Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
THE NEW DUBLIN city centre taskforce has recommended that the GPO be redeveloped “as a major public building”, which could see it become a world class museum or the new home for RTÉ.
The recommendation is contained in a report compiled by the taskforce, which includes ten major initiatives to revive the city centre.
Taoiseach Simon Harris will bring a memo to Cabinet today to approve the report and to establish an interdepartmental implementation group to enforce its recommendations.
The taskforce, which Harris convened earlier this year to recommend ways to improve the city, was led by David McRedmond.
It’s understood the report, which was presented to Harris last month, will outline how a “step change” is required in how the area is developed, with a recommendation that regeneration of the area should be managed as a special programme.
It also makes significant recommendations on the revitalisation of O’Connell Street with a particular focus on the iconic GPO building.
It is recommended that the GPO be redeveloped as a “major public building”. A number of proposals were made to the taskforce for its use, including a world class museum, a leading government department, or the relocation of the national broadcaster.
The taskforce did not make a determination on the redevelopment. A decision on future use will be made by the end of March next year.
Earlier this year, the Taoiseach said the historic O’Connell street building is “wasted” in terms of reaching its full potential and could be used to attract families to the capital’s main thoroughfare.
Other areas covered in the taskforce’s report include housing, policing, waste and culture. The report will be published next week.
It is expected the Government will establish the interdepartmental group with a timeline to report back to Government before the end of the year with recommendations. The group will be overseen by the Department of Taoiseach.
The group will also be responsible for assessing the multiannual cost and policy implications of the recommendations at a local and national level.
Separately, it’s understood Justice Minister Helen McEntee will today ask Government to appoint a new deputy commissioner of An Garda Síochána.
The position, the second most senior in the force, has been vacant since last March following the retirement of Ann Marie McMahon.
An open competition to fill the role was conducted by the Public Appointments Service. But the deadline had to be extended due to a lack of applicants.
It was reported last year that McMahon postponed her retirement because of a lack of interest from senior gardaí in replacing her. It was claimed that low morale within the gardaí is one of the reasons for a lack of interest in the top job.
Since then, it’s understood there was a number of applicants for the position and a “strong competition” for the role.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly will seek Cabinet approval for legislation to allow free HRT for women experiencing symptoms of menopause from January.
Donnelly announced plans for a publicly funded scheme for HRT in Budget 2025 and allocated €20 million for the measure.
HRT is free for holders of medical cards, but otherwise can cost in the region of €30 to €70 a month.
Under the scheme, HRT products will be free for all women who have a prescription from their doctor from January.
However, women will still have to pay for their GP visit and dispensing fee to the pharmacist.
It’s understood Donnelly intends to commence free HRT products from January 2025 and underpin the scheme in legislation. If legislation is not passed before then, free HRT can still be provided for on an administrative basis, until the legislation is passed.
It is intended to pass the legislation through a Committee Stage Amendment to
the annual Health Insurance Bill, which is expected to pass the Oireachtas in the coming weeks.
If Cabinet approves the legislation today, the State’s legal advisers will draft the necessary amendment to allow for the free HRT scheme to be enacted in legislation.
The measure is part of the continuing investment in women’s healthcare with a €35 million package announced in Budget 2025.
Minister Catherine Martin is also expected to bring the Sports Action Plan (2024-2027) to Cabinet today.
The plan outlines 47 key actions to improve participation levels, investment, inclusion and sustainability among areas in sport.
This includes proposals to formalise State funding consequences (50% cut) for failure to achieve 40% gender balance on boards of sporting bodies.
Other actions proposed include research on introducing design changes in sports facilities to meet the needs of women and girls in sport, as well as assessing the need for guidance on the role of school uniforms in enabling student engagement with physical activity during a school day.
Further actions in the plan include developing volunteering in sports sector, appointing a disability lead in Sport Ireland and reviewing disability sport funding.
It’s understood Martin’s memo will say that the actions within the new plan are designed “to continue to push Ireland in the right direction” towards a target of getting 60% of people regularly participating in sport.
Rates of participation among those with a disability are currently lower overall while social participation in sport, including volunteering and event attendance, also still poses challenges for some sports and communities countrywide.
The action plan outlines the need for sporting organisations to develop sustainability plans to reduce their carbon footprint, and also contains a focus on developing the link between sport and educational settings overall.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
She can’t say how many genders there are but plans on building 50,000 houses? Yeah, sure, Holly!
@Jonn: If you feel you know how many genders there are, why would you need people to tell you?
@Brendan O’Brien: What’s a woman? I need you to tell me.
@Brendan O’Brien: indeed…
If he knows maybe he should be running in this election
@Cole Palmer: Perhaps ask some of the Chelsea women’s team. Give them a laugh.
