Daft Property - Irish Property News

Junkies and empty spaces litter streets where a dream died... The ill-fated Northern Quarter would have transformed our capital city: A mid-afternoon stroll around the place that would have been known as the Northern Quarter shows, emerging from the cracks, what we have come to expect in these days of broken dreams. There are junkies everywhere, in the numerous alleyways and on street corners, cravenly going about their business; there are the usual scatterings of beggars too, wrapped up quietly within themselves. In unequal measure, then, it is an uneasy landscape, both edgy and pathetic. People walk past, eyes in the distance, without taking notice -- or so it seems -- hurrying for trains, cars, buses, and bicycles, any mode at all out of the city and home. I was once familiar, indeed, with this area, before moving office in 2004, shortly after the arrival of the Luas -- a shining symbol of the new and of renewal, if ever there was one, at a time of optimism not that long ago. These