completely different sense and feel to it.' Barry Kehoe with Mnemosyne, 2002, by Alice Maher in the IMMA gallery space. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien A wall plaque in the baroque chapel, Royal Hospital Kilmainham. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien Bluer hues are more present in dimmer lighting, giving the portrait's young subject a melancholy look. Barry Kehoe pictured in the Great Hall. Photo: Bryan O'Brien Machines whirr and hum, keeping control of the galleries' humidity levels and providing ambient background noise for a steady stream of consciousness as we take in the art. An audio loop of bird song from a distant installation filters through. Kehoe steps inside IMMA's baroque chapel, which was consecrated in 1686. It is pitch black. Stained glass windows gifted to the Royal Hospital by Queen Victoria in 1849 cast an eerie reflection on to the chapel wall. 'You can sort of feel the weight of history in this part of the building that you don't quite feel in the rest of it, because it still has that very ceremonial element to it,' Kehoe says, shining a torch over the decorative windows. 'They used to lock the pensioners out of the chapel because if they came in here during the daytime they'd fall asleep.' [ Sam Gilliam: Sewing Fields review – At Imma, an outstanding experimentalist's work takes over three floors Opens in new window ] From there, Kehoe walks on to the Master's Quarters, the palatial dwelling place of the hospital's masters and their families. Passing from the old diningroom through deserted corridors, Kehoe comes to stand in the Oak Room. He says it contains the strongest poltergeist presence. 'There's a lot of potential about these rooms in terms of great events. It's believed that some of the leaders of the 1916 Rising may have been questioned here before their executions,' he says. A light drizzle starts to fall as Kehoe enters the Master's Garden, an expansive green space dotted with fruit trees and cherub statues. The isolated cherubs once formed part of the triangular plinth of the Victoria Statue removed to the Royal Hospital from Leinster House, home to Dáil Éireann, in 1948. 'It's a strange sound oasis. The walls and the trees kind of cut out the city's sound,' says Kehoe. Apartment blocks and cranes join Phoenix Park's Wellington monument on the city's night-time skyline above the treetops. Barry Kehoe the military cemetery in the grounds of Royal Hospital Kilmainham. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien 'Weirdly, the city is growing up around us. When I started working here you wouldn't have had any of that in the skyline so you wouldn't have seen anything over the wall of the garden,' says Kehoe. A swarm of bats descend at the headstone of Master Lord Frederick Roberts' beloved warhorse, Volonel. Erected in the garden in 1899 with great ceremony, the headstone's original location meant it could be seen from the windows of the Master's Quarters. Lord Wolseley, who preceded Roberts, also buried his treasured dog Caesar in the garden, under a mulberry bush. Moving from one miniature cemetery to a far greater one, Kehoe's tour arrives inside the gates of Bully's Acre where more than 200,000 estimated burials were made. As the main public burial ground for Dublin city before Glasnevin Cemetery, dating from the early 1600s until 1833, there are a few big names in the soil beneath. The remains of Brian Boru 's son and grandson are thought to have been buried here after the Battle of Clontarf. Bully's Acre was subject to much body snatching over the years. In more recent history, Robert Emmet was laid to rest here following his 1803 execution up the road from here on Thomas Street. However, his body was later secretly dug up and taken elsewhere; its final resting place a mystery . At the far end of the grounds, the Royal Hospital's recently restored military cemetery lies unlit and exposed to the open road. An ambulance blares past as the museum sleeps behind the walls. The night outside holds many more stories beyond the Royal Hospital. Next in the 'One Night in Dublin' series - a night out with Dublin's street cleaners - on Wednesday
BreakingNews.ie
13-07-2025
- Politics
- BreakingNews.ie
Michael D Higgins lays wreath to mark National Day of Commemoration
President Michael D Higgins has laid a wreath at a National Day of Commemoration event in Dublin. Ceremonies took place across the country to honour all Irish casualties who died in wars or on service with the United Nations and other international organisations. Advertisement The Dublin event at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham was also attended by Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Tánaiste Simon Harris, other Government ministers and members of the Council of State. It was the 14th National Day of Commemoration attended by Mr Higgins as president and the last before he leaves office later this year. Representatives from veterans' organisations, the diplomatic corps, and the defence forces were also in attendance. Mr Martin told the ceremony: 'It is fitting that we remember here today all those Irishmen and Irishwomen who died in past wars or on military service with United Nations or other international organisations in the service of peace.' Advertisement An act of commemoration was led by leaders from various faiths. The ceremony concluded with a wreath-laying by President Higgins on behalf of the people of Ireland, followed by a fly-past by the Air Corps. Ceremonies were also held in Cork, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick and Waterford, with an event in Sligo due later in the day.