@Brendan O’Brien: 2 genders man and woman thick pants
@Jonn: Dunno what other peoples genitals have to do with it, weird thing to bring up.
@Jonn: All mammals have only 2 genders: male and female, including Humans. Of course we have effeminate men and masculine women. But yeah, just the 2 genders.
@Dave Callaghan: It’s always great to hear the opinions of experts.
@Brendan O’Brien: Thank you! Look up this butcher ‘John Money’ he was one of the first people to popularise the term ‘gender identity’ in the ’50s.
@Dave Callaghan:
Well done Dave, a buala bos and a star in your book! As for you,Brendan, you seem confused, I’ve a feeling you haven’t done your science homework again,stay back after class!
@J B: you can say anything in the seanad, that doesn’t make it true.
@Dave Callaghan: It was actually Magnus Hirshfeld, a jew in Germany in the 1920s. In 1933, The ‘Nazi Youth’ group went into his institution ‘Institut für Sexualwissenschraft’ and beat up all the employees and chanted ‘Burn Hirshfeld’ in German. A few hours later, the actual Nazis came in and burned all the books to dust. Almost all the people employed there were Jews. We have to give the Jews credit for founding transgerdism. Well done Jews. If you’re wondering what happened to Hirshfeld, he fled to Switzerland and died a few years later of a heart attack.
@Cole Palmer: And it resurfaced with the post-modernists in the French universities and moved on to the Frankfurt School which popularised ‘Critical Theory’ especially in the radical intersectionalist feminist movements in the 70s, 80s up to the present day Wokeness.
Not a brain cell between those woke clowns
@Cole Palmer: you hating on the 4x2s again ?
Not a hope love, You have your pension now on you’re bike.
@087 bed: deluded and one of them woke lot she is
@Mental Mickey: the country is on its knees but looking forward to everyone voting FFG in again for the craic, can’t be having woke people in right mental mick
Council houses should never be owned or sold to tenants. They should be returned to public stock when the tenants die or trade up. The property tax in them should also be means tested properly as should rent on an annual basis. Also the ability of tenants to demand refurbishment or maintenance should not be a given. The system is open
to abuse
@Simon Carr: since the foundation of the state families that occupied local authorities houses have been given the opportunity to own them eventually. It not the tenants buying local authorities when they could afford them that caused the housing problems,it was FF/FG failing to fund the building of local authorities hoses. Instead they gave tax payers money to the greedy builders and developers, in the form of hands out, in other words subsidies.
@Jimmy Kiely: I believe this option to buy the house is no longer available to the occupiers. I think it ceased about 8/10 years ago.
@Lydia Mcloughlin: No that not true, the 1995 scheme was replaced in January 2016 to the present day scheme.
@Jimmy Kiely: i know at least of one case where a family abused the ability to buy the house and it never was used as social housing since. I know of other cases where tenants sold on the house at huge profit and moved on. We need social housing to be social housing
@Simon Carr: if social housing wasn’t a lifetime benefit, it would free up homes for people who need it most. People fall on hard times and need temporary help, not a house for life. Someone whose kids are gone and finds a decent job can stay in the same house that costs minimal rent, while other people who need it have to live in hostels or wait years to access a house that would help them kickstart a stable life. It causes massive shortage and homelessness that delays the ability to get out of poverty.
@Simon Carr: it’s the old chestnut, no matter what system you come up with,they will be someone out there that will find away to abuse it. That system of giving sitting tenants the opportunity to buy worked well for decades. It gave the local authorities the chance to sell off some of the old housing stock. Less maintenance.
I’d rather vote for a coalition of Putin, The Taliban, Hunter Biden, Jeffrey Epstein and Joseph Stalin than vote for the social democrats.
@Cole Palmer: no you wouldn’t.
@Alex Kane: He probably would.
@Cole Palmer: ffs, what a plank
@Kevin Kerr: try a bit of ‘spacing’ in between all the comments from the obvious multi account troll…. bring in chutes & Claire powers accounts for a few replys — since the landside victory of peace in the US all your accounts gone very ‘amateurish’
@Kevin Kerr: that’s unkind to wood.
@ecrowley ecrowley: indeed, some might say offensive
@Kevin Kerr: I’ve seen cleverer plankton.
@Alex Kane: sure in his worlds he can, up you boyho.
@Kevin Kerr: I am reporting this comment to the Gardaí for online bullying and harassment.
