Daft Property - Irish Property News

Real austerity brings inclusivity, inspiration and invention... CULTURE SHOCK: The Cultúrlann in Derry has been shortlisted for the architectural Oscars, the Stirling Prize. With its modest design, it shows good aesthetics make for good politics. Photo - Irish Times MODESTY AND restraint are not the virtues one associates with Irish culture in the Celtic Tiger years. But one of the finest pieces of contemporary Irish design is brilliant in part because it is contained, understated, and so supremely self-confident that it doesn’t have to shout. John Tuomey and Sheila O’Donnell’s Cultúrlann building in Derry is on the shortlist for the architectural Oscars, the Stirling Prize. I was in it for the first time last weekend and it deserves all the praise and prizes it can get. Apart from its own merits, it points towards a kind of genuine austerity aesthetic, a way for Irish art to be modest and serious without being dull and impoverished. The Cultúrlann is the baby of the Stirling s...

The elements that today might form a national culture – language, religion, nationalism – are no longer so readily identifiable here, where the effect of Tiger affluence was not individualism but conformism... THINGS ARE often studied only when they start to go wrong. The end of things is the moment when we start to understand them: and only when they are understood do we begin to realise what might be lost. For instance, sociology emerged as a discipline in that era when society was no longer felt to fit like a glove. Perhaps the fairly recent development of Irish Studies on campuses is less a cause for celebration than a warning: that the identities which it sponsored were, in effect, being codified before their possible eclipse. Such fears have, of course assailed Irish people long before now. After the defeat at Kinsale, the poets of the 1600s proclaimed the collapse of Gaelic Ireland, but in lines of such throbbing vitality as to rebut that very thesis. A tradition lived on in the...

"Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change 1970-2000" is a book, by Roy Foster, that looks at the development of the Celtic Tiger... "Cuddling Up With the Celtic Tiger" ...is a report by Adam Kirsch, on the New York Sun, which gives an interesting American 'take' on "Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change"... "When you consider how large a place Ireland occupies in" the Americian "cultural imagination, it's astonishing to realize how small a country it really is. Its current population is slightly more than 4 million; more people live in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens than in all 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland. If the island seems to loom like a continent, the reason is, first of all, the Irish emigration that did so much to shape America in the 19th century. According to the Census Bureau, some 34 million Americans claim Irish ancestry, more than any other nationality except German. But you don't ha...

Voices from Our Past... "Over the past five years there has been considerable controversy regarding construction of the M3 Motorway through the Tara Valley, especially in light of the discoveries at Roestown and more recently Lismullin. While those finds are extremely significant, they pale in comparison to a more recent discovery at Tara. This short film by the award winning documentary filmmaker and musician, Mairéid Sullivan, shows that the complexity and importance of The Hill of Tara goes well beyond what we've known about the site for the past few millennia."

Enjoy!... Laurel & Hardy Meet Talking Heads:

Culture Being Destroyed In Ireland: The struggle to save over 150 ancient sites surrounding the sacred hill of Tara in Ireland continues...Watch the video:

M3 Madness: The M3 motorway being built, by the Irish Government, in one of Ireland’s major historic areas has been condemned in a BBC documentary, Tar on Tara, by Seamus Heaney, The Nobel Laureate, and many others. Crazy Property Prices: Due to crazy property prices in the Capital, Meath and Cavan is now home to thousands that commute to Dublin. The infrstructure has not kept up pace with this hideous urban sprawl - the only railway line is for freight only so commuters must rely on road transport. The current N3 has some of the worst traffic jams in Ireland! Heritage Destroyed: A new road was needed but why choose the Tara Skreen valley? This is a place of huge historical and religious significance in Ireland for thousands of years. Seamus Heaney on BBC: “I think it literally desecrates an area - I mean the word means to de-sacralise and for centuries the Tara landscape and the Tara sites have been regarded as part of the sacred ground" Celtic Tiger Attacks: “It will be a sort ...