BreakingNews.ie
25-06-2025
- BreakingNews.ie
Man (20s) arrested after gardaí find gun concealed in his bulletproof vest in Dublin 8
A man in his 20s was arrested after gardaí found a gun hidden in the bulletproof vest he was wearing in Dublin 8 on Tuesday night. Uniformed gardaí on routine patrol from Kilmainham (Community Engagement) Garda Station observed two men of interest entering a taxi on Turvey Avenue, Inchicore, Dublin 8 at around 8pm last night, June 24th. Advertisement The gardaí were met with a strong smell of cannabis upon stopping the taxi, a garda statement said. Both men were told they were going to be searched under the provisions of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977, and one of them was found to be wearing a bulletproof vest and in possession of a "substantial sum" of money. As he was being searched, a .22 calibre pistol fell from being concealed in the vest. The man (20s) was arrested in connection with the seizure and is currently detained under Section 30 of the Offences against the State Act, 1939 at a garda station in Dublin. The seized firearm is now subject to a full technical examination, and the investigation is ongoing, the statement added. Speaking about the seizure, assistant garda commissioner Paul Cleary said that he wanted to commend the work of the two uniformed members "going about their duties diligently and proactively. "This was a timely intervention likely to have saved lives or prevented serious injury and is another dangerous firearm which has been taken off the streets of Dublin," he said.
Irish Times
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Iggy Pop at In the Meadows review: Old-school rock has rarely felt so timeless and incendiary
Iggy Pop In The Meadows, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin ★★★★☆ Shirtless and heedless of the passage of time, a 78-year-old Iggy Pop brought Dublin's In The Meadows festival to a blistering close with a performance that didn't so much roll back the years as carpet bomb them with aplomb. Iggy rocks into Ireland the same age as Donald Trump, but there is no sense of cobwebs needing to be knocked off as he begins with The Stooges molten classic, TV Eye. His energy is extraordinary, as is his ability to recycle the same sinew-stretching dance moves throughout the evening without ever feeling as if he is repeating himself. Iggy is part of classic rock's golden generation, and yet he never stands on ceremony or comes across as over-awed by his own mythology throughout a thrilling show. He is instead powered by the same punk fervour that drove his notorious early, riotous tours with The Stooges when he would emerge from mosh-pits bloodied and bruised. He doesn't go so far in Dublin – though he does rush the barrier during another Stooges milestone, I Wanna Be Your Dog. Iggy Pop at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham: Old-school rock has rarely felt so timeless and incendiary. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill/The Irish Times The set leans heavily on Iggy's golden years – which included a spell sharing a flat with David Bowie in Cold War Berlin. Yet there is never even a hint of nostalgia throughout a turn that feels powerfully rooted in the here and now. Banter is kept to a minimum, though he does attempt a Conor McGregor-esque 'hello f***ing Dooblin' accent at one point. Otherwise, the night is a story of literally charging the barricades – while he also plunges into the mid-1970s hit The Passenger and Lust For Life, the David Bowie tune that made him a mainstream star. READ MORE [ Gilla Band at In the Meadows review: Musical Marmite from Ireland's own Velvet Underground Opens in new window ] With a 90-minute run-time, Iggy doesn't have quite enough bangers to avoid a few misses. The pace slackens halfway through, by which point the singer and a band that includes Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner is reaching for Stooges' B-cuts 1970 and I'm Sick Of You. The cold that has descended over Kilmainham gets to Iggy too, and he twice requests a jacket – leading to the unsettling sight of pop's most famous bared torso being zipped up. Yet these are mere speed bumps. He brings down the curtain on a breakneck performance – and a winning second serving of In the Meadows – with the hectic one-two of The Dee Jays's Real Wild Child (Wild One) and the 'does-what-it-says-on-the-tin' banger Funtime. Old-school rock has rarely felt so timeless and incendiary.