@Brendan O’Brien: indeed, capable of supporting life for starters
@Cole Palmer: You do know you’ll have to give them your real name..? I for one, hope you do.. and it goes before the courts.. so we can see what one of the Journal trolls looks like in real life.. go on… I dare you. Show us who you really are ‘Cole’
@Brian: You’re impersonating Brian Cowen
@Cole Palmer: Awwww.. So you won’t be reporting it to the Gardai then… just a butthurt little sunflower pretending to be a hard man behind his anonymous account. Yet again, you’re a disappointment ‘Cole’. No doubt you have a lifetime of practice behind you.
@Brendan O’Brien: That would be just Gary
@Brian: did you actually think I was serious?
Princess is mixing up genders with house building
@H Woo: You seem a bit mixed up yourself.
@H Woo: You guys are absolutely obsessed. It’s a 24 hour ideology onslaught.
@Louis Jacob: When someone drew comparisons between Hamas and the IRA, he said ‘ nobody ever voted for the IRA’ ..yet he spends his days on here trying to convince people that SF is the IRA and a vote for SF is a vote for the IRA. he’s a terribly confused individual.
@H Woo:
Haha comment of the day!
Holly will have to change party and/or constituency for the next election to have a chance… And she will.
Holly and her snob party are hard to listen to _ They should have been open to enter government last time instead we landed with the Greens.
@Tim Brennan: ah now Tim the woman have her principles and the parties red line issues. Also she’s a mother in waiting, adding to the great Irish race, she deserves a vote.
@Jimmy Kiely: Her two predecessors were quality politicians with serious substance. I was so disappointed they didn’t choose to enter into Government as they would have made a serious difference and then looney greens would have not killed us with their mad taxes and we have to drive the from Cork to Limerick for work on an absolute death trap of a road which they stopped
@Tim Brennan: I agree that Road is badly in need of serious up grade. But sure you’re buddy Michael will get that done in his election manifesto, he’s promising everything else, with our taxes.
@Jimmy Kiely: 2011 we were on our knees coping with a now 22 year non verbal autistic young man Burton nailed us to the cross attacking carers and taking away our payment seeking nail us with water charges.Only for Michael Moynihan TD FF we would have been destroyed as a family he advocated for us we have arrived at a destination were our son is in a safe residential place and able to come home to us weekly. I’m proud to vote FF. In all elections since we have never been able to vote for him Now we are in a bloody constituency with Cork city voters However I’m voting For Ken O’ Flynn and FF. So that’s my logic and I just hope Michael Moynihan gets every vote in Cork North West he’s a truly decent politician whom Michael Martin disgustingly has never rewarded for his hard work.
@Tim Brennan: Tim again you can’t see the flaw in your thinking. We have our own water well bore hole, so we constantly pay for our domestic water and maintain it.I for one will never forget the mess FF/FG have created for the young citizens of our country, when they think €400 thousand is a affordable house price. The 14,562 people in emergency accommodation, Over 4,000 thousand children. Over €220 billion in debts to be paid by future generations. Teacher leaving the country in droves because they can’t afford the cost of housing and the high cost of living. The elderly been left sitting on chairs or on trolley in hospital’s , anything up 2 weeks waiting for an appointment to see a GP. These are the legacy’s of FF/FG. I for one won’t help to put them back in power, to screw us again.
@Jimmy Kiely: We all make our choices and thankfully our people will make the decision which if it’s not what I’d like I will respect my fellow citizens decision.
Sad truth is the vast majority will decide who they’re voting for without considering at a single policy or track record
Pwease vote for meee… Nah. Beat it, missus.
Any political party that would want to go into government with FF/FG should require them to make housing an national emergency, which it is. Also housing for all should be made part of our constitution, every person need a place to call home. House price have gone from € 256 thousand to €345 thousand since FF/FG joined forces, that how bad their housing policies are. And they still give subsidies to greedy builders and developers . Stop this now, don’t give them a vote.
@Jimmy Kiely: so we all should get a house ?
They’ll stock libraries with those dirty books aimed at kids
@Penguin O’Toole: relax, when’s the last time you saw a kid reading a buke!?
I think holly will find it tough to get elected. Only made it in on the 8th count by 500 votes
@John Purcell: Simon Harris got elected on the 15th count. She’ll be grand ya dosser.
Holly, you have my vote iv my mind made up, time for change give her a chance
@N D K: she won’t be in Government
@Sheila McNulty: endlessly pregnant
FFG are a sorry of James blunts..
@Stiles: shower*
@james rowan: well that certainly explains a lot
SocDems who are they?
Like, get real!
Dream on
Moving swiftly on !!! Woke much !!
My Jesus! What a miserable shower of goons in that photo.
Will be an event less short career in politics for Holly
Absolutely no votes for ridiculous “Judean people’s front” parties, SD L G PBP AON, the equivalent of the UK looney party, time to move away from this madness
Holly you can’t say “we want to go into government” as a minority guest and then say you have a red line – ____ or get off the pot
have your